Category: Post-A-Day

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.

Passing the test of knowing how to talk to kids

Marcie Hull said something toward the beginning of our friendship that told me we would get along well.

When pointing to a couple at a restaurant during one of our first meals together, Marcie said, “He knows how to talk to kids.”

The he of the mixed-sex pair, was presumably the father of the 6 or 7 year old girl sitting between them.

I paused for a moment to eavesdrop on the conversation going on at the other table before asking Marcie what she meant.

I heard the man talking to the child in a voice that was warm, engaged, and likely very similar to the same voice he would use with the woman sitting with him or to a server that happened by.

I asked Marcie if what I was inferring had captured her meaning, and she said it had.

Since that conversation, this has become one of the litmus tests I use the first time I meet adults who work with children. Right or wrong, it is my brain deciphering how much those adults believe children are capable of.

The tone we reserve for babies and pets does not urge children to respond with aspiration.

It is a tone not of equals, but of esteem. Often, adults to who use this tone or register with children are also willing to have conversations with children to help them work through whatever they may misunderstand or question about a situation.

In his book How Children Learn, John Holt brings up this point again and again when describing encounters with children intent upon learning something. A child proffers a question and Holt proffers an answer in a tone he might also offer a colleague of similar age and experience.

His words (and the words I’ve seen Marcie use time and again when helping children work through difficult problems) are perhaps more intricate. They contain fewer assumptions of the shared language of mastery that can build up over time.

This is the tone we should use with our students, those who show up to learn alongside us each day.

They are, as Dewey implied, more immature in their learning, but not in their curiosity about the world.

The tone we reserve for babies and pets does not urge children to respond with aspiration.

I should make the distinction here between tone and content.

There are some who agree with what I’ve written so far with whom I deeply disagree. These are the people who talk to kids in the tone I’m describing, but bring that tone to bear encumbered by the expectations of adulthood. These adults forget the tempest of emotions they likely experienced during their youth and the vulnerability that comes with learning something new or complex like engineering or fitting in to new social situations. They forget they are the adults in the conversation and that the children with whom they are speaking are in their care.

These adults confusing speaking as an adult with speaking to an adult.

That’s unfair.

Working with a new class of ninth graders, Marcie speaks to them with a tone of esteem and respect, but her words also denote an underlying listening that is taking place between each thing she says. She is probing to find out how she can most effectively leverage her own experiences as a technologist, an artist, or a person against the learning taking place without becoming overwhelming.

Holt understood this too. He wrote about answering a child’s questions and accepting when the child wandered off, ready to mess about with something else. He wasn’t angered. He didn’t try to fill the space between them with more and more content as the figurative passing bell chimed. Not only was the tone he used respectful of the people he was interacting with, but he was respectful when they signaled they’d received the answers they needed. I think of this as the same way you or I would accept the signals from adult colleague when they noted they were ready to move on.

I know there are many ways to talk about this, from discussions of register to developmental tones. For me, what helps me keep my thinking centered, is Marcie’s plainly laid out knowing how to talk to kids.

Four lessons from my first 100-mile month

Post-race face. #potd

Today marks the start of month #2 of my resolution to run 100 miles per month for 2015. How’d I do in month #1? The final total was 109.199 miles according to the Charity Miles app. I wasn’t trying to overshoot 100 by quite so much until Friday evening when I signed up for the High Cloud Snapple Half Marathon.

January 1, the thought of running a 13.1-mile trail race with a starting temp of 24º wouldn’t have been the excitement-inducing prospect I found it to be when I woke up Saturday morning. The race was great, and my experience was indicative of some of the other lessons I’ve learned this month:

  • I’m still a runner. The inconsistency of my running over the last year or so had me thinking of myself as someone who had run about a dozen marathons and other races. This had a sharp distinction from the more active claim, “I’m a runner.” It was mid-way through Week 2 that I noticed the furniture in my head re-arranged. “That’s me again,” I thought, and kept huffing through the freezing cold.
  • Two other resets have been key. Before I knew “Drynuary” was a thing, I decided to take the time between the start of 2015 and my March 2 birthday as two months of refraining from alcohol and choosing a solely plant-based diet. Both are things I’ve done for about a month a year for the past 5 years or so, but this is the first time I’ve decided to put the two in concurrent service of a specific running goal. As a result, my nights are full of much better sleep. I hit the mattress, and I’m out. Waking up is much easier as well. When I’m back in the apartment after anything from 5-8 miles, my selection of snacks is much healthier than what I was eating before, even though, that was still a vegetarian diet. For me, vegan has meant cutting processed foods as much as possible as well.
  • I can neglect Netflix with no emotional consequences. A new city, a demanding job, winter – these all created a perfect storm of couch-sitting and binge watching in my first 5 months in D.C. While I didn’t make it my conscious objective to make it through all of Netflix/Amazon Prime/Hulu’s catalog, a ticktock of my time pre-January would have provided evidence to the contrary. While I’ll still catch episodes of Parks and Rec, Arrow, and Flash; they will usually be one-off viewings before I start in on cooking dinner or head to bed.
  • I’m cooking again. I have to. Turns out not buying processed food, deciding to eat plant-based, and running a ton mean my body tends to ask for actual food. My slow cooker has been getting a ton of use. I’ve picked up Angela Liddon’s The Oh She Glows Cookbook along with diving in to the plant-based Pinterest community. I’ve learned kale chips can be delicious. Not long after, I learned a person should not eat two entire cookie sheets of kale chips in quick succession.

All of January’s miles benefited Back on My Feet. At $0.25/mile, that’s just shy of $27.30 for the month. It seems small, but I hope it helps. With tomorrow’s run, I’ll be posting on February’s charity and why I’ll be running for them.

An Accounting of January’s Miles

Date Distance Charity Location Notes
1/1/2015 4.238 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/2/2015 4.248 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/3/2015 4.642 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/4/2015 YOGA REST REST
1/5/2015 4.453 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/6/2015 4.3 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/7/2015 4.713 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/8/2015 REST
1/9/2015 REST
1/10/2015 5.372 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/11/2015 5.479 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/12/2015 5.506 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/13/2015 5.719 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/14/2015 REST
1/15/2015 REST
1/16/2015 5.868 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/17/2015 5.905 Back on My Feet washington, dc
1/18/2015 REST
1/19/2015 6.073 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/20/2015 6.041
1/21/2015 REST
1/22/2015 REST
1/23/2015 7.522 Back on My Feet Philadelphia, PA Great run w/ @jspry
1/24/2015 EduCon
1/25/2015 EduCon
1/26/2015 REST
1/27/2015 8.019 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/28/2015 8.001 Back on My Feet Washington, D.C.
1/29/2015  REST
1/30/2015  REST
1/31/2015 13.1
January Total: 109.199

 

I really never knew who Raffi was

Evidently, Raffi sings about a baby whale. Additionally, load of folks know about the whale, and the song, and, well, Raffi.

Until today, I didn’t really get who Raffi was. The closest I’d come to knowing was having a vague recollection of some stand-up comic along the way referencing Raffi in a joke.

Raffi, for the acolytes out there, has released a new album – Love Bug. From the short snippet I heard while listening to Raffi’s interview on Jesse Thorn’s Bullseye podcast, it’s the type of song that fills like a warm hug. I can’t say I listen to too many songs like that. I can say it was lovely.

The entire interview was lovely. Every. Single. Word. Thorn pushed at the edges here and there to seek some sort of cynicism in Raffi’s responses. There was none to be found. It was one of the most refreshing pieces of tape I’ve heard – ever. It reminded me of any interview I’ve ever seen, heard or read with Mr. Rogers. (Start here.)

Similar to Mr. Rogers’s Fred Rogers Company, Raffi has a non-profit called, The Centre for Child Honouring.

Knowing these two folks have dedicated their lives to thinking deeply and caringly about the health, welfare, joy and development of kids makes my day somehow peaceful.

I won’t say more, because I really and truly want to convince you to make 30 minutes in the next few days listening to this interview.

Let’s Start Setting SMIRT Goals

Two pieces of otherwise unrelated writing came across my screen this evening that have me thinking about goals.

The first is a post over at the No-Meat Athlete blog titled, “Why Everything They Told You about Goals is Wrong.” It’s a short piece that is summed up best in this passage:

If your goal is compelling (huge! ridiculous!) enough, then when those inevitable obstacles come up, you’ll plow right over them. Or around them. Or through them. And when all of those approaches don’t work, you won’t be able to sleep until you find one that does.

The second was an email from today’s listserve winner, Dan Shipton, who writes:

I had resigned to not write anything, but was gently reminded how I got this far in life by a couple word magnets strung together on the side of a fridge at my office. Those words struck a chord with me today and I want to share them with you: “build to win big”

I like these two lines of thought because of what I don’t usually get to see at schools. As a teacher, I was always hungry for something larger when I got to chime in on the drafting of the annual improvement plan. Without fail, though, we were asked to make our goals SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound).

I could wrap my mind around SMRT, but A always struck me as mired in fear of failure. If it’s a goal you know you can achieve, you should already be doing it.

Instead, I want SMIRT goals where the I (depending on your level of comfort) stands for impossible or improbable.

Something like:

  • “Every student in this school will love reading by the end of the year.”
  • “All of the students in this algebra class will be able to explain the quadratic formula to elementary school students, and the younger kids will understand.”
  • “Our science class will develop a cure for the common cold.”
  • “No one will be sent home from school as a negative consequence for their behavior.”
  • “Every student will have enough to eat as they move through the school day.”
  • “Teachers at this school will have 100% job satisfaction.”
  • “All parents will feel proud enough of this school that they will recommend it to their friends.”

This is just a smattering. Sure, you might fail, but so might the kids fail at any of the seemingly impossible things we ask them to do in the course of growing up and mustering through schools. That doesn’t stop us from asking. The least we can do is set goals at a similar scale.