Author: dmaxmj

Me and My X

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I don’t want to start calling Twitter “X”…

…but I also don’t feel like dirtying the memory of Twitter by using her name for whatever she has become. I might be leaving her, but is there a decent alternative?

It’s me baby, not you-I swear.

I do remember something happening, in terms of creating an alternative gathering place for free and sometimes regrettable speech. Just before or around the time of the changeover from what was (Twitter) to what has become (X). And now I’m looking for options, another platform or forum. I’m doing a Friday-to Friday cleanse, so next Saturday I’ll probably open it up and do what I can to filter out the undesirable, maybe make a decision.

Will this bit of writing auto post to X the way it did Twitter?

Having a “meeting place” would be nice, because teaching has become more and more dystopian (right along with the rest of the world).

Send me a message if you have ideas. I just got a username on Mastadon but I’ll be waiting til tomorrow to look closer.

“Lie to them, Jack” (A real short read)

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“Lie to them, Jack. If you do it half as well as you lie to yourself, they’ll believe you.”

Bam. 

John Locke (played by Terry O’Quinn) delivers this line to Matthew Fox’s character, spinal surgeon and perpetual hero and soul-tortured martyr Jack Shephard. Didn’t take me long to tire of Jack, and yet he was one that endured while others I liked more got killed off on LOST. Dr. Responsible seemed more or less a reiteration of Fox’s way back character Charlie on Party of Five. Remember that relentless ride of sibling family drama and angst? 

It was horrible. So much so my brother and I took to calling it “Misery of Five”.

Well, Once Charlie now Dr. Jack has spent a good portion of four binged seasons racing around trying to be mister boss-man in an attempt to weaponize moral equivalency and save everyone else for the future he has determined is right for them.

In the meantime, John Locke continues his communing with the island and doing its apparent bidding, which has put him often at odds with the doctor, despite the doctor having been shown time and time again that Locke may just be correct about what the island wants. It has been a challenge for the woe-is-me man of science to come to grips with the reality that there are forces at play that can’t really be ‘splained’ away.

I know what goes down, but I won’t spoil it. I’m just about to the point where it gets to be a bit too much, and “a bit too much” is my middle name so you know it must be too much. I’m watching on Hulu, if you get curious.

Using Mindful Structure, Stories and Enrichment to Build Both Culture and Community (and maybe improve attendance?) in School

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My name was used as a verb recently.

The person that did it told me so. She even described the context in which she used my name when I asked. Maybe she was going to tell me anyway but I was so excited I jumped in and asked to hear the whole story. I mean to think: my name as a verb!

Like a force of nature almost.

Like some dynamic that might influence the world or instigate some movement or something!

Okay, I’m getting carried away. But wow. My name as a verb! 

I guess it came out sorta like this:

“I don’t mean to ‘Dan McConnell’ this, but…”

Of course, thinking back I realize I could have been the in absentia butt of some joke. Like when someone says Boy you really Shleprocked that! But in this case, I asked for an explanation because I sensed that it was a good thing. This person and I are pretty tight philosophically and ideologically, though there is a disparity in the intensity of our deliveries.

Turns out it was pretty good. I was proud to have had my name dropped in this situation.

So in just a moment here, I’m going to give my impression, like an impressionist would, of the conversation in which my name became definition worthy. But understand it’s before 5 AM right now. The sun isn’t up. My coffee has slid from out-of-the-pot hot to piss warm and I need to think it out before I write it out, which isn’t usually my way. So you aren’t going to see this happen but it really is about to: I’m going to “freshen up” as real men say.

Hey, you’re still here and my coffee is once again hot! Win-win I say. But back to that conversation where my name became a verb (because in a bit I’ll take another break to crack today’s WORDLE).

It was a conversation where one side represented an insistence that there be more lockstep alignment and assimilation, where everyone was doing the same thing, was on the same agenda, same page, and everyone knew exactly what everyone else was doing and when and how… Essentially “you will be assimilated”, join the Borg collective or the consortium, or whatever you want to call it. 

An important aside here is that in my mind, teamwork is vital, and I am not opposed to a shared agenda. In fact, if all involved in the endeavor to educate were empowered to share the agenda to actually do what’s best for learners, especially our youngest learners, I am 100% on board. But when predetermined structures imposed from outside and above demand humans be viewed and valued first by the statistically normed assessment data they produce, and diminish the value of learners and professionals who know better, you’re not doing teamwork. You’re doing surrender and compliance.

That “mindful structure” in the title gets turned into a functional structure. It’s how you set up efficiency and cost-effectiveness first and tweak for obedience and performance, not how you grow minds and culture, and community. It’s the way you train dogs and tune engines, not the way you should raise or educate young people.

And here I’m getting ahead of myself again, goin and gettin’ all preachy.

When it’s about children, learning, and people in general that happens. So here’s my description of how this man became a verb. I may lean into the drama, sure. I know I think through my feelings filter a lot when I should feel through my thinking filter instead. But my god it makes life worth living.

My name was used to put words to the thinking that children and people be treated more like the varied, beautiful individuals that they are and that maybe that is the truer path in the human endeavor to educate. 

Use my name as that sorta verb every day of the week.

Now, here’s the thing. Education isn’t simply a “human endeavor”, as in some theoretical warm-and-fuzzy concept, or one that can be allowed to be discussed in broad conceptual word-strokes.

Education does need to have a purpose, and it needs to serve a purpose. In order to meet these purposes it needs to have structure and a plan. Using Mindful Structure, Stories and Enrichment as the path, with the plan being to empower learners to engage with culture and build community, we could start making education actually feel like the human endeavor it is supposed to be.

Okay, I’m chopping here. There’s a bunch more typed below but I have edits to make, coffee to warm, lunch to pack (NYS Math test day 2…ugh). What comes next is me describing the structure I have used and like to set up. For my own daughters, for my students, and for the zone I operate in. Pretty simple, really. Simple rules, close observation and facilitation, and plenty of out-of-the-box opportunities…

I really hate them boxes. I work with roundy pegs. Okay stop, WORDLE time.

The Tiny Vampire Community, and Creepy Winery in the Woods

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It was ten years ago at least. Maybe close to fifteen. I was vacationing with my wife then and we decided to do something Virginia-beautiful. Something that would take us on a scenic drive, along winding mountainside roads that might offer up a spontaneous stop-n-bite meal someplace that serves tasty southern roadkill sandwiches or critter fries.

Or a winery?

Yeah. A winery. We were given an incredible place to stay through a family connection-a place with ceiling-high windows, a “cabin” that was much more than just that, surrounded by nature. A bottle or three of wine would certainly allow one to be left unopened as a thank-you gift. Right?

So off we went in search of, with some loose awareness of where a winery might be found and one of those old Garmin GPS things to guide us along the way. Are they still around? It’s one of those devices that need to be actively updated (or at least it did back then) otherwise new roads, roads that no longer existed, current construction blocking roads you expected to be there… all of that waited as potential confounding variables in your point A to point B plan.

This on top of the fact that I am pretty hopeless when it comes to navigation, with or without GPS.

After some time we came to realize that the roads Mr. Garmin was pointing us towards, and the winery that supposedly awaited, were not where we were being told they were.

I say Mr. Garmin because I’m pretty certain Mrs. Garmin would have known what the hell she was talking about. Mr. Garmin clearly did not. So we were left to our own devices to drive on beautiful Virginia roads on a beautiful, sunny, Virginia day, looking for things to see and wine to drink. Isn’t there a John Denver song about some of that stuff? Not so much the bottles of wine-maybe that’s Rocky Mountain High I’m thinking, not Virginia Mountain Drunk.

Okay, I’m rambling. Let’s get to it.

Some winding roads and a gradual climb, and all of the sudden the trees parted. The sky opened, and out of nowhere, we were plunked in the middle of what looked like a suburban pod community. A few perfectly neat little homes, with perfectly paved driveways in front of perfect little attached garages. Perfectly mowed lawns with nothing out on them except a few perfectly pruned trees and shrubs. No toys, no lawn furniture, no trash bins by the roadside for pickup… No cars in the driveway. And we hadn’t seen another vehicle on the road for quite some time.

It almost looked like a developer’s life-sized model of a planned community. No Real estate signs, though, to indicate that these were model homes for viewing. It seemed these were homes that belonged to actual people, but there were just no signs of people.

Driving just a little bit past these homes brought us to the tippy top of this hill. The homes were gone and there were only a couple of things to see here.

On the left:

A cemetery of sorts. Or, a graveyard? I’m not sure which name should be given to a blank, sterile gathering of bodies and grave markers into columns and rows on a rectangular piece of earth. This was no “final resting place” that would be sold to folks who actually worry about the view their corpse will have from initial occupancy until a future developer buys the property and evicts the residents.

No trees. No meandering paths or drives to take. Little variation in headstones. A four-foot high chain link fence surrounded it with a gate at the entrance, a dirt road that went straight in at the gate and then split in perpendicular branches, for efficient delivery, maintenance, and no-frills visitation, I assumed. From the entrance to the back row, it was about the width of an Olympic size swimming pool.

On the right:

A small stone building that looked like one of those figurines you buy in an artsy gift shop when you’re on vacation. You know the ones I mean. Sometimes the pieces are cute cottages, sometimes lighthouses. There’s that little boy and girl that are holding hands or touching noses all “in love” and stuff. Well, this building was a cobblestone type, maybe leaning a bit towards fieldstone or a collection of stone shapes that varied a little in size. The colors were reds, and purple-ish, the type of stone you see a lot of down south.

It looked like it could be a cute home even, but here’s the thing: the windows facing the road were too small, dark, and high off the ground to be really functional as windows that would let any light inside. I think they were stained glass, but I don’t remember for sure, and if they were?

They were still small, up off the ground a bit, and dark.

On the ends of this building were small, round stained glass windows way up high where the roof came to a pointed peak. The land it was on sank away steeply from the front to the back so that a small, basement-level entrance door could be put in on either side. I can remember thinking “No way that’s a house. But man, it’s kind of a fancy little mausoleum. I guess if you aren’t spending for landscaping around the graves, givem a nice waiting room, right?”

Then I saw the sign.

Church of the Brethren.

I’m not going to spend too much time on this because religious faith is precious to those who have it. Let’s just say I had never heard of this particular religion, category, sect, or classification… And let’s be honest, “brethren” has a spooky-movie sound to it.

So imagine this eerily abandoned Virginia community, because I had pretty much written the story that way in my mind right then when it happened, and this mausoleum so-called-church that blocks out all the sunlight, which sits right across the road from collected and dutifully arranged graves and bodies…

Okay, let’s just get off that.

We kept driving while I thought “Can vampires sleep their day away in an actual church?”

Eventually, we came to a “T”. The road ended.

Yet Mr. Garmin was saying there was a road in front of us.

There was not.

It was a coin-toss decision. A shared “I don’t know, which way do you think, right or left?”

The decision was for a left turn, and off we went, believing there was a winery somewhere nearby and figuring we’d see vineyards, buildings…a sign of some sort? You know, some blatantly obvious clue telling us a winery was somewhere close by.

There was none of that, and in fact, the road began to climb again and entered into a thickly wooded area. No way there were any vineyards around here and I expected to see posted signs or markers identifying state land, but you know there I was thinking like a Yankee.

Then suddenly through the trees on the left, I could see a clearing set back a little, maybe around fifty feet in, and as we got closer we could see it was a dirt parking lot around a pretty nondescript white building. The building looked something like a small town’s village barn, the sort of place where a plow, dump truck, and other small equipment might be stored.

There was no great big garage door. Nothing around it that gave it that town lot feel. No big bucket loader, piles of gravel, stone, or sand. No sign identifying it as the town of something-or-other property. There was none of that. The appearance of this building was like the “church” in that it was sort of an odd building in this secluded location and one with a purpose that was difficult to determine.

Still, as weird and secluded as it seemed, as we neared the entrance to this lot we saw that there were about eight cars parked around the building. Not abandoned junkers, or cars waiting for repairs, but decent cars that appear to have been driven and parked there for something that was going on. Then we saw a sign. It was a winery, and the sign said there was a tasting that day!

It sure didn’t seem to be the winery that Mr. Garmin was pretending to try and help us find, but after the strange church and cemetery across the road, it was a welcome and kinda quirky pitstop. There may have been that warped storytelling voice in my head that whispered this is where the vampires keep the bodies hung for “milking”, but I ignored that voice.

It says lots of silly stuff.

So in we went, and I was quietly hoping it wasn’t me that would get “tasted” that day.

The entrance was a simple, windowless door, and inside was an unfinished barn-like interior. Overhead there were exposed beams and around there were support posts and small areas that looked like this building might have served its purpose for a small farm. You know, a smaller boxed-in space where a calf could be kept on a bed of straw, another to keep wheelbarrows and some rakes, shovels, and whatnots out of the way, a larger one where bales of hay might have been kept. No fresh folks hung by their ankle for any vampires to drain at their leisure.

The vampires’ leisure, I mean.

There were about a dozen people meandering about that looked to be customers, and a few that looked to be owner-employee types. A couple makeshift serving bar/sales counters were set up, one near the entrance and another across this space on the opposite side. There were plates with some typical “pairing” snacks and some tasting, actual wine tasting, was happening. So it looked like a legit wine-making operation. Small, but legit.

As my wife and I mingled and spoke to a couple of the folks that appeared to be attached to this winery, we discovered that they only open up for tastings like this two days out of the year, and we just happened to come across it on one of those days! An incredible coincidence, right? Moving around we met a few people, took a few sips, and nibbled a cracker or two to “cleanse the palette” or whatever the wine folks do.

While we’re doing this, I notice a thin, white-haired old dude relaxing in a simple wooden chair in an area off to the side, watching.

Just watching.

A couple of the younger employees stayed close, and they spoke a little to the little old man in the little wooden chair and he to them. While I know the resemblence was not a close one, the paintbrush that is my memory has created a charater that looked like William Hickey. He had played some wonderfully creepy roles in his time but I most remember him as Don Prizzi in Prizzi’s Honor and Uncle Lewis in National Lampoon’s Christmas.

During a conversation with a woman working at this winery, when we shared our “where we’re from stories”, my wife shared that she was originally from Sodus Point, N.Y. Pleasantly surprised, the woman said:

“Why (so-and-so) right over there is from Sodus! She’s been with us for several years!”

Near 500 miles away. Little old Sodus, NY. On the shores of lake Ontario. And here in this open only twice-a-year winery that we found accidentally.

Now how could we not talk to this person.

So, we did. It didn’t take long for my wife to get through the when did you graduate, and who do you know stuff, but most interesting was the where did you live question. My wife grew up in a white house that sat in front of a couple hundred acres of Girl Scout Camp called Camp Beechwood. Her father worked as caretaker of the camp and the house for he and his family to live in was part of the compensation, and of course it was right there close to the job.

Turns out that this woman had grown up in that same house before ending up at this winery.

Her father was the caretaker of Camp Beechwood before my wife’s father had become the caretaker.

It was at this moment my mind replayed that scene from The Shining where Delbert Grady is helping to dab a stain off of Mr. Torrence’s (played by Jack Nicholson) jacket. Torrence confront’s Grady about having been the caretaker previously, having “chopped your wife and daughter up into little bits, and then you blew your brains out,” but Torrence is a little drunk on ghost booze and just starting to realize that the secluded hotel he is in holds a lot of deep dark secrets and restless spirits.

Torrence tells Grady that he WAS the caretaker after Grady claims to not know anything about what Torrence is saying, insistently, in an I know this is true tone.

Grady responds: “I am sorry to differ with you sir. But YOU are the caretaker. You have always been the caretaker.”

It is just then that the little old man in the little wooden chair stands and announces that it’s time to go to the basement for a tasting.

Storytime: How our Stories Echo

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Chloe was home from college on break. This past Thanksgiving, maybe. She and I were watching the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and near the end, at the point where Hector Barbosa gets shot, and is first dismissive of Captain Jack Sparrow, almost condescending-believing his undead status provided him protection at that moment from such foolishness as being shot.

“Ten years you carry that pistol and now you waste yer shot,” he says.

Here, an echo.

If you’ve watched the movie you know that Barbosa himself gave Jack that pistol with that one shot believing that the madness and suffering of having been left stranded on a deserted island would lead Jack to use that pistol and that one shot. On himself. To end his own suffering. Instead, Jack uses the pistol and his one shot to shoot Barbosa.

A moment he’s waited ten years for.

Of course, Barbosa is mocking and taunting at first, it’s part of his charm. But then he realizes Will Turner has dropped the last cursed coins and a bit of blood onto the stack gathered, finally breaking the curse that came with every one of those coins. Barbosa stands frozen in place. A remarkable moment of blaring silence following the hectic and fast-paced fight scene involving multiple participants in a cave holding untold amounts of pirate treasure, including the cursed gold that the Black Pearl and its crew had sailed the world to retrieve.

Having torn his coat open to first see the blooming flower of blood soaking through his shirt, and then lifting his chin to stare off at some nothing in particular beautiful thing, the pirate has an expression owning his face. There was a split second of surprise, maybe. He’s been bested. But his expression changed into something else.

And then he says “I feel…”

It is at this moment that Chloe hits PAUSE, freezing that face to the screen.

Another echo.

“Dad, I remember sitting on your lap watching this with you when I was like four or five years old, and you stopped it right here and asked me ‘What do you think he’s feeling right there?’” Chloe said.

“What was your answer?” I asked.

“Happy.”

We had a brief conversation at that moment, about that moment in the movie. About that expression, what it meant, the amazing delivery of actor Geoffry Rush… Even more important: we talked about the connection between the there-it-was-again frozen moment on the screen and it happened-back-then earlier moment. How when you pay attention, you hear more echoes.

Engaging with these moments when they arise, with intent, is a powerful technique for growing a mind. One of my favorite things to think about, talk about, and write about is taking advantage of the earliest opportunities to do this with young learners because it’s vital for building that brainpower. Especially as a parent in the earliest years up to five years old, but then as an educator- in that 5 to 10-year-old zone, those elementary school years.

What I really love is using it to plant those echoes, to drop a thought, a question…to set up the moments still to come.

There must be a sense within that young mind when it dares to reach out and then makes some independent discovery.

An “Aha!” turns into an “I did it!”, an intrinsic reward and a sense of accomplishment that leads to self-motivation, an “I can do it!”. I had stopped to explore this Barbosa thing with the four-year-old Chloe in my lap, she had seen the connection to an earlier story moment, and here I was exploring it again with an all-grown-up Chloe who had paused it herself, just as I once had.

That earlier moment in Barbosa’s story, and in our story, had echoed.

As my little stinker grew into a thinker she began to see this type of connection on her own, without having it pointed out to her. She has become a brilliant writer and storyteller. We can now discuss moments like the Barbosa one in the context of technique and purpose- how similar intent applies and is evident in other movies and in other stories. Making those connections had become a collaborative exercise.

With all three of my daughters, I was able to engage them at home in all sorts of interactive play during storytime, bathtime, and diaper changes… So many things became events with characters and roles to be played. So many nights Dad got scolded for not just reading a story and instead getting the children all riled up at bedtime.

While the more formal learning environment of school doesn’t offer all of those opportunities, connecting ourselves as human beings to each other and engaging in narratives together, through our observed, lived, explored, and shared stories, is vital in providing a true education.

Once young learners become adept at engaging with stories and making all those connections with the others around them, of seeing how stories and characters evolve and how their own stories develop, they also become more prepared to generalize the skills employed to their own lives. They are better able to understand how actions and plans can be means to some ends: in-the-moment decisions, day-to-day decisions, and maybe even long-term plans.

Practicing with learners how to slow down to explore that dynamic in fiction, with fictional characters in fictional situations, and then connecting similar themes in plotlines in real-life stories around us, spotting how actions come with consequences or rewards…

It might even show that motivation and unwavering commitment can pay off!

Just as it had with end-of-movie Barbosa.

The earlier movie event in Barbosa’s character trajectory was after the crew of the Black Pearl had raided Port Royal, called there by the power of the last gold coin. The character of Elizabeth Swann, a prisoner of the pirates for having given the name Turner instead of Swann, stabs Barbosa. Much like in the later scene, he is dismissive and even menacing. It’s about to be revealed to “Miss Turner” that these are no ordinary pirates.

Barbosa says:

“Look! The moonlight shows us for what we really are. We are not among the livin’ and so we cannot die, but neither are we dead. For too long I’ve been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I’ve been starvin’ to death and haven’t died. I feel nothing. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea. Nor the warmth of a woman’s flesh.”

There is real desperation in the man’s eyes as he tells her this. He isn’t relishing the murderous spree and pillaging. He is desperate to truly live again. To feel.

That moment when reflected back upon makes the final “I feel…” There was an echo for Barbosa there. He lamented the “too long” he had gone without feeling a thing, and now he was almost euphoric, realizing that he could finally feel. There was an echo for Chloe and I as well. The powerful moment in the movie had woven itself together with a powerful moment of ours that echoed from the past where we had shared it all then in a way that helped us to share it again nearly twenty years later.

So how can educators use this idea of echoes and connections to benefit their students in school?

I’ll start getting to that next. And just as an FYI, that angel all grow’d up just texted me a picture of Chef Gordon Ramsey’s ass.

That’s a story that’ll echo later on. You should take note because I loooove to play the long game with shit like that.

It Starts With Stories

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Preface:

I tend to bring in a lot through a feelings filter. And I don’t just attach my own personal feelings, sensing my way through some situations when it might be better for me to just take a deep breath and “slow my roll” (as people way cooler than me might say).

My thing is I sense the feelings of others and sometimes think into that a little too much. Sad songs, sad movies…Ohmigod when kids in a movie suffer or struggle in some horrible situation despite their wide-open hearts and hope for a better future?

Shit, I’m crying for sure. Please don’t look at me. Or maybe I’ll just go to the kitchen quick to “grab another beer” or “get a snack quick” (a.k.a. do whatever that excuse I made up was but also quickly wipe the tears away on my shirt before I return).

So many moments like this while watching different movies, and for different reasons. It isn’t always about the kids. Loving Vincent is probably the best most recent example. It shook me. It was one of those movies I walked away from really happy that I saw it but really sure I wouldn’t be ready to watch it again any time soon. It so engaged my love of story, my sympathetic take on what I already knew of van Gogh’s life as well as my passion for art and music… That movie brought paintings to life, made them move and speak and tell that story. And it was heavy. Wow.

I want to see it again. But I think it needs to be with others, on a nice day, with a brief drink and snack plate intermission somewhere. Try to give it a trip to France sort of feel to keep it light. And then do something really fun with those people afterward.

The kids thing, though? That one is tough. The movie My Girl hit me pretty hard and I won’t ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. But even worse, Radio Flyer. I just went to snatch and drop that link there and only saw the briefest of a promotional summary,

“When the younger brother is subjected to physical abuse at the hands of their brutal stepfather, Mike decides to convert their toy trolley…”

…and I’m already feeling it. I loved that movie for how much it made me hate it, and I have gone back to the ROKU a few times over the past few years to see if it’s streaming free on one of the channels. Over a decade and it still hadn’t. Is it that popular? I’m going to check again in a bit just to see, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to watch it again.

Like these movies, the stories I’ve been told or the ones I have lived became powerful life memories, lessons, and reference points through the emotions attached to them. From the ones where I made a righteous Tom Sawyer fool of myself trying to get the attention of my Becky Thatcher (her name is Carla), to the stories I was just witness or audience to… The ones told to me by my family members, stories have entertained me, taught me, altered my perspective, my outlook… These stories affected how I parent and how I teach.

My belief is that for people, emotions attach themselves to our lives events and that makes those events become “stories”, making them more indelible and retrievable for information that can be used later on. It’s why oral histories and oral traditions are so important. It’s how we share who we are and become aware of who others are. It’s how we convey lessons, successes, failures, culture, and so much more. It’s how families and communities connect and spread that feeling of belonging, of commitment, of shared purpose.

What follows is going to be a bit of all of that, along with the suggestion that we try to push for public education to be a tool for true engagement of learners with their world and the others who are in it through more engagement with stories. Real-life stories, made-up stories, stories from the page, or stories on stage… The current trend to measure, label, and dehumanize the goals, purpose, and process of education has had negative impacts- especially in this age of screen addiction and perpetual distraction and misinformation. I’m saying we need to slow down, come together, and share more stories. And I’m saying there are great reasons to do it, and great ways to do it.


Just went to check. Radio Flyer is still in the pay extra to get it category.

So click here, and it’s on to storytime.

Snow Day Magic (as well as other powerful and essential magic)

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Note: There will be multiple references to magic, and many places where this text seems to turn around and bite itself in the ass and be self-contradictory. Don’t let any of it throw you off, just read it to enjoy it and when you come out the other side you will probably be okay.

I’m starting this at around 10 AM on Tuesday, February 28th, 2023. Normally at this time, I would be wrapping up an activity with two students who qualify for extra support services to reinforce their skills in the area of mathematics. Instead, I am home in my pajama bottoms and a favorite St. Lawrence University t-shirt, with my tootsies wrapped in thick wintry socks that are like soft little blankets for my feet. My belly has a few “sea waffles” (little waffles shaped like sea horses, crabs, and dolphins) in it. Only real maple syrup will do for those, and I finished off the pot of coffee by adding a little cream and some cocoa mix to it.

It’s all part of the spell. Snow Day Magic. So special it deserves to be capitalized like that and for more reasons than I can probably get to here. But I am going to try.  Also, I might try to get to other types of very important magic, as well as explain why none of it is actual magic, before telling why we should all be casting more spells.

Let’s start at the beginning

It isn’t really “the beginning”, in terms of magic, but if we’re talking Snow Day Magic I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on 2014 for a moment. My three daughters always enjoyed a snow day, other than me blazing into their room as soon as I got the news to pounce on their bed, bounce them awake, scaring the bajeepers 1 out of them with the good news before hastily running out and into the next room for a repeat performance-daring them to try and get back to sleep. 

Clearly, as a teacher, I like snow days too. I have come to learn that there are rituals one should observe if calling in a snow day is the goal. Now, I don’t remember any of these rituals from my own childhood, but kids these days have a list of “to-dos” for when the weather looks as if it might lean in that direction. Give Mother Nature a little nudge, you know. The rituals I am most familiar with are listed below2.

  • Wearing your pj’s inside out
  • Putting a cotton ball under your pillow
  • Placing a pencil in the freezer
  • Flushing an ice cube down the toilet
  • Doing the Snow Day Dance™

I can get into the actual scientific principles that are involved in the cause-effect dynamic between these rituals and the results but you first have to understand that it’s not an actual science and the causal relationship probably can’t be validated. 

But boy is the pretending fun, and isn’t that what magic is all about?

So here I am, or there I was as it were in 2014, wanting to gift my girls (and me) with a surprise day off. I didn’t just wear my pajamas inside out. I wore them inside out and backward. I didn’t just sleep with a cotton ball under my pillow, I did so with four-one for each of my three girls and one for me. Same with how many pencils went in the freezer and how many ice cubes down the toilet. Last but not least: the dance. In the past, I had just “winged it”-making up some on-the-spot wiggly stuff. This time it was carefully choreographed and included a chant of sorts. Arm motions, ninety-degree twist, step, kick…A little regrettable in terms of things you might see a grown man do, but good magic can be good while being ugly too. That might be why I have always been a fan of Penn and Teller.

In the end, the results spoke for themselves. I felt obligated to let people know of my involvement in the weather event that resulted, both out of a sense of responsibility and as a warning intended to inform anyone else’s future efforts involving Snow Day Magic. 

Fast forward to Monday, February 27th, 2023

Holy cow, what happened to me? I went and got old and two of my daughters are off to college, living life and all…Damn. If I Could Save Time in a Bottle, you know. (*sniff*). Apparently, my youngest daughter has internalized what was learned in 2014 because as I type this, I, my pajamas, and my driveway bear witness to the very real but nonexistent magic this family is capable of.

So here is what happened:

Last night we pulled into the driveway after having to cut Drama Club rehearsal a little short because our school, as others around us had, was shutting down after-school activities to send folks home to safety. Apparently, bad weather and dangerous driving conditions were on their way. Pulling into our driveway, and putting the car in PARK, I say to my littlest angel, Ella:

“You know, we might just have to work up some Snow Day Magic.”

And yes, I even speak it capitalized like that. Seems like it can’t possibly be true, and it isn’t, but that’s really how I do it.

Ella says, “You know you better not say something like that because if it doesn’t…” 

I don’t remember the exact words but it was a translation of don’t go getting my hopes up because she sorta believes. 

You see, “believing” is a thing that runs in my veins as it did my people before and my children today. “It’s a gift,” one might say3, and it’s one that keeps on giving despite the protests of family members, children, students, colleagues, strangers on the street… We believe in magic, in a sense. The rituals and the other weird stuff that happens around me bear some indirect power that outright silliness has for influencing impressive and amazing outcomes. It brings an audience in and inspires them to participate and believe, and the feeling of satisfaction and sometimes wonder inspires further participation…

When I first showed her the news of a two-hour delay this morning, her respect for the power was probably reinforced. When I returned a short while later with news of the full cancellation it was certainly cemented. She came downstairs about five minutes later, looked me in the eyes, and said “I think this calls for waffles.” The next hour was filled with me blasting my Dad-music, singing along with Elton John, Cat Stevens, and Billy Joel while my youngest and I consulted each other on mixing, measuring, and eating…

It was magic.

Non-believers sometimes find it unbearable. Which makes it all more fun.

Santa used to call my house to talk to my daughters back when my dead hippie friend and poker buddy Coop was still alive. I’ll always swear it was Santa and not Coop, but he could coincidentally do a really good gruff and not quite entirely appropriate Santa impersonation. To this day “Santa” (a different one that is busy typing right now) leaves notes for my family congratulating the girls on what amazing human beings they are, apologizing for the mess the reindeer left, the beer swiped from the fridge, thanking us for whatever snacks get left out and disparaging the behavior of the man of the house.

Apparently, he’s the only naughty one out of them all. 

Jack Steam swipes messages on the bathroom mirror that reveal themselves when someone showers. Jack Frost does the same to cold-weather windows. I know both Jacks well. We go way back. The messages are sometimes a little wrong. Thankfully when the girls were little there were a couple of responsible parents to help debrief children exposed to such stuff. 

Well, there was one responsible parent, at least.

Magic. All of it. The best kind of magic, too.

So sitting in the driveway with a hopeful daughter, what is a naughty dad to do? 

Refer to that earlier list of rituals, except this time it was Ella hitting them hard! Sure, my pj’s ended up inside out and backward. Of course, I did the Snow Day Dance™. But it was Ella that put three pencils in the freezer, and she flushed five ice cubes down the toilet. 

Again, let’s let the results speak for themselves.

You don’t have to believe in the magic, simply observe how it works. Because magic isn’t real and doesn’t really work magically. But in the same way that Penn and Teller know exactly what the #%$& they are doing (and know that magic isn’t really real and have spent much of their careers revealing so), they know how to make the end product seem powerful and magic. You can make great things happen when you believe you can make great things happen.

Now know that this Dad is also a teacher. 

What if teachers were empowered to draw learners into a more exciting, engaging, and nurturing education instead of being compelled to force-feed children grit and rigor on a mind-numbing and unnatural daily schedule in order to pick apart and analyze what comes out the other side after endless scat-hunts? 

What if schools were a preparation for life and engagement with real-world people, places, and opportunities?

What if educators could provide a truly “least restrictive environment”, as opposed to factories that measured, labeled, and used a cohort-to-standardize approach on little human beings? 

I have had discussions where I suggest a more developmentally appropriate and humane approach to early education and sometimes these discussions end with “That’s fine for your girls, Dan, you could just sit them in a corner and they would learn,” or “Well, that’s (the factory model) what we’re told we have to do so we have no choice.”

Both things are true. You could sit my girls in a corner and they would still learn. We are being told we have to do that other thing.

Actually, I believe that only one of them is truly true. 

My response: It wasn’t ever magic. Magic isn’t real. It’s called first engaging and then preparing independent lifelong learners. When you see the results you can’t deny that the results might seem magical, especially in this day and age where children seem less and less willing and capable of achieving outcomes realized by the highest achievers. But outcomes aren’t an accident, results speak for themselves, and shouldn’t real educators be empowered to work their magic with children who need that sort of “magic” the most?

I am not special, my ideas aren’t new or unusual, and many teachers I speak to agree, but fall back on the helplessness of weak-willed soldiers made to feel that they must comply with less-than-magical approaches. Has the time come for people who know better to demand the freedom to bring better?

Footnotes

  1. Shit
  2. These are to be used cautiously. “With great power comes great responsibility,” and all. Engage with magic of this sort at your own risk.
  3. Or a curse, others might say.

That Old Expired Jar of Mayonnaise (Part 2)

~ dmaxmj ~ Leave a comment

It is a good idea to read Part 1 (an event from the Spring, of 2022) before this piece if you haven’t. Even though this post is about an event that happened prior to that (the previous fall), the setup of the two is me providing this one as a backstory for Part 1. IF YOU HAVEN’T, GO READ IT NOW.

Fall, 2021

The return to live and in-person learning in the fall of 2021 was sure to be an exciting, challenging, energetic, almost combustible experience.

I had written clear directions on the board and had materials and prompts and discoveries in their locations. I had prepared a scavenger hunt of sorts to reacquaint the children with each other, and placed name tags at seats around the tables I had switched to years ago, having realized that for me student desks were a far greater pain in the ass than they were a convenience. It was one more thing to manage, including all the things a desk ends up holding-things that should be in a desk, and things that should not.

The four rules for my classroom were posted in at least eight different locations. Finding these rules was, in fact, one of the find-it-if-you-can items on the scavenger hunt. I had those rules all over the place on purpose, and every year I point them out. But by the time I do, on day one, the students already get that those are the rules. I mean, they’re everywhere and they just really seem like rules when you see them and see that they are everywhere.

I created this four-rule list early in my career, one that now spans over two decades. They came to me after having participated in at least a couple “hug the children and make them feel respected” type professional development offerings. These were largely focused on a classroom discipline approach that pretends to put students in the driver’s seat when it comes to establishing classroom rules by involving them in a leading conversation-one where the rules land pretty much where the teacher wants them to begin with.

I hate wasting time that way when it comes to rules.

The foundation for an effective lifelong learner, a great part of which is structure and rules, needs to be simple and easily understood so it can be generalized to more early-stage learners. I have rules when I teach. Pretty much the same rules I had as a child myself, the same rules my parents had, the same rules my daughters had… I think the same rules most decent people I know have had. They rarely needed to be listed the way I’m about to because the words might be slightly different but when you see someone succeeding either in school, at work, or in life in general, chances are they learned and internalized a similar set of all-purpose rules. My rules are:

  1. Listen
  2. Follow Directions
  3. Be Polite
  4. Do your Best

What we’re really struggling with in school is less about gaps in ELA and Math achievement and more about gaps in student experiences with structure and with basic rules like that, as well as appropriate rewards and consequences attached to those things. The lack of character, responsibility, and respect that are the products of structure and rules are the hurdles standing in the way of their achievement. Educators are perpetually directed to and held accountable for achievement in discrete skills and standardized assessments, away from long-established, understood, and researched-based developmental progress and practices.

Remember that scavenger hunt?

Maybe not. I ramble and go off on tangents but let me just say that my goal was to watch how these children would handle getting tossed back into the crazy, hectic, smelly, noisy salad of the classroom, as well as the rules that exist in the structures and confines of in-person, down-and-dirty learning.

Well, they were thrilled. They were happy. They were getting back together with friends and peers they had seen little or nothing of since the beginning of the pandemic and now here they were! Most couldn’t give two shits about rules, directions on the board, or any of that type of stuff. Oh their seat, sure. The novelty of a teacher that had tables instead of desks, yes. But what was written on the board?

Psssht. There were maybe three who got right to the tasks described on the chalkboard while still engaging in the more social aspects of this reunion and the “work” of day one/morning one, which was mostly social anyways. Most mingled and bounced around the room oblivious to any direction clues or cues that attempted to guide them toward a routine or requirement.

Now, as kids can and will, they DO notice the things you sometimes hope they don’t.

I set it up so that someone might because I wanted to see if any would, and sure enough one did: the package of Oreo cookies barely peeking out from a semi-bad hiding spot high on the shelf. That was Eva who announced it loudly to the class. The other item that got noticed by Eva, again loudly, was a little jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise sitting tucked back a bit on the top level of a bookshelf that sat behind his chair in his little teacher’s corner of the room.

“Hey, why do you have that jar of mayonnaise?” Eva shouted.

Having already started to realize that this group would have to be eased gradually back into civility from their largely feral existence during remote learning, and having already noticed that Eva was the sort to notice, think about, wonder about, and ask about everything except what she should and should not be doing, I decided to use a strategy mastered over the course of my lifetime.

I decided to wing it and throw out some confusing bullshit, just to get kids thinking.

“Oh, that mayonnaise?” I said, gesturing back to the jar. “Because… you never know.”

Here I nodded wisely as if having some experience knowing that keeping some mayonnaise around might come in handy. I told them how I had kept it for years and years, and just never gotten around to using it or throwing it away. They got curious and wanted a closer look. There was a little bit of investigation to find the expiration date (about three years earlier). I cracked the crinkly plastic seal around the rim of the jar and wondered aloud how old, expired mayonnaise might smell.

I realized a majority of the students were still caught up in the excitement, less focused on the activities he had set up for them, and knew I needed their attention. I also knew that kids are always watching and listening, especially to the adults who are near and are just waiting for something interesting to latch onto. Especially if it’s tasty, naughty, off-limits, privileged information, and so on.

So instead of yelling for their attention and demonstrating weakness and frustration in the face of adversity, I simply skooched my puffy, comfy green chair to front and center, facing the room to sit down and pretend to have a think.

I then put on my best, helpless, what am I to do now face, leaning forward with an elbow on one knee, reaching into a pants pocket with my other hand.

From my pocket, I withdrew a small, black, rectangular object. It was black, and it was a dull, flat black. It was about the size of a Zippo lighter. The whole reason I had it was exactly because it looked like a Zippo lighter. During the summer break before the beginning of the school year, I had done a brothers-get-together to help one move day, and one of my brothers had an object exactly like it. He had never been a smoker so I was a little stunned until I saw him carefully pluck and pull a pair of folded-up emergency readers from under the flipped-up lid, open them up, and then put them on.

“I could really use a pair of glasses like that,” I thought. I figured that having them in my pocket might come in handy if I walk to someplace in the building while forgetting my regular pair of glasses. Also, I almost immediately thought:

That looks enough like a zippo lighter, I can mess with some kids’ minds with that thing in my pocket!

A hush began to fall as kids noticed and some whispering began “Mr. McConnell’s got a lighter!”

Of course, it was one of those kids-notice-what-you-hope-they-don’t moments, but it was one where I knew they would and I wanted their undivided attention. I kept a somewhat perplexed look on my face as I absentmindedly flipped and clicked closed the cover of this Zippo-like thing to accentuate the lighter-like characteristics.

When the kids had gone quiet, except for you-know-who (Do you remember her name?) who shouted “Mr. McConnell-why do you have a lighter???” I pretended I was woke from my at-my-wits-end trance.

“Oh, this? It isn’t a lighter. Check this out.”

Very gingerly, like a street magician doing some kind of up-close trick, I carefully pulled the glasses out and unfolded them much as my brother had. There were some “ooohs” and some “ahhhhs”, and Eva yelled:

“Why do you have those???”

I got to deliver the message I would go on to deliver at least a hundred times from that day up to nearly the end of the school year.

“Well, I know I’m forgetful and tend to leave my real glasses (I take them from the top of my head) here or there and walk away, and end up needing glasses to read something. Having these in my pocket keeps me covered for those situations because, hey…you never know. You know, like that mayonnaise back there. Don’t forget, you never know.”

Now, you read Part 1, right? You know what’s going to happen with that mayonnaise after the state tests are done, right? What the students didn’t know in this moment we are in, or the one that will be after those tests is this:

I planned to play this “you-never-know” mayonnaise bit all year long, tweaking it occasionally, until the night before the day after state tests were all done. The stress, the ridiculousness, the scripted and onerous nature of assessment as it is currently done…All would be apparently eased out of my teacher’s soul by a big, sloppy, nasty spoonful of old, expired mayonnaise shoved into my mouth the day after tests were done. You’ve read about it so you know.

But the reveal is that the night before, I took that jar home and thoroughly cleaned it out, and filled it with vanilla pudding. Back onto my shelf it went the next morning, ready to play a starring role in that other piece I hope you already read.

The shadow cast by NAEP

~ dmaxmj ~ Leave a comment

Following the October 24th release of “The Nation’s Report Card” by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it’s no surprise that the rhetoric of education reform is once again on the rise. In reality, the tide of assault on public education had only receded a little in the quiet between “Race To The Top” and COVID. 

Now, on the heels of the pandemic, if you choose to believe it’s actually over, NAEP has provided important data that should be no surprise to anyone but is likely to be used to steer us even further away from the real reforms needed if better educational outcomes are desired.

Take, for example, the words of  U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona when talking to reporters about the NAEP results. “Appalling and unacceptable,” he said. Also, “This is a moment of truth for education,” and “How we respond to this will determine not only our recovery but, our nation’s standing in the world.”

“Our nation’s standing in the world.” My lord, you couldn’t write it more silly and lacking in substance, and this guy is the head edu-honcho for the entire country? Implicating public education in the threat to or erosion of our nation’s standing in the world indicates either ignorance or willful deflection from the stuff that actually does make us look bad to the rest of the world. 

We have been going about education reform all wrong and so-called leaders in education,  are largely to blame. The misguided assault on this human endeavor should end and we should engage in real education reform.

Dropping Pebbles in the Pond

~ dmaxmj ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know that this quote has been accurately attributed to Mother Theresa, but some time ago I came across a meme that did. The quote was:

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

Think about that concept. 

It’s unlikely that an individual or individual actions are going to create a world-changing difference. There are standouts in history where big things happen due to the ideas and actions of individuals, but on a day-to-day basis, faced with the challenges put in front of humanity in today’s world, the thought that one person alone can change the world for the better is a bit of a reach.

And yet there’s a reason we know who Mother Theresa is.

Whether it was her that said it or not.

I DO like the idea of ripples as a way to affect change.

Casting a stone though…Sure there are ripples. But it skips away and across, leaving that trail of expanding rings. Neat enough, but as a teacher, I’ll use a stone when I’m looking to smash a window or get attention. 

Like a teacher should, you know.

But my approach when I’m educating, which when you think about it is changing the world for learners’ through their perceptions of the world and their approaches to it, and this is whether I’m speaking of my own children or about students in my classroom, is more about dropping pebbles than casting stones. 

More ripples. More intersections. More influence. More opportunities.

Many pebbles when I can, and right where I am. I want to be in the ripples. I want to see them intersect and interact, I want to watch what happens when students see them. I want to collect the data on what happens when I know that they do and are reacting to that.

Then I want to use what I see to decide where more pebbles should be dropped.

I’m the teacher. I have been doing this for over twenty years and in my time before and in my time now my world has rippled across hundreds of years of collective experience in education and intersected and been influenced by every sort of little pebble from state legislative leaders of education, down through commissioners of education and state department regents, down through superintendents…down to food service workers, custodians, health office staff, parent volunteers, board members…

It has never really been education or schools that needed reforming, but a game is being forced into play as if it was and is. The world is placing its burdens on schools and educators are being expected to pretend that it’s the school’s responsibility to fix the world. This is where Mother Theresa nails it, I think. And she did it in this interview almost twenty years ago, around when I started teaching.

 “There is a poverty in your country that is just as severe as our poorest of the poor… In the West there is a loneliness, which I call the leprosy of the West. In many ways, it is worse than our poor in Calcutta.”

Our “American Exceptionalism” culture drives us into separation and isolation.

We are expected to accept “the economy” as the measure of our success as a people, and in schools that economy has become standardized testing data. The norming of results to take that data and further dehumanize a human endeavor has turned our eyes further from the children and more to the screens, machines and spreadsheets that only facilitate further dehumanization of the human endeavor to educate.

The way real educators should.

Those are some pebbles from my one hand.

In the other, I’m still holding a stone.

If the world is to be changed, I think that’s how to get it started. With the right pebbles dropped in the right places at the right time.

I had a bit of a break from my last podcast episode, and I’m still trying to nail down the platform and approach. The next one will get into examples of how I have actually made that pebble and ripples thing work. A little twisted, a lot of fun, and very effective!