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.