Author: Mr. Chase

Things I Know 53 of 365: The hypotheticals aren’t looking so good

Sixty kids in a class strikes me as a lot.

On average, I teach about 30 kids at a time. In moments when the controlled chaos gets to be a little out of control, 30 feels like it could be 60.

If 60 ever got out of control (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) I suppose that would start to feel like 120.

Last night, I was asked, “What do you think the GOP is thinking by decimating school budgets? I mean, do they really think that 60 kids in a class in Detroit will be anything other than civil war?”

I took the hypothetical bait and started playing out how I would teach in an chronically economically depressed inner-city school where the average class size was 60 students.

It didn’t take long.

In my hypotheticals (and I’m guessing in GOP lawmakers hypotheticals) I’m not in that classroom.

Education is the largest chunk of combined state and local budgets, and teachers are the largest chunk of that chunk.

If you want to save money, eliminate the teachers.

And if you want to back up your argument, trot out selected passages from Christensen, Johnson and Horn’s Disrupting Class. Not the whole book. Present only the pieces of their argument that sound like they back up your plan.

Cite budget deficits and slowly lay off the most junior of your teaching force. This will leave your most senior teachers with little patience and overflowing classrooms.

Some will stick it out, but many will decide things have gone too far and take an early retirement.

You won’t have to worry about much standing in the way of finding reasons to fire the hangers on as you already broke collective bargaining when you destroyed the last vestiges of a collective.

You’d think you’ve saddled yourself with an ugly mess at this point, but this is where the truly beautiful part comes in.

Again, you’ll have the benefit of bastardizing Christensen, Johnson and Horn.

For a fraction of a cost, say $25K each, you hire aides – half hall monitors, half data entry specialist – to oversee the computer labs with which you’ve outfitted your school buildings. Sixty kids to a room starts to sound like a low-ball estimate, so you start to schedule kids in shifts, using the computer rooms around the clock – constantly overseen by what we’ll label education accountants.

It looks like there’s a hole in the plan. All the capital outlay for those computers is going to set you back.

Don’t worry.

Some multi-billionaire benefactor will step in and his foundation will donate the proprietary technology to stock your learning centers.

It will be a happy coincidence the students in your learning centers develop an unquestioning brand loyalty to the corporation founded by your multi-billionaire benefactor in his previous life.

It will be another happy coincidence that the proprietary brand loyalty will quietly suffocate the open source movement that threatened the corporate donors who filled your re-election coffers.

So, you’ll have your closed system. You’ll eliminate your greatest cost, you’ll increase learning production, you’ll increase consumer production (the production of consumers), and you’ll find a place for most of the young people from your electorate.

Most of the young people.

See, what you will be creating is the “public option.”

You won’t be eliminating all teaching positions or schools. The private options will still exist.

You’ll send your kids there.

Your donors will send their kids there.

The best teachers from the old model (many of them likely the most seasoned) will fight tooth and nail to cling to the profession they love. They might disagree heartily with the new way of doing things. You don’t have to worry about that. They’re not a collective anymore, so their voices will be mere whispers on the wind.

So, your children and your donors’ children will be educated. The public option will fit the needs of your electorate. You’ll eliminate the majority of your budget deficit. And, all will be right with the world.

In the early days, you’ll hear grumblings from the disenfranchised about the morlocks and the eloi, but such hesitancy is to be expected in times of great innovation.

Things I Know 52 of 365: My classroom should be as democratic as twitter

A great democracy must be progressive, or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.

– President Theodore Roosevelt

Teachers dig Facebook. They like ning and twitter and youtube and social networking. I mean, they really really like ’em.

A TON of teachers who like these online affordances also like to build the case for their inclusion in classrooms and education.

Of the Ton,I get the feeling many, if not most, of them work in schools or districts where those online affordances are blocked, banned, outlawed and censored.

I’m not sure many of those teachers really want the access or understand the shift in pedagogy that use would imply.

I’ve been reading Sam Chaltain’s American Schools: The art of creating a democratic learning community. You should too.

Chaltain holds that American schools should be places of democracy, but are not. No whiner, he then works to outline what he sees to be the keys of democratizing classrooms.

Before I picked up the text, I had been reflecting on the role democracy plays in my own teaching. While I’d wager it’s greater than many, I still struggle moving from compliance to choice.

Most recently, I’ve struggled with accepting the idea that saying, “Pick one of these three options,” isn’t the same thing as choice – not true choice.

Chaltain quotes Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick:

[I]f the world takes our ideas and changes them – or accepts some and discards others – all we need to decide is whether the mutated versions are still core. If they are, then we should humbly accept the audiences judgement.

When the Ton trumpet the use of the aforementioned online affordances in learning, they invariably speak of students’ abilities to choose, create, re-arrange, remix and “like” in the spaces they can inhabit online. In essence, they like that those online spaces would give their students the chance to do what the Heaths say sticky ideas do.

This leads me to question what’s been limiting those options in the physical spaces of their classrooms in the first place.

I know what’s been holding it back in my classroom – me.

No pedagogical prude, I attempt to take learning styles, intelligences and modalities into account as often as possible. I differentiate and modify and accommodate. In the end, I’m realizing much of the work in my classroom is still closer to conformity than I’d like. And perhaps, that’s limiting the contribution of those voices from whom I’m most waiting to hear.

“We should evoke contribution through freedom, not conformity,” Chaltain writes.

I agree.

To the extent that I work within a system that expects certain outcomes from my students, I agree. To the extent that I have a picture in my head of what my students can do once they leave my classroom, I agree.

It might be fear that leads me to the caveats above, but I don’t think it is.

There are pieces of being able to read and write that I know will prove detrimental if they are not within my students’ abilities when they leave my care. The democratic classroom I envision isn’t one without goals. It’s chock full o’ goals. Those goals are also balanced with choice.

When I write about improving choice in my classroom, I do not mean to imply the abdication of structure or goals. I mean to say I need to give greater and truer choices to my students in how they journey to those goals.

And to the Ton, I want to reference something Jerrid Kruse brought up tonight on twitter. He referenced his frustration with online ed discussions veering toward the tech and not the teaching. I don’t yet know if I agree with his claim that this happens in the majority of online conversations. I do know that it’s complicated my thinking.

If you’re clamoring for these online affordances backed by the argument of the democracy they bring to learning, have you done the hard, uncomfortable work of making your classrooms democratic so your students are better citizens when the tools show up (or don’t)?

Things I Know 51 of 365: There are 100 people in the world

Do not compute the totality of your poultry population until all the manifestations of incubation have been entirely completed.

– William Jennings Bryan

I’ve spent this weekend with my godmother and her family.

Karen and my mom met in science class on the first day of seventh grade. Family legend has it they were best friends from then on.

When explaining to people I’d be down in D.C. for a Bat Mitzvah, I’ve been asked for whom. After a few dozen rounds of “my godmother’s youngest daughter,” I switched to “my godsister.”

It slipped out so naturally, I didn’t realize right away that this wasn’t actually a thing. Or, at least, it hadn’t been until now.

If you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends, these people are the family my parents chose for me when I was born.

There’s something pretty tremendous about that.

When I lived in Florida, Ricki, a journalist friend of mine, wrote a profile piece on a local resident who captained a wooden sailboat.

In appreciation for the profile piece, the captain invited Ricki and a few of her friends out on his boat.

The majority of the cruise featured the captain at the helm, me at his side and the three others sunbathing on the bow of the ship.

The captain had spent most of his life on the water, and I took my cue to sit and soak in his stories.

Now, many of them started with, “I can only tell you this because the girls are all up front,” and ended with a good-natured elbow to the ribs, but one thing has stuck with me – right to the stickiest part of my brain – as the other stories have faded away.

“There are 100 people in the world,” said the captain, “The rest are just extras.”

My understanding and interpretation of his words has vacillated and evolved in the intervening years. Always, though, the thought comforts me.

It’s easy to get lost in a world of nearly 7 billion souls or a city of 6 million or even a school of 500.

Remembering there are 100 people in my world, helps me to anchor in the tempest of data, friending, following, redditing, and stumbling upon.

I know 100 is a soft number, and I don’t have a catalog or list anywhere. I tried once to no avail. Knowing they are there proved more important than knowing exactly who they are.

Sometimes, I’ll meet someone I’m certain is a person in my world only to find central casting has sent them for a walk-on role. Sometimes, I’ve absent-mindedly ignored the first moments of what were to become some of my deepest and most lasting friendships.

Nel Noddings writes about the potentiality of being overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for everyone whom we come into contact. The 100 people in my world are the way I avoid that feeling and keep myself sublimely whelmed by the ethical imperative to care for others.

Though I’ve seen Karen and her family a handful of times in the last couple decades, I am reminded of their place as people in my world.

Something peaceful happens each time I am reminded of this.

Things I Know 50 of 365: Teaching is an act of faith

Faith without works is dead.

– James 2:17

I looked up “bat mitzvah” yesterday.

I’m headed to my first tonight and thought I should at least know what it means.

Loosely and in my googled understanding, “daughter of the commandments.”

Tonight, my godmother’s youngest daughter Katie will take on the task of upholding the commandments of her faith.

It is a beautiful and solemn thing. Though I am not Jewish, it is holy to me.

That certain things are sacred, I understand.

There are trusts and covenants that transcend human frailties.

The closest thing I have is being a teacher and working for the good of my students.

I realize it falls well short of the threads of history into which Katie is interweaving her life tonight, but it is what I have.

Whenever Chris talks to the parents of SLA, he thanks them. He thanks them for trusting us with their most precious possessions.

School is difficult. Learning is messy. Teaching is intense.

For all of the science and research and discussion, teaching is an act of faith.

TFA calls it grit.

Faith has more hope.

Faith, religious or otherwise, asks us to take up certain commandments.

For me, one of those commandments is seeing potential – seeing the best.

It’s the commandment Natalie Munroe broke when she posted her first blog entry denigrating or criticizing her students.

Munroe was wrong.

She hurt children.

We don’t talk about kids that way.

Somewhere in my mind tonight, as Katie reads from the Torah, I’ll be considering the commandments by which I teach. I’ll be thinking of how I can better act out my faith.

Things I Know 49 of 365: Boredom scales

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

– Ellen Parr

Noah and I were chilling in my godmother’s living room earlier tonight.

He and his family had caught a 5 AM flight from Topeka to D.C., so I assumed he was a bit frayed.

He told me no. He’d fallen asleep before takeoff. I asked him about missing the in-flight movie and he stared at me blankly. Evidently, this is not a feature of the Topeka-D.C. run.

I switched the subject.

“I’m guessing you’re in third grade?”

Noah shook his head.

“Secon…”

I stopped short, noticing a decided uptick in Noah’s head shaking.

“Fourth?”

“Yup.”

This is why I’d sat down next to Noah. He was easily the youngest person at the party in that way I remembered meaning I needed to entertain myself when I was his age.

Plus, I like talking to little kids. They give the most honest answers.

As he didn’t have the air of a dropout about him, I began to ask Noah about school.

“Who’s your teacher?”

“Do you like him?”

“What do you think about school?”

The last one surprised me.

Noah had been keeping himself busy for the better part of an hour and a half – following the dog around, walking around in circles, entering a room and whispering “Does anyone want to play Follow-the-Leader” so he didn’t get in trouble for interrupting. The kid was pretty fantastic by all accounts.

I’d totally love to teach him.

By fourth grade, though, Noah was broken.

“I don’t like school.”

“Wait, school’s awesome. How can you not like school? Give me the top three reasons you don’t like school.”

“I can give you four,” he said, and held up four fingers. “Boring, boring, boring, and boring,” he explained ticking off each finger as he spoke.

In some ways, I’m a little relieved. After four years in Philly, I was beginning to worry we could only bore the creativity and curiosity out of children in urban settings.

Noah was offering up evidence young children’s imaginations were being neglected in the rural Midwest as well. It’s a striking display of continuity of message.

It’s easy to argue I’m making snap judgements about Noah’s education after only a few seconds of conversation. As I said, though, little kids give the most honest answers. Imagine, though, what systems must be in place so that Noah can so quickly and self-assuredly jump directly to boredom when asked his opinion on school after only 5 years of what I’m certain his parents hope will at least be a 16-year tenure in education.

Some Topekan had the chance to make this funny little guy think and create, but he’d gone and bored him instead. That’s damage it’ll take years to repair, and faith in his teachers-to-come that Noah might never regain.

It made me sad.

So, I did what I do.

“Does your teacher know you’re bored.”

“Um, I don’t think so.”

“Have you ever told him?”

A smile, “no.”

“You should.”

It might have been wrong of me. I might have just set Noah and his parents up for a parent-teacher meeting. Then again, I’m sure Noah has had to sit and listen to what his teacher thinks and knows and feels for the better part of the school year. I’m a little bit ok with the tables being turned.

Things I Know 48 of 365: It’s okay to leave the classroom

Today’s the day.

– Joan Cusack, as Sheila Jackson in Shameless

I once heard people who live in apartments are less psychologically sound than those who live in houses and condominiums where they can walk out their front doors and be outside. Something about instantaneous access to the outside world, an immediate exit, makes things ok in their brains.

After years of apartment living, I live in a rowhome now. I think there’s something to the claim.

All my evidence is anecdotal, but my theory is the same is true for classrooms.

Forget the argument that teaching with your door open opens a literal gateway to collaboration and being a part of your larger school community. Ignore the touted benefits of talking to those around you. I’m claiming here and now, that stepping outside your classroom is good for your brain.

We’re having what I am taking to be a false positive on Spring’s arrival in Philadelphia right now. Today’s high was in the mid-60s. I took a walk to get my lunch.

I taught better the rest of the day.

My colleague Matt Kay took it a step further. He took his last period class down the street to a park near the school, and they read. Then, he circulated among their literary clumps and peppered them with questions for discussion.

Yeah, yeah, it was good for the kids.

But, I saw Matt walking down the hall after he’d entered the school. The man was glowing. He’d dared to step outside the classroom, outside the school, and it showed on his face that he was all the better for it.

Too often, I meet teachers who see the hallways outside their classrooms as Tron-like rails leading them perhaps to the office but definitely home.

They shouldn’t.

Our classrooms are connected. Beyond anything electronic. Our classrooms are physically connected. The world connects not just virtually, but physically as well.

My friend Jeff teaches middle school students history. Today, they were squirrelly (as is their wont). He took them on a field trip – a walk around the neighborhood. When he got back, he was a better teacher. What he knew was good for his students turned out to be good for him.

I’m not suggesting all teachers need to take their students for a walk (it’s not a terrible idea).

Tomorrow, I’m going to eat my lunch outside, maybe with another teacher. You should too. If it’s too cold, go out to a restaurant that has cloth napkins. Step outside.

Crazy cat ladies die in apartment, not houses or condos (I did a Google News search). Let’s not be the crazy cat ladies of our schools.

Things I Know 47 of 365: I like knowing where stuff comes from

When the shift to push-button telephones happened, my grandparents let me sit at the dining room table with their old rotary-dial and a screwdriver.

I was there for hours.

What the phone did was clear. How the phone did it do it, how the phone came to do it – those were mysteries.

At the end of it all, I had no answers.

I had many more questions.

I wanted to know how it all happened and came together.

These things are important to me. I want not only to know with whom the kernels of my ideas originated, but who jumpstarted my stuff cycle as well.

Friday, the students in my FOOD class will begin watch King Corn, a documentary about the rise and role of corn in American food production. Though I’d seen it before, I previewed it last night. Fascinating.

From high fructose corn syrup to agrinomics to industrial farming, the film traces corn’s role in everyday life.

We’re watching the doc because it sheds light on one of the most ubiquitous ingredients in the American day. I want my students to know what I wanted to know as I pieced apart that telephone.

As I watched the film, it reminded me why it had been hanging in my memory since the first viewing.

“If people only knew where their food comes from,” I irately IMed an unsuspecting friend, “they would be more thoughtful about how they consume.”

I hope I’m correct with that statement.

People buy bottled water because they don’t know about its environmental impact.

Once people read Fast Food Nation, they stop eating at McDonald’s.

When you learned about sweatshops, you stopped wearing Nike.

Or not.

It’s not, right?

People know these things and choose ignorance.

Still, I have to think knowing influences our decisions, at least a little.

Every once in a while, I’ll got back and watch The Story of Stuff to be reminded how connected I am to the rest of the world through the stuff I have and the impact having that stuff has on the world.

While I’m certain King Corn will help my students connect, at least a little, to an understanding of the food they consume, I realize showing a movie about the corn fields of Iowa to a bunch of kids from Philly could just as well be showing them images from the Hubble space telescope.

To combat the disconnect, I’m enlisting the help of SourceMap.org. Throughout the course of the quarter, my students will select their favorite comfort foods and map their sources and impact. They will see the myriad courses their main courses take to end up on their plates.

Knowing where stuff comes from, the origins of not our universal but individuals existences, forces us to be aware. Try as we might, we can’t return to the cave.

Things I Know 46 of 365: Education should never be our country’s Third World

If we take these steps — if we raise expectations for every child, and give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day they are born until the last job they take — we will reach the goal that I set two years ago: By the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. (Applause.)

– President Obama, 2011 State of the Union

I’ve been in trouble with the charity mob lately. They’ve called my phone. They’ve e-mailed friends and co-workers. They’ve faxed my principal.

Donors Choose is looking for me.

More specifically, they’re looking for my Thank You Packet. I’ve been horrible at thank you notes since I was little. Always loved the idea, but been horrible in its execution.

Rather than feel guilty, I’ve become resentful.

Not resentful toward Donors Choose – they’re just doing how they do.

Resentful there’s a need for Donors Choose to do how they do.

According to CharityNavigator.org, Donors Choose spent almost $17 million on program expenses for the 2009 fiscal year. That’s $17 million that school districts couldn’t get to their teachers, classrooms and students to make the learning happen.

I remember the excitement I felt when I first learned about Donors Choose. I was immediately enamored of the idea I’d never have to negotiate the funding tug-of-war within my district when my students needed new books. I remember telling a science teacher friend about DC and watching her face light up as she realized she now had an avenue for procuring the new lab supplies her students desperately needed.

If we are true to our commitment to making America a STEM powerhouse, a creative force to be reckoned with and a leader in social development, we must acknowledge the irony of an education that forces teachers to outsource the purchase of Romeo and Juliet or scientific calculators.

For every dollar brought in by DC, an administrator wasn’t reminded of the needs facing his or her school. As those dollars piled up, administrators didn’t see as much need in telling their bosses or there bosses’ bosses their schools needed money for books, for computers, for field trips, for art supplies.

According to Donors Choose, “Since 200, 182,386 projects have been brought to life.” That’s 182,386 reminders of the needs to better fund our classrooms that never made it past their online proposals.

I love Donors Choose, but I wish I shouldn’t need to remember it exists.

When I was teaching in Florida, one of the heads of the district came by to speak at our faculty meeting. It was part of an initiative to talk to talk up new programs in the district. They were great programs – really designed to help kids.

Our guest asked if there were any questions or concerns he could address.

I raised my hand.

“Can we get pencils?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can we get pencils. These programs all sound excellent. I know they’re going to help students learn. It’s just that, they never have pencils, and it holds up the learning in the classroom. If we could just get some pencils, I know it would make a huge difference tomorrow and take a load of stress off my day.”

Our guest chuckled.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I got a bit of a talking to from my principal after the meeting.

“Hey, he asked,” I said.

Stern stare and I was excused.

The next Monday, a package arrived via district mail – 1 gross of packages of 12 pencils.

I’ve never seen so many pencils.

What I said in the meeting certainly broke from protocol, but it also delievered the message that literacy specialists were going to be more effective had the children the tools with which to show their literacy.

In the age of Donors Choose, I worry those messages aren’t being delivered frequently enough.

Instead we’ve a sort of education Kiva doling out school supplies with repayment of teachers and students thanking donors for the tools of learning their schools and districts should have provided in the first place.

While I certainly support the work of both organizations, I cannot help resenting the systems which continue to make both of them necessary.

Things I Know 45 of 365: The difference between an allowance and birthday money

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

– Benjamin Franklin

When I was a kid and up through my first job, money came to me by two means.

One was my allowance and eventually paycheck. As explained to me by my mother, my allowance was what I got as a member of our family. I had chores and the like, which I was expected to do as my part of keeping the family running. I contributed to the betterment of the family and benefited from the success of the family.

I used my allowance for the general upkeep of me and the upkeep of my adolescent operations. Snacks at lunch, movies with friends – looking back now, I can’t quite remember what I did with my allowance. Largely, I remember squirreling it away for nothing in particular.

The other means by which kid me acquired money was the act of being alive each year – birthday money. Brithday money was something altogether different from allowance and the eventual paychecks that accompanied my first job.

Brithday money wasn’t squirred away at all. It was spent on those things I would have spent my allowance or paycheck on were it not for the costs of being me which eventually included car insurance and gas money.

CDs, books, hats (I wore a lot of hats) – these were the big expenditures on which birthday money was spent. Nothing recurring like increased insurance coverage or a new car and the accompanying payments.

I understood birthday money came once a year and the amount was always uncertain. It was to be appreciated, but never expected.

I’ve been getting the feeling lately that the School District of Philadelphia doesn’t quite know the difference between allowance money and birthday money.

Birthday money is when the federal government gives your state about $4 billion for education initiatives as part of a one-time stimulus package. See, they even call it a package so you know it’s birthday money.

Allowance money is when the federal, state and local governments chip in to your annual budget to take care of the general upkeep of your schools and the upkeep of educational operations. It’s what you get for doing your part in keeping the bigger family running.

See. They’re different.

Even without birthday money, it was important for me to keep track of my allowance and first job spending. Spend too much on something new and shiny and I’d have trouble keeping up with my basic expenses.

I’ve been getting the feeling that the School District of Philadelphia has misunderstood the idea of managing an allowance as well.

They’ve maybe focused on the new (if not so shiny) and it’s going to mean having trouble keeping up with the basic expenses.

Of course, if I misspent my allowance or paychecks from my first job, it meant not being able to drive my car. As much of a bummer as that was, it’s paling in comparison to watching my friends and colleagues fear for their jobs.

See, when I screwed up, it really only inconvenienced me. I wasn’t responsible for the livelihood of thousands of people. It’s a good thing too, I was only a kid. What did I know?

In those times of screw up with my money and they were at their wits’ end, my parents would tease me they were going to put me up for adoption.

I wonder if anyone will get grounded.

I wonder if anyone will be willing to adopt an entire school district.

Things I Know 44 of 365: Positivity can be viral

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

– Mark Twain

Friday, Sam started class.

Well, she pre-started class.

“Mr. Chase!” as the rest of the students filed in.

“Mr. Chase!” during the general din of everyone taking their seats.

“Mr. Chase!” as I made my way to my computer to log attendance.

“Yes, Sam,” said I through gritted teeth letting only the voice of patient Mr. Chase escape.

“Can we do a high-grade compliment?”

“Um, sure.”

High-grade compliments are a piece of the opening of class I started a few years ago.

They have three rules:

  1. Be in close proximity.
  2. Make eye contact.
  3. Pause to collect your thoughts.

The difference between a high-grade compliment and a low- or medium-grade compliment is the focus on complimenting who you see a person as being – the best parts of that character my mom was always so concerned with building.

A low-grade compliment might be something like, “I like that shirt,” or “Your hair looks nice.”

Physical attributes, but still things that accessorize a person phyisically.

A medium-grade compliment might be something like, “You have a nice smile,” or “You’ve got a great sense of humor.”

Sometimes still physical attributes, but closer to who people are or who they present themselves as.

A high-grade compliment says, “I see you. I appreciate you. And here are some of the reasons why.”

From time to time, we’ll start class with a high-grade compliment, a student is picked at random, and I follow the three rules to compliment them publically in front of the whole class. A really good compliment can last anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute in delivery.

Sam was asking if we could start class with one.

As soon as my “sure” was out of my mouth, Sam followed her first with a second, “Can I give it.”

Usually, I deliver the HGCs. On ocassion, the kids will take it over.

Midway through my second “sure,” Sam was out of her seat and positioning herself in front of Douglas. As shocked as everyone else in the class was of her placement, no one was more shocked than Douglas.

The Douglas and Sam are any kind of oil-and-water-esque metaphor you can think of. They bicker, they tease, they call each other names.

And Sam was about to give him a HGC.

I was maybe holding my breath.

“Even though we call each other names and pick on each other, that’s just how we do. That’s Sam and Douglas,” she began.

“I wouldn’t want it any different. You’re like a brother to me. I know if there’s any part of the homework that I don’t understand, I can come to you and you’ll put the kidding aside and help me. And I know, when something’s wrong with you, you know you can come to me and I’ll try to help you. So, even though we call each other names and fight all the time, I wouldn’t want it any other way. ‘Cause then we wouldn’t be Sam and Douglas.”

And then the class applauded.

I swear. Douglas has it recorded on his phone if you don’t believe me.

But the class wasn’t done.

Another student raised her hand.

“Mr. Chase, can we do good news?”

Good news is my bastardization of a concept from Hal Urban. For 3-5 minutes at the top of a class, I ask the class what’s good that’s going on in their lives. We talk about how to mine the really good news rather than pieces like, “I’m wearing my favorite socks,” in the interest of not taking 20 minutes of class time.

“Sure,” I said again.

“Well, my mom had back surgery, and they had to disconnect her spine and stuff like that. And it’s been really stressful and scary. But, the doctors say she’s recovering faster than expected and she’s going to be coming home from rehab.”

Applause.

Another hand.

“After 28 years, my parents paid off the mortgage on their house.”

Applause.

Another hand.

“My brother has been having a rough time of managing going to dialysis three times a week, but this week someone from California called and said they’d like to donate one of their kidneys.”

Applause.

Another hand.

And it continued like this – students brimming over with stuff that was good in their lives.

Even the student assistant teacher in the room, a senior who the rest of the class is starting to see as an older brother, raised his hand, “I got accepted to college this week.”

A raucous applause. Why wouldn’t someone accept their mentor into college?

It was positively contagious.

One student stood her chair to share something she said only two other people knew. When she was done, the class applauded again. As she stepped down those sitting around her hugged her in congratulations.

Things were winding down and Sam yelled out again, “What about your good news, Mr. Chase?”

My mind went blank. Usually, when I schedule good news, I try to have something in mind to get the ball rolling. I’d been paying such close attention to what everyone was saying, I hadn’t thought of anything.

“Come on, Mr. Chase, what’s your good news?”

It hit me I was happy that I’d found out this week my little sister Rachel, now in her junior year at college, will be spending her spring break with me as she has every spring since her 8th-grade year.

Applause.

Now, tomorrow could just as likely bring a falling out between friends or a feud in a group project, but Friday showed me something beautiful.

It showed what fostering relationships in the classroom can look like. It showed that working to make sure all my students feel safe and supported is worthwhile work. It showed that they have come to trust me and the rest of their classmates with the deeper pieces of who they are.

We weren’t talking reading or writing, but we were definitely building our understanding of the power of words.