Malcolm X

On the days that bookended Dr. King’s holiday and the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, my seventh grade students spent their time playing a board game entitled, “The Game of Life: Malcolm X Style,” created by one of their classmates.  We began our study of the American Civil Rights movement with a biography of Malcolm X, By Any Means Necessary by Walter Dean Myers.  Instead of writing about the book, students had to create some other form of visual presentation to represent what they learned about the life of the man who was born Malcolm Little, became Detroit Red, Malcolm X, and finally, El Hajj Malik el Shabazz.  Student presentations were varied and original, resulting in this game, several sculptures, 3-D maps, original photography, drawings, videos, paintings, and even a graph.  I love this project not only because it allows students to shine with leadership and creativity in non-traditional ways, but also because of the lessons Malcolm’s life offers all young people, especially my students.   

Young Malcolm Little was definitely gifted: a top student in his class and elected class president, yet his teacher famously told him that he should not pursue his dream of becoming a lawyer and instead, he should try something more “realistic” for a young, black man in the 1930s and 1940s.  He became, instead, a petty criminal, serving time at a prison very near our school.  While there, Malcolm found hope in the Nation of Islam, and his giftedness was finally recognized, though sadly channeled toward a message of hate.  After further experience, education, and learning, Malcolm turned away from this message and gained his greatest recognition as a leader of all people. 

What can students learn from the life of Malcolm X?  When I asked my students this question, they delighted me with their swift replies.  They offered that a person can learn, change, and become open to new possibilities over the course of his or her lifetime.   They added that we have the ability to overcome difficult circumstances through resilience and hard work in order to attain fulfillment and even greatness.  One wise seventh grader said that he learned that a person should not condemn, just show others the best example. 

Like many great figures, the story of Malcolm X transcends his part in a specific history and offers the best kinds of lessons for our kids.

A Love Letter

Dear Students:

Once again, you gave me one of those perfect days.  You touched me with your kindness, compassion, and complete lack of pretention or entitlement.  You managed to delight and amaze me, even after seventeen years of teaching. 

A recent blog post by Julie Conlon in Education Week Teacher reflected upon a teacher’s resolution to brag more about her students, so I have embraced this as my own resolution and plan to do so myself. 

In only four hours on one ordinary morning in January, you individually and collectively gave me reason to boast.  We aren’t the most expensive school around; nevertheless tuition here is significant, and most of you don’t take this education for granted.  Today, you expressed your appreciation, and you also demonstrated compassion for others.

It began first thing in the morning, and it continued in class after class.  While you generally know that the world is not always fair, your discussions today evidenced continued dismay about racism, reflecting your thoughtful and youthful innocence.  As that discussion evolved, you expressed your appreciation for all you have, for your own educational opportunities, and for the love of your parents.  You know that they do not have to send you to our school, and you are very much aware that they might spend their efforts elsewhere.  It is rare for you to miss a homework assignment, and when you do, you are universally apologetic.  Your commitment and sincerity are the strongest evidence of your appreciation.  At 11:30 am, you discussed and debated in your Student Council meeting the many charities you would like to support, settling with great seriousness upon a donation and planned fundraiser to honor a faculty member most of you have never even had as a teacher.  You did this because of your compassion for her loss of her husband.  You are young and may not be able to fully understand this experience, but when I looked at your faces, I could see your grief for her.  You are so earnest, honest, and beautiful. 

This was only half a day.  Why shouldn’t I brag about you?

Just a Stick of Juicy Fruit©

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In my seventh and eighth grade humanities classes this fall, students are learning about the founding of the United Nations, and with that, the notion of human rights.  Since September 11, 2001, my teaching on this issue has been informed by the need to reassure students that the world is still making positive progress with respect to our essential freedoms and that there is no need for despair. 

The best way I have found to accomplish this goal is to use an old fashioned histogram of world history.  We use the Wall Chart of World History (1988) by Edward Hull.  The Chart presents human history from biblical times to the present in graphic form, representing branches of human cultures and governments in linear form.  It is an exceptional tool for allowing students to explore how timelines work.   

Our particular focus in the study of human rights is to examine when in the timeline we first see the emergence of a modern notion of human rights.  If the chart stretches along the length of our classroom, we consider that human history actually began a couple of blocks from our school, with the emergence of our species in Africa.

Next, using meter sticks as markers across the histogram, students indicate where on the chart they will find the Roman Empire, the Magna Carta, the American Revolution, and the first three major suffrage movements in US history: universal white male suffrage, African American male suffrage, and women’s suffrage.  Next, we look at the end of World War II and consider the timing of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the length of time from that 1948 document to the present.  In terms of the timeline, the latter works out to the length of a stick of gum, Juicy Fruit in this case, as the different bands on the Chart look like end-to-end pieces of gum. 

So if students are feeling blue about the world, I just remind them to look how much progress we have made.  It wasn’t until 1941 when Franklin Roosevelt said, “we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms.” (emphasis added)  A world where these freedoms are guaranteed had not yet arrived, and today we are still working at recognition of universal human rights, but look at what we have accomplished in the figurative length of a stick of gum. 

The Value of Struggle

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"The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically... Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education."    Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr. 

While mission is the heart of what drives a successful community, how does an organization then accomplish that mission?  As an independent school for a very particular population, we wrestle with this question when we think about admissions and who will benefit most from our program.  Related to these discussions, the buzz among us has been the concept of grit and how this fits in our admissions process.  Will every gifted kid benefit from the rigors of a program where the focus is on daily high expectations for production?  How about when he or she does not have inner tenacity to succeed?  Can we develop grit when a student does not have this resolve?  If so, how?  How important is support from parents?

Canadian author Paul Tough has released a new book on just this topic entitled, Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character.  In his book, Tough argues that character traits such as resilience, self-control, curiosity, and perserverance are better measures of determining potential academic success than indicators such as IQ scores.  For us, IQ testing is an important component of our admissions application and needs to be, yet the focus on developing these components of character is really the heart of what we do, and it is affirming to learn that we are on the right track.  We start with the premise that gifted kids need to be challenged in a loving, nurturing environment that will allow them to stumble and to recover, so they will develop the ability to recover and press on.  These aren’t new concepts, and history is full of references to the importance of developing these inner strengths as a goal for education.  If our kids fret when the answers are not easy, and they must think intensively, we tell them, “if there is no struggle, there is no progress,” relying not only on our own encouragement, but also on the genius of Frederick Douglass to comfort them. 

In an interview with NPR, Tough said, "Right now we've got an education system that really doesn't pay attention to [noncognitive] skills at all. ... I think schools just aren't set up right now to try to develop things like grit, and perseverance and curiosity. ... Especially in a world where we are more and more focused on standardized tests that measure a pretty narrow range of cognitive skills, teachers are less incentivized to think about how to develop those skills in kids. So it's a conversation that's really absent I think in a lot of schools, to the detriment of a lot of students."

We still have a lot of questions to be answered and have not yet worked out all the details, yet I am proud to be a part of a community where this conversation is happening and where developing the character of our students is our most important value.

Note:  Since I posted this, Tough's concept of "grit" has received a lot of pushback, especially as regards socioeconomically disadvantaged students and students of color.  See Paul Thomas's excellent blog, The Becoming Radical for discussion.  SCV 6/6/16.

Will You Apply?

In the last month or so, I have been thinking a lot about how our culture in the United States considers the profession of teaching; a view I often try to ignore because it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.  I really love what I do; I am intellectually engaged every day, and I am better person because I am a teacher.  Yet this societal pressure sometimes makes me second guess my choices, in spite of how happy I am in a classroom.

Why am I thinking this way?  Our school is now seeking a new leader, and this prompted a certain family member of mine to reiterate her frequent question to me, “why aren’t you applying for these jobs?”  The next reason was a Huffington Post blog by Dr. Matthew Lynch.  Dr. Lynch reported on research of Steven Paine and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that, “suggests our lack of respect for teachers is the nation’s number one enemy of education,” and that, in other countries, “it is a tremendous honor to be a teacher, and teachers are afforded a status comparable to what doctors lawyers, and other highly regarded professionals enjoy in the U.S.” 

Having been a practicing lawyer and then a teacher, I can vouch for this different perception.  A cocktail party provides the perfect little microcosm of these impressions.   If I say I am an attorney, often people perk up and listen.  If I say I am a teacher, eyes glaze over, and I have to work harder to engage.  Sadly, these perceptions are even true within the educational community itself.

According to Dr. Lynch, the OECD report suggests that a start for improving the value of education, and presumably with that, teacher esteem, is to offer educators more responsibility and the opportunity, “to become innovators and researchers in education, not just deliverers of the curriculum."

I am fortunate that our school is still young and entrepreneurial enough to allow just that.  Teachers have the ability to innovate in the classroom, to change what isn’t working, and to run even farther with what is.  I am not sure I agree that simply allowing teachers to pursue these opportunities on a larger scale will change the level of respect afforded teachers in our culture; rather, teachers are limited in doing so because of lack of respect for their abilities and training.  The incredible teachers I have met outside my little Sage bubble are ready and willing to do this work, but they are sometimes severely restricted from doing so because of the restrictions of state testing and other mechanized approaches to education, approaches that stem from a lack of trust and respect for the work they are doing.  Yet perhaps a conscious decision by the larger educational community to empower teachers this way will work.  At least it is a start.

Tempus Fugit

It has been a bit of a roller coaster at my school, so I haven’t had much time or heart for blogging.  Time for writing has flown away in the wind as our little ship weathered a storm.  Yet in spite of the clouds, the people who most embody our mission, like our dear Latin teacher, remind the rest of us why we are here through their evident joy in our work. 

This summer, my humanities partner, our Latin teacher, and I met to try to more closely integrate what we teach.  One example of this integration relates to the concepts of rhetoric.  This year as students learn ancient rhetorical device in Latin, they will study Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and JFK’s First Inaugural Address and examine how those old Greek and Roman concepts are reflected in modern examples.  One of the best practices in gifted education is to integrate complexity, or big ideas, as an umbrella for our teaching, and that is what we are attempting to do, working together toward accomplishment of our mission to provide for the educational needs of gifted kids. 

Just how important is the concept of a well-articulated mission to a school, a faith community, other non-profit organization, or even a political candidate?  Most folks believe that mission should inform and clarify decision making and behavior (like curriculum planning), answer questions, and help resolve conflicts   It should make life simpler.  It is the core, the heart of an organization, that same ideal I referenced when writing about Simon Sinek.  If the folks who work for an organization believe in the mission, then the work is easy and a source of joy.  If they don’t, then perhaps they will feel disconnected, and the organization will struggle.  The clear mission of our school is the reason I have stayed teaching so long.  While I may not have had time to write during this storm, the people with whom I work most closely helped me never stop thinking about the kids and the reason we all choose to be here.  We are lucky to be in a place where the motivation is so clear.

Four Freedoms Wisdom

My seventh and eighth grade students are now studying the years leading up to World War II, and in connection with this topic, they learned about people who were inspired by Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union Address, commonly known as the “Four Freedoms” speech, to create works of art.  After study of these artists, students had to create their own works of art, reflecting on the Four Freedoms today.  While it wasn't the original intent, the assignment gave me insight into their lives.  I learned more about what they worry about, and what is important to them.  Repeatedly, student work demonstrated their concerns about freedom of Internet expression, conflict in the Middle East, and the oppression of women in fundamentalist religious communities.  They reflected on their worries about poverty, the ability of people to marry freely those they love without respect to gender, the availability of health care, interest in dissidents such as Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, and the fear of most young people since 1945, nuclear war.  Their honesty, depth of concern, and maturity made me sad that they are so aware at such a young age, while at the same time it also made me hopeful about the future.  How lucky I am to be a teacher, to experience the wisdom of youth.  Here is what some students wrote about their work: 

DK:  [The Social Armor:  three suits of armor made with clay of differing malleabilities]

“The third and final set is flexibly baked-solid enough to protect, but soft enough to allow movement and individuality.  This represents the Four Freedoms in countries like the United States, where all four are valued equally, the “to” freedoms preserving flexibility, while the “from” freedoms provide stability.  Naturally, I cannot provide an accurate account of what others would believe about this set as I am a child of a nation adhering to its standards.  Granted, the United States is not perfect, even in this armor.  Some places it is brittle where it needs to be soft, some places it is flexible where it needs to be solid.  But overall, I think the ability to alter between ideologies when it comes to policy is better than being stuck in a single way, with a single answer to all questions.”

AP:  [Four Plexiglass Collage Boxes, shown above] “I chose to make the box for freedom of speech first because I thought it would take the most time.  The freedom of speech box was hard because I have never experienced a time when I wasn’t allowed to say what I wanted to say.  My parents, teachers, and friends have always encouraged me to say what is on my mind.  The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Internet Protocol Act (PIPA) have been the only conflicts with freedom of speech that I recall.  The absence of freedom of speech has not yet affected me, and I hope that it never will.”

NI:  [In my video artwork, I] involve the audience in connecting the problems FDR faced back in 1941 with those we face today, such as the stock market crash and foreclosures.  Seventy years later, President Obama is faced with similar problems.  It sometimes seems that we are in a parallel world.  Later in the video, I involve the audience with thinking about the importance of the freedoms that we have, and for which we are still fighting—freedoms that FDR urged everyone around the world to have.  However, in the same year as that speech, the US entered into WWII, which ended many economic problems.  We cannot go down that same path, and we have to express ourselves and speak out to make sure our leaders solve problems diplomatically and peacefully, and avoid entering into any wars.  If we were to follow that same path now as FDR had to follow back in 1941, we could find ourselves in World War III, which might be the last war.”

AO:  [Video]  “Many people in the Arab world have seen their speech suppressed as they fight oppressive regimes.  Just last week, three Western journalists were killed trying to expose government brutality in Syria.  It may seem that in the United States, we all have freedom of religion, but after 9/11, many Muslims were targeted for hate crimes and discrimination.  Once again, we are facing an economic crisis and a lot of Americans are struggling to pay their bills. Sadly, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, we are nowhere near being free of fear.  It seems like we have made a dent in the wall that blocks us from having all four freedoms, but we are not there yet.”

I hope my students are learning from their study of history, figuring out  how to lead through understanding of the freedoms they value.  They fill me with optimism for our future, and I am ever grateful to them all.  

One Less Hero

Living in the Boston area and teaching middle school means that professional sports are often the student-preferred subject of the day in my classroom.  We have had a pretty good run of late; our home town team, the Patriots, is on the way to the Super Bowl this Sunday, and last year, the black and gold of the Bruins dominated the fourteen and under fashion scene as the team brought home the Stanley Cup. 

My observation is that kids still look up to sports heroes; the faces of middle school boys often take on a fierce intensity when talking about their favorites.  Brady and Gronkowski are the men of the hour, and in the spring, it was goalie Tim Thomas of the Boston Bruins. 

So for me as a teacher of civics in the Boston area, last week was tough.  Kids look up to Thomas, yet he refused to travel with the team to Washington to be honored by the President of the United States.  Well, that is his prerogative, I guess, but sometimes when kids are watching us, we have to just suck it up and do the right thing even though it might cost us a little personal energy.  It was not a political event or endorsement of the President, but rather just a chance to be recognized by our Head of State and the leader of our country.  Thomas’s refusal made me feel sad because so many kids admire him, and he does set an example.

In my classroom, we talk a lot about politics, both historical and current.  One of my rules is that students are free to express their own political views; however, they may never speak disrespectfully about our elected leaders or their spouses.  My philosophy is that in discussing civics, we must be civil. 

We have great kids at Sage, yet I sometimes feel that we are fighting a battle against the negative influences that surround them.  Loss of manners and civility, and disrespectful behavior toward the institutions that we should protect, like the Presidency as a symbol of our representative democracy, abound.  While this was even true when I was a child with respect to soldiers coming home from Vietnam, this lack of civility seems more pervasive today.  The symbols of our democracy mean much more than the person holding the flag, the man who holds the office of the Presidency, or the individual man or woman in uniform.  How can we teach our children to revere and honor these symbols of our country when the adults, especially those adults kids think of as heroes, cannot set aside political differences to be recognized by our President in a non-political setting?  How do ordinary teachers combat this powerful, yet negative, example in trying to instill a sense of pride and respect for our institutions?   

My mom has been Kennedy woman since 1960, and whenever we talked about politics before Ted Kennedy’s death, she always took pride in the fine example of Senator Kennedy’s celebrated friendship with Orrin Hatch.  She held it up as a model for public servants and for my sisters and me to find common ground with people with whom we might not agree.  As Senator Hatch wrote upon the death of Senator Kennedy:

 

“I hope that America’s ideological opposites in Congress, on the airwaves, in cyberspace, and in the public square will learn that being faithful to a political party or a philosophical view does not preclude civility, or even friendships, with those on the other side.”

Too bad Tim Thomas didn’t listen to Orrin Hatch.

Bad Days

“If you are a person of an inner path,

            then you

are a person of peace, so make peace with

yourself and your surroundings.”

                                                       Ezzeddin Nasafi*

We all have bad days at work, even the lucky people who love their jobs, like me.  One of the hard things about being a teacher is that to be really good, you have to make yourself vulnerable.  This means that we commit heart and soul to the work and are open to a particular tenderness when we feel we have lost the confidence of a student, a colleague, or a parent, even when our work has been the best it could be.  I have known many teachers who truly suffer when this happens: sleepless nights, lack of appetite, even tears.  Anguish is not an exaggeration.  Sadly, some folks take advantage of this vulnerability in teachers, yet people still stay in the profession because the rewards outweigh those bad days.

The best advice I ever received for coping with those inevitable downs came from one of the wisest educators I know, my boss for many years and the person who first gave me the book with the Nasafi poem.  Kate always reminded me to look for the best, to find the solution that would work most optimally for the student, the person for whom we really work.  I think that in doing so, we satisfy our core beliefs and motivations, the reason many of us are teachers in the first place.  We love teaching and education. 

Bad days are always going to be a part of life, in teaching, any other profession, and in our personal lives.  We can try to find peace by acknowledging and accepting this inevitability.  We can quiet turmoil by sometimes letting go of our own egos to allow others help us with the work, or at other times by just lifting our chins, putting on a smile, and stepping forward to strive toward the best solutions.  Luckily for teachers, to see that light in a child’s eyes on another day can make that bad day, just a memory.

* Nasafi, Ezzeddin. "Oh, my friend."  Intractor, Sam M. and Scribner, Megan, Eds.  Leading from Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead 135. 

Outside the Box Part 2: My Colleagues

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In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer, wrote, “If we want to grow in our practice, we have two primary places to go: to the inner ground from which good teaching comes and to the community of fellow teachers from whom we can learn more about ourselves and our craft”  (Palmer 141).  Every teacher remembers his or her own time as a student, and we hope gives credit to those folks, the first people outside the box of our own classrooms to inspire our best work.  Those honored teachers are Part 1 of the experiences we bring to that effort.  Part 2 comes later, for if we are lucky, we also have the opportunity to observe our colleagues, and recently before our winter break, I had just that chance. 

On this particular day, our kindergarten class was studying the short o vowel sound, the sound we hear in box, fox, outside, or socks.  After an exciting lesson together on the rug, (imagine a teacher who can make vowels exciting!) some students completed a practice exercise compiling a small book, and in this book, they read about and drew many strange animals and objects, each inside a box.  As I watched those students hard at work, one drawing a big gorilla to put into a box, I realized that I was doing exactly the opposite, stepping outside my classroom box. 

Palmer says that, “[w]hen we walk into our workplace, the classroom, we close the door on our colleagues.  When we emerge, we rarely talk about what happened or what needs to happen next, for we have no shared experience to talk about.  Then, instead of calling this the isolationism it is and trying to overcome it, we claim it as a virtue called “academic freedom”: my classroom is my castle, and the sovereigns of other fiefdoms are not welcome here” (142).  Whether or not I agree with the latter part of his reflection is a subject for another day, but it is true that the nature of our profession is such that we usually have few opportunities to see our fellow teachers at work. 

My pre-holiday observations were a part of our faculty development/evaluation at Sage.  While the process is still quite new for us, the classroom visit portion basically goes like this: each teacher is assigned an intense observation team every three years, and team members are to observe that teacher at least twice during the year.  My work life has been a little crazy lately, so I didn’t schedule my recent observation times until the last minute.  Yet instead of resistance about visiting their “castles,” both of my colleagues, a kindergarten teacher and a 4^th/5^th grade math teacher, were most gracious, warmly welcoming me to watch them at work.  In doing so, they not only moved toward melting their own isolation, they also gave me an opportunity to share my experience and dissolve my own seclusion.

If I had to choose one word to describe both of my colleagues that day it would be joyful.  Of course, teachers are always a little nervous having someone observe, but it was clear that after a few minutes, the kids fully absorbed all their attention, and I was forgotten.  The enthusiasm of these teachers and the conversations and writing that followed my visits energized my return to my own students.  The same has been true for every observation I have completed over the last two and a half years.  While ostensibly the process is intended to help the teacher being observed, I benefitted as much or maybe even more. 

So thanks to Julie, Rick, Gina, Shauna, Manisha, and Gary, the teachers I have been privileged to observe since we started this process at Sage.   Along with those folks who inspired me as a young girl, they have reminded me of what is best in the classroom, even though they teach completely different age levels and subjects from my own.  The content doesn’t really matter; rather, it is the teaching.  In sharing their experiences, they have made me a better teacher.