Education

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

~ dmaxmj ~ Leave a comment

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.

Storytime: How our Stories Echo

~ dmaxmj ~ 1 Comment

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.

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.

The shadow cast by NAEP

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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

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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!

Real Educators and Real Education Reform

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This might just be the first segment of the first episode of a new podcast.

Hello all, welcome. Come in, find your seat, or I guess find a seat- I won’t be assigning any yet so it’s okay, just grab the spot you want for now and if there are any problems I’ll move people around. Just know that if you choose to sit next to your bestie I’ll be watching to make sure you can do that and still make good choices.

Let’s get some definitions out of the way first. Since this effort I’m making here is called Real Educators, and Real Education Reform I should share the hows and whys of my using the terms “Real Educators” and “Real Education Reform”.

First, “real educators”. In my mind, if you are involved in any way with guiding learners as they come to grips with how to navigate this world we’re sharing, then you are a real educator. Most of the time my frame of reference will be how that is happening within the public school paradigm with a focus on classrooms and hallways.

But from parents to police, from presidents and their favorite porn stars to the guy at the newsstand on the corner selling the rags that reveal the darkest secrets of presidents and their favorite porn stars…

Everyone plays a role, so the key is paying attention to the role you play and the potential that lies within. 

You can make a difference, and chances are you do make a difference, but do you know that you can and do make a difference? 

Do you know that what you do and how you do it is a part of the education of others around you sharing this world with you? 

Do you think about what that difference you make might be or could look like? 

Maybe you see it as incidental or insignificant but it isn’t at all. All those tiny interactions add up. No matter how brief or in passing they are, they, and you, make a difference. Even tiny ripples travel and spread to the edges of a pond. Like the muppets sang on Sesame Street, they’re the people you meet when you’re walking down the street each day- except now you know that in the lives of learners you are those people. You are those ripples.

So sure, as a teacher my primary focus is on that role and other roles within the day-to-day school setting but having played that role for over twenty years the number one thing I have learned is that I am only part of the “real educator” team. A chance meeting, an every morning or afternoon hello from a fellow familiar…from cashier to construction worker, from preacher to police, all of these other humans tell us something about the world we are living in and tell school children as well. From puppets to porn stars it all informs us as we move forward through life. And if you are lucky enough to come across porn that incorporates puppets-definitely let me know. 

Purely for research purposes you know, I am a licensed, professional educator. Your children are safe with me

An invitation to story time

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This is a description of, and an invitation to, an endeavor that is purely for the enjoyment in participating and value in whatever takeaways you find. The path and destination are TBD, but the jumping-off point is gathering initial interest, in this school and in others around us, from former professors and teachers I know, and writers in the area. I’m collaborating with SUNY prof David Franke and we’ve spoken about what might come next down the road, but at this birth-of-an-idea stage, there’s no submitting for approval. There’s no post-conference survey, which means it’s no inservice credit thing. Right now it’s more of a gathering together, feel-good, self-care, soul project, SEL thing: 

Who doesn’t have a “got pulled over” story?  Have a “my favorite teacher” story? And everyone has a “What was I thinking!?” story! We tell stories from morning to night because they’re informative. They’re how we make sense of our experience. They’re a generous way to share what we know. The best stories are crafted, and for that, storytellers need a good audience.

Dan McConnell (Marathon SD) and David Franke, (Seven Valleys Writing Project, SUNY Cortland, English) would love to have you join us, first online and then in real space, to practice our stories. Our stories do not have to be about school and teaching, but we figure that will figure in. To put it another way, we have heard a lot of badly told stories (the news is an example), but we get few opportunities to tell our own.

If you are interested in listening or maybe even telling, you are already on your way to supporting the skills your learners need. Feel free to reach out and learn more, maybe even participate.

dmaxmj@gmail.com

Taking Advantage of this Opportunity to Think Big

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So, we have an opportunity to think big, and out of the box? Good news:

I think big as a rule…

  …and when I think about the best way to take advantage of some “closing the gap” funds and a significant opportunity, I think of targeting the foundation of learning first. For learners that foundation is a cognitive “net” woven during development from fetus to nurturing to parenting to schooling to life… It starts at the core of the person, and continues in the parents’ arms, satisfying the most basic physical and emotional needs.

Then it starts developing beyond that core’s reflexive responses to start reaching, touching, interacting. Those infant experiences are intertwining and stretching-weaving together continuously and then reaching outward and interconnecting with every new experience, whether introduced intentionally or just through circumstance. That cognitive net engages with its environment, makes sense out of it based on what it has already established, and then has new understanding as new experiences are integrated. Threads are created, reinforced, branches shoot off for little side trips that might connect with or just tickle/tweak other relevant experiences…  The result of a well woven net (aka prior knowledge and experiences) is that learners more openly experience new settings, new people, new ideas, new understandings… Kids just absorb it as they live it and new experiences get cross-connected in a “seven degrees to Kevin Bacon” way.

     The prepared and adept learner has an intricate weave and can access and pluck a plethora of threads that send signals all across that net and return information that drives that weaving and ends up providing the foundation for students at the beginning of their k-12 experience. We would like them to be at least “ready to learn” at the very beginning, and in the very best case scenarios: prepared to soar.

It seems our students are having difficulty, though.

The foundation, that “net” is the key. It’s gaps where threads in the net might have been. It’s threads and experiences we wish weren’t there. The things we need students to be able to do aren’t accessible to them yet because there’s weaving to be done. Maybe even undone and then redone.   A few years ago, as part of ongoing efforts to understand the students and their lived realities, their culture, we were made aware of what a pervasive and oppressive force poverty is during a poverty simulation.

     The differences in the learners’ exposure to language and vocabulary. The proportion of positive to negative interactions, and how starkly different that proportion looks when comparing our most stable and nurturing homes to those on the other end of the spectrum. Those eager to attack what educators are trying to do with catchphrases like “poverty is just an excuse” come up short on substance because they know the truth. The poverty line is not just a number to be exploited (like standardized test scores), and to engage in a rhetorical battle to blame teachers for the perpetuation of inequity and oppression through political and economic policy is disingenuous or misguided.

“This process starts with students’ core relationships with parents or primary caregivers in their lives, which form a personality that is either secure and attached or insecure and unattached. Securely attached children typically behave better in school (Blair et al., 2008).“

Our academic mission is supposed to be our primary mandate, but we find ourselves having to spend a lot of effort on social and emotional gaps in order to get to that mandate.

The in loco parentis role (I’m told that means we are like crazy parents) kicks in because we find that prior knowledge/learning/skills (“ready to learn”) is wanting in the areas largely pertaining to learners’ empathy, emotional stability, social connections, sense of self-worth… A growing number are “trauma informed” in ways we wish we didn’t know about, but need to know about to be our most effective.  We are spending a lot of time actively nurturing in order to get to the teaching we’ll be held accountable for. 

     So, us crazy parents have no choice but to rush into situational fires to save these children, only to emerge with them, covered in soot with our eyebrows singed off.

     So that we can then make them take standardized assessments and later be shown spreadsheets of test data that show how badly we are failing them.

Sure we have to move that ELA test score needle in the right direction in a sustainable way, but it is going to require a shift in mindset not just doing the same things more rigorously.

     We still need to target those mandates, but doesn’t anyone wonder if we married our endeavor to the wrong spouse? I envision a more desirable common-law wife than HEDI, but getting rid of her evil influence is a side mission of my own.

In the here-and-now I’d like a shift away from:

  • continually identifying, measuring and remediating/repairing on the back-end to try and catch those falling behind and falling through that “net” because they haven’t engaged in experiences and exchanges that weave well.
  • thinking that the space inside the four walls of the classroom is the “least restrictive environment”. 
  • accepting the crap of disingenuous reformers with an agenda that is more about markets and their opportunities, less about children and what they need.

I’d like to shift towards:

  • helping learners weave in more threads to extend their nets with, giving them more cognitive integrity and flexibility to support further (and more independent) learning.
  • re-envisioning the least restrictive environment. In my mind it is outside the box, out in the world, or at least in one that mimics the flexibility to move into and out of various settings and cooperative (mixed grade level, even) learning groups within the school.
  • teachers being the respected experts who have say in how education gets done instead of blamed for the results when others tell them what to do.

So, let’s think big and “outside the box”.

     If the regular, standard setting/environment/program is one that allows more movement between settings and groups, it isn’t an “accommodation” or “program modification” when it happens. It IS the program, and one that sends the fewest “why am I different” signals to students because everyone is doing it. The movement through and reconfiguration of various groups would be continuous and feel organic, while actually being planned to combine students in a purposeful way and track progress towards academic and social/emotional targets.

      It’s establishing that foundation/net and growing a culture of learners on the front end, and it could help prevent some holes in the net while inspiring more learners to start weaving on their own.Think of a district-wide PBL where “effective” (thanks to HEDI for that, at least) means active participation in one’s own learning as well as the learning of the others in your community. 

My opinion is that focusing on our school culture and nurturing learners first is a better strategy than obsessing over raised bars, grit and rigor. 

      A well-nurtured and guided learner is prepared for that grit and rigor when it happens. We shouldn’t force grit and rigor onto them hoping for better outcomes. Remember the fable about the sun and the wind having the contest to see which could get a man’s coat off the fastest? The wind was sure that by sheer force it could achieve the goal by just blowing the coat off. The harder it blew, the tighter the man gripped, held, resisted… and the coat stayed on. 

     The sun simply shone. 

     The man took the coat off himself!

     Pretty cool that warmth did the trick. Even cooler that I am using “cool” and “warmth” together in a sentence that way. Hey look…I did it again!

So let’s think big, shine like the sun, and warm this place up!

Building Brainpower 1: Hide-n-Seek, Dad’s Way

~ dmaxmj ~ 1 Comment

Learning can seem like magic when you observe it.

Starting with “peekaboo”, then moving to on-the-spot games like cover-uncover the binky (or some favorite little toy) with the spit-cloth, you are making magic happen. You are laying the foundation for a mind. Object permanence, the notion that even if I can no longer see it, I know that it exists. That quickly grows into I know it exists, and that it is somewhere where I can’t see it right now, so I COULD go find it. That’s where I’m heading with this: hide-n-seek.

First is the drive to explore, find things, get things, get into things…To recall where those things are kept and go there to get them! Who hasn’t found their child, new to and excited by the mobility of crawling, in the lower cabinets? Or in the laundry basket pulling out folded clothes; in the kitty litter pan pulling out…

Yeah, those kiddie cabinet locks are a pain, but you need them because kids are smart. And that’s just baseline smart with little effort or intent on behalf of the parent. The little rats basically come wired for trouble.

This is why intent and effort at this early stage have incredible returns on investment later on.

You really need to guide the development that itty-biddy humans are pre-wired for, because they’ll figure stuff out, alright. A responsible adult can move them in the direction of the right stuff to be figured out. While “responsible adult” might not apply to me in the traditional sense, I still attacked parenting with a mission in mind. I wanted my daughters to be super-sharp and out-of-the-box thinkers. Unafraid, self-assured, confident… And I know that type of person and mind is built. Beginning this building right out of the gate maximizes success.

At the same time baby-mind is developing that concept of object permanence with things, it is beginning to grasp the same concept with people. For example: Mommy or Daddy aren’t in the room, I can’t see or hear them, but if I call or cry they’ll come because they’re somewhere. They exist nearby and if I need something, they can help.

Once that understanding becomes locked in, baby starts to sleep in later, maybe start waking up giggling or babbling instead of crying for comfort because they know that comfort isn’t far away when they need it. They start to self-soothe and then even self-entertain. Baby thinks “Those important nurturing others that tend to me are somewhere nearby, so I can take a few minutes to swat away at that mobile, or shake and interrogate this Teddy here and try to make him answer a few questions.”

Okay, maybe not exactly that, but you get the picture.

The simpler object permanence concept starts to connect to the people and things in the environment and there is now an awareness of places beyond the immediate space-empowering planning to pursue some need or curiosity. Behavior is starting to become goal oriented and reaching out for other places and discoveries as mobility and curiosity increase.

Hide-n-seek is a powerful tool at this time because it exploits both the desire to interact and the growing desire to explore. Parents and guardians are vital in the development of mind and mindset, and you might as well have fun while you’re doing it.

The learning that goes on is perpetual, and it accumulates…

…threading, spreading, reaching, winding and weaving-making connections between things already known and the new things discovered- a nucleus of self and security shoots feelers out to establish other smaller conceptual “home-bases” (for parents, home, rooms, toy box, favorite foods…) that also shoot out to connect to related concepts. A connection might be made between the unusual sound of Mommy calling from some room where her voice resonates, and the room that makes it happen. That connection is made as Baby gets carried to it for a bath. The resonant sound is now attached to that bath place and Baby can hear in-person how it sounds, maybe shouting to hear their voice do it.

And, oh! The little yellow squeak ducky is there in its spot. Then it’s there again, and the next time, and again, every time it’s bath time. Pretty soon the mind has grasped where to go to find and get Ducky- It’s Loudvoice-Bathplace. When Baby becomes More-mobile Baby, he/she just might escape your sight, especially when you hit the walking/climbing stage. They’ll be on the way up the stairs to get Ducky on their own because they’ve pretty much mapped home in their memory.

They have become an adept seeker, and are now ready.

Stretching the mind of an adept seeker-child.

Seeking starts in the arms of one parent while the other hides. Looking in closets, under the beds, behind the shower curtain, with an occasional sneaky giggle from under the blankets as a “clue”. Baby starts to get that Daddy, Mommy (Brother, Sister…) are somewhere, but hiding on purpose, and the fun is discovering where.

Now while you are strengthening a mind and making connections, be warned that you are also inviting future trouble. Your consistent guidance on the how/where/when/why it’s appropriate to go off seeking is crucial. Trust me, the last thing you need is to be invited to the neighbors’ for dinner and have it be your toddler looking through Mister’s sock drawer. Curious is good, precocious and lacking discipline- not good.

So with the child at this stage, mobile, and knowing the home, I am going to switch from “child/baby” and just use a name. I am going to tell you how I did this with Chloe, the oldest of my three daughters.

We had followed all the required steps. The formalities had been observed.

For Chloe, finding me had become no challenge-other than how fast could she. Our house was quite tiny. But speed is a measure for concepts that are almost reflexive that get done pretty much the same way every time. Before calcification settles in you’ve got to throw in a curve and keep that hide-n-seek nucleus loose and capable of sending out new thread-connection to some novel concepts.

So I didn’t just hide, I used dishonesty and diversions.

It was probably by the tenth time of doing the same-old same-old that I changed it up a bit. Sitting in a chair covered by a big blanket was just too easy. Hiding behind the curtains that hung to just a few inches off the floor was too easy. Dad was either the lump in his chair or the feet sticking out from under the bottom of the curtains.

So I mixed it up.

Since we had already added the “Are you ready?” yell, and the “Not yet,” or “Come find me!” response, it was easy to buy the time to play a little trick and get myself hidden. Chloe was a good counter and could get to 20 and beyond with no problem.

This time my response was “Not yet, count again!”

I was busy, you see, constructing a “Dad-lump” under some blankets on the chair. Something bigger and poofy-er for the midsection, a couple throw-pillows maybe; a knit winter cap stuffed with some socks for the head, something to fill out that lap/leg space under the bottom of the blanket. Then, for the pièce de résistance: a baseball cap perched jauntily on top and a couple boots poking out on the floor down below.

There was no way a sane person, even a child, would think that lump was me.

But they’d think it just might be!

Chloe came down the stairs and ran to the Dad-lump to tear away the hiding blankets, only to be surprised by the stuffing. And then the giggle from behind the curtain where a different pair of Dad’s shoes could be seen. Sure, it only added about five seconds to the time it took her to find me, but keeping her from finding me was the last thing I cared about. I was dropping a new, little, pliable concept-nucleus. One for subterfuge and how to do it right.

I could have stopped with the lumpy stuff covered with blankets. But the hat perched on top and the boots down below added a twist. Visible cues that Daddy is being tricky, but this is just silly. He’s not really wearing that hat or those shoes-he’s making a crazy-looking pretend Daddy! What now happens is independent creation and invention start to branch out.

Chloe would occasionally make a fake Chloe, with a hat, maybe a pair of mittens…which I had to discover loudly and with cartoon villain frustration. She also started to adopt some of my “misdirection” techniques:

“I’m under the blanket.” (When I’m really behind the curtain)

“I’m in the closet.” (When I’m really under the blanket)

“I’m behind the curtain.” (When I’m really in the closet)

She would hear where I was calling from and go directly to that spot, at which time I would protest loudly “No, not here, I’m in (that other place)!”

Deception, invention, creation…

Scenarios, strategies and possibilities. A world of pretend is opened up through this kind of play. With it comes the understanding that by using the creative mind-more things become possible. I am not advocating destructive dishonesty, but an ability to conceptualize and describe possible realities, stories that haven’t been told, ways to use the materials and supplies around to make cool things happen. I don’t want you to think I had fun lying to my children. At least not yet.

Because next comes the Lying to Children as a Brain-Builder!

“School choice” where pragmatism and propaganda collide.

~ dmaxmj ~ Leave a comment

Recently, the word “pragmatic” came to me in a reply to a brief twitter conversation. It was used by the author (I consider tweeting to be authorship) as a qualifier for good education policy/solutions. Essentially, that is a “What should we realistically expect  to get for our poorest and most under-served children, I mean really” (pragmatic) presentation of a “What efforts can I promote to stroke an image or agenda?” (propaganda) position.

But I don’t think a pragmatic settling for less should be the “go to” when it comes to improving outcomes for children. That’s like surrendering and accepting the attacks on children’s minds, bodies, hearts and souls coming from all directions, shrugging off the losses incurred, all while patting yourself on the back for any opportunistic half-effort made within that paradigm.

In education, that half-effort is called “school choice”.

Often, the framing of the school choice issue is that privileged families have all the choice they want, so why shouldn’t others who need it get choice as well? In that narrative, the lucky ones wander the vast school-scape looking for whatever school they want for their children and are just given access to the most fabulous schools and teachers they manage to find. The least privileged, on the other hand, are trapped where they are, in the sinking ship of failing schools manned by bad teachers, denied the freedom to wander that school-scape to choose the schools they want.

I am not so certain that privileged people wander around choosing schools. I am more inclined to believe that their schools end up having better outcomes because of the resources and stability within the communities they are in. When communities are oppressed, abandoned by the world around them, economically deprived and lacking in cohesive personal and social supports, the negative impacts compound in ways that carry over into the schools trying to serve the children living there.

So it’s no surprise that parents seek escape for themselves and seek schools less impacted by these forces for their children. Because that demand is there, it also isn’t a surprise that a market of educational lifeboats (i.e. charter schools) would arise to rescue them. Something has to be done, and as a wise man once wrote:

“ending poverty and integration are politically difficult and financially expensive goals at a time when political courage is in short supply and many elected officials – especially on the right – seem intent on starving government”

We can see this reality play out now in the current Democratic race for the presidential nomination. Leaders of the party that were once the party of the working class, the party that preserved the social safety net, now demonstrate a disdain for the working class and the poor and look to undermine and block candidates trying to pull the party of the pretend left back to the actual left. Education policy has been victimized by that rightward lean for some time, and that has led to an approach that favors free-market style solutions rather than a call to the moral and social obligations of public education.

It boils down to social and political thought that not only holds the reins of power, but has become captured by and enraptured with the wealth equals value mindset-the notion that the more money someone has or the more money something can make, the more valuable to us all it is. This fuels a bottom lines (dollars) and test scores (data) approach to school reform and school choice that deflects attention from the human condition and holds educators responsible for numbers on paper, not the actual little human beings in classrooms, in schools, in communities ignored by policymakers unwilling to address the human condition because of their lack of political courage.

Billionaires who like being looked to as authorities on how we can all be better (like them) like trapping people in that mindset. Politicians like helping to impose that mindset on the electorate because it keeps millions of people who deserve to be represented chasing the visions, policies and mandates advised by the fewest people with the most money, which is now equated with speech, and political math is simple on this matter: more money buys you more speech.

And that’s how we end up with propaganda. It’s “failing schools”. It’s “bad teachers” protected by unions and just riding it out for their cushy pensions. Funny, it never seems to be lead in the drinking water, over-policing in struggling communities, lack of health care, jobs that pay so little that it keeps parents out working instead of home hugging…

Pragmatically speaking, the response might be, how can you honestly represent and fight for the needs of the many in the current paradigm, we might as well just let them make their own schools. I am one hundred percent in favor of choices but when you start to qualify/quantify by applying words like realistic, scalable, pragmatic… Then the underlying message seems to be We can’t really do what we should for all, so let’s just do what we can for who we can. What kind of choice is that?

Is there a merit badge for surrender?