"...for always the inmost in due time becomes the outmost..." --Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

It's A Matter of What

I have a seven-month old son.  He is a self-powered engine of learning, displaying new physical and mental feats every day.  Some slight gain in his reading of the environment, or a fresh sound he creates with his throat, or a stronger leg movement in his efforts to crawl.  When I'm really still and observing him closely, I can see these and other subtle and modulated stages of learning. And I am led to the realization that we are enormously patient of infants (maybe slightly less so of toddlers).  We get it!  We marvel at the beauty of this process, and are in awe of their combination of fragileness and fierce determination.  We understand their daily drive for growing and learning.  It is who they are.  In their presence, we strive to speak and act in ways that nurture them.

So doesn't it follow that our students can't help but learn?  It is their natural stance in life.  They watch, and listen, and take so much in, even when we think they aren't.  At home, in their neighborhood, at church, and at school.  


So an interesting question for each of us to consider is, "what will they learn in each of our classrooms?"


  • Will they learn that learning is frequent and satisfying, or will they learn that it is random and unnoticed?
  • Will they learn to fear mistakes or welcome them?
  • Will they learn that learning is a lifestyle choice or a political one?
  • Will they learn that school work is a door or a wall?
  • Will they learn to joyfully participate in learning, or will they learn to wish each day a quick end?
  • Will they learn that only fast, clear and confident is praised, or that slower, experimental and uncertain is of equal value?

Our students are going to learn; they can't help it.  The question is, what will they learn?


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Embracing Inefficiency

In order to move towards more effective and meaningful modes of practice, we need to come to terms with the ways in which we tend to limit human possibility in classrooms.  

This is a tough thing to consider really.  We are good people with good intentions.  We want the best for our students.  We trust in their innate capacity to strive and grow and accomplish.  We understand and celebrate their resilient and hopeful natures.  We get angry and emotionally involved when others do anything to harm them in any way.  We are their advocates!  And given our good natures and fervent hopes, it is especially difficult to turn a harsh light on the ways we work and allow ourselves to consider that, good intentions aside, we are limiting our students ability to thrive as learners to some degree. 

I propose that one way we do this is by elevating efficiency to disproportionate levels in our thinking.  What do I mean by efficiency?  Maybe a simple and common teacher scenario can help us.

A teacher plans ten multiple-choice questions as a test.  Let’s unpack the professional considerations here.  Is efficiency the prime consideration in choosing this method of assessment?  Is it because ten questions allows us to easily determine percentages?  Are they multiple-choice because it is quicker to grade?  Was at least equal consideration given to the rigor of questioning?  What types of questions would yield more insight into student understanding?

By offering this single scenario, I am simply suggesting that there are consequential choices to be made in even the simplest of our practices.  Whatever our impulses, motivations, or habits of thinking, we need to find ways to reconsider, even transcend, our most cherished assumptions in order to become more conversational and intellectually engaged with them.  I certainly don’t mean to suggest that efficiency, in and of itself, is limiting.  However, if we endeavor to teach in ways more limitless than limiting, I do think it is crucial to understand that a tension exists between efficiency and human endeavor in our professional choices.  

Can we frame learning opportunities wherein students (and teachers!) experience a degree of freedom for critical learning processes to take root?...observing, approximating, correcting, developing theories, revising theories in light of new evidence, etc.   Allowing these processes to emerge in students does fight against our well-developed capacity to narrow learning in order to achieve an efficiency that comforts us so.  

I contend that the industry standard in these matter is to value efficiency far above important inefficiencies that are at the heart of quality learning experiences.  I think that our dependency on efficiency is understandable, even defensible, given the industrial basis for how schooling is organized (its factory-like nature -- number of kids, subjects, and myriad demands).  In such a demanding situation, making things as efficient as possible is certainly a necessary motivation.  

However, our profession needs to come to terms with the imbalance.  Moving forward, it is vitally important that we understand the tension between efficiency and learning.  We need to critically self-examine in order to open up and balance the important need for efficiency with the critical need for human learning in all its complexity, both in its linear and tidier aspects, as well as its non-linear and fragmented mysteries.

Can you think of some ways to embrace certain inefficiencies in your practice?

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

A New "Vision" for Teaching


Meaningful and sustainable education reform cannot be just a new way of doing; it has to be a new way of seeing that leads to new ways of doing.

It seems well understood amongst teachers that reform initiatives are too often something akin to fashion: quickly admired, and just as quickly replaced, season after season.  

When I began teaching, my veteran colleagues were eager to share their understanding of this cycle.  While sitting with me at “trainings,” seasoned, somewhat weary souls would say things like: “Its just the next new thing,” or “______ is the same as _______ that they pushed ten years ago,” or “same trick, different package.”  I certainly heard these words as somewhat cynical and defeating, as they, indeed, were.  I mean, I was just starting my career, full of idealism and creative energy.  This is a great gig!  Let’s get on the boat, people!

Of course, it’s true, as I’ve learned while, year by year, I have become a seasoned veteran myself.  More often than not, new initiatives are rolled out with a great deal of enthusiasm from district central planners and state lawmakers and committees; bought and sold, pre-packaged and over-hyped, they come as the next great “research-based” program to teach reading, or the activity that will powerfully promote college aspiration.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

The Reform We Wish To See

Now in my 16th year as a public school teacher, I have never been more certain of the following notion : the profession of public school teaching is in crisis. 
It seems to me that our citizenry tends to speak of our public school system as a sort of ineffectual whole, referring to "our education system," or "our nation's schools."  My ears and heart hear this deep, collective concern that our education system is failing.  And there certainly are a ton of troubling facts associated with this concern.  High school dropout rates are extraordinarily high.  Funding is drying up.  The achievement gap is sustaining itself.  As a nation, we do worse than many countries that we used to do better than...the list goes on.