There's No Debt...

Confession: I'm an NPR junkie.

I have a rather long commute to and from work each day and I love listening to NPR. My oldest son even enjoys listening to it when I bring him down to spend a day with my parents. I love getting caught up on world and national events, I love learning about "all" the things that they talk about on All Things Considered, I love when I am doing errands on Saturday and can catch snippets of Car Talk and Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me.

My favorite part, however, has to be the three to four minutes a week on Friday morning when they play excerpts from Story Corps. It is a project to record people's stories from around the country and it is incredible. This morning's story hit me hard. It was a dad and his grown son reflecting on an excruciating time in the son's life. It was incredibly touching to hear the two speak with such love and honesty. The line that got to me was toward the end when the son said, "I owe you so much. You saved my life." To which the dad replied, "There's no debt."

There's no debt.

I immediately thought of my two boys. My oldest is four and doing all the things a four year old should: getting dirty outside, jumping off of anything he can climb inside (though we try to discourage this one), asking a million questions before lunch, dressing up as Batman, learning to read, and throwing fits and testing his boundaries. My wife and I are admittedly struggling with how to correct the fits, the tantrums, and the talking back. He has had a particularly difficult week this week and we spoke often with him about him asking for forgiveness for his actions or words towards us, and how we will always forgive him, no matter what. We spoke to him of clean slates and fresh starts. We spoke to each other about how to offer correction and grace at the same time.

There's no debt.

We will not view him today through his poor choices of yesterday. We will always offer a fresh start and do all that we can to help him grow and choose what is best, not what is easy.

Here's the catch. He starts preschool in two weeks. I worry about that for a host of reasons. The big one? I want everyone he encounters to offer him the same fresh start. I want his teachers to extend grace as well as corrective guidance. I want them to do what is best for him, not what is easiest for them. I want his teachers to not hold his mistakes or errors over his head from day to day or year to year.

All this has been on my mind and heart but came to the forefront this morning when I heard the dad and his son talking. All of the thoughts that I have had about my son, and all of the thoughts I have had about my students came together somewhere between home and school. Just as I want what is best for my son from his teacher, someone somewhere wants that from me for their son or daughter.

Each and every one of my students deserves to be "debt free" in my class. Each student has someone worrying about him or her. Someone is hoping and praying that his or her teacher is doing what is best and not what is easy.

So today I make a commitment to my students and to their parents.

There's no debt.

I will not view my students through the lens of all of their past mistakes. I will give fresh starts each day or even each moment if I need to. I will not participate in discussions that come anywhere close to keeping the students in a perpetual state of judgment for past actions.

I will do my best to do what is best for my students and not what is easy for me. I will remember that my students are other people's children and those parents desperately want someone to "get" all the strengths and weaknesses and quirks of their children and support them in every way possible.

I want my sons and my students to know that when they are around me, there's no debt.

What a mess...

I had a very different idea of what "messy" meant when I originally thought of the title to this post a few days ago.

In this blog, and in numerous conversations with colleagues and my wife, I have spoken about how amazed I am at what my students have been doing these past few weeks. I have seen things that I hoped would occur by the end of the year, but time and time again these students exceed all expectations I have of them.

It has been wonderful to watch them break out of the confines that normally or traditionally bind them. One of the strategies that I have been using is to remove myself as a resource. We go over the goals for the day, I give them an overview of what my expectations are in regards to any products they need to produce during class, I give them a few minutes to ask me questions, and then I go mute.

This was harder for me than I thought it would be, but is incredibly rewarding. They create plans as a whole class before moving forward. They elect a supervisor through blind voting, they break up into small groups according to student interests and skill sets. The leaders check in with small groups. Representatives from groups travel to other groups updating them on progress. Small group and whole group leaders meet with students without jobs asking them how they would like to contribute to the project. They come together a few minutes before the product is due and make sure that everyone understands the purpose and the final product. They make sure that everyone likes what the individual groups came up with.

They do it all without me suggesting any of it.

We are only in the fourth week of school, yet they act like they've been doing this forever. Each day I do something like this, they streamline the process a bit more. They try strategies that worked for them in the past. When they aren't that effective, they try new things.

But it's messy.

There's a lot of noise. There are miscalculations, things overlooked, plans that don't work.

But this is exactly what learning should be. No obstacle has gotten in their way that they couldn't find a way around. Sometimes there were obstacles there from the beginning that they just didn't see. Sometimes obstacles pop up somewhere in the process. But they move forward.

It is a beautiful mess.

Then "messy" took on a whole new meaning yesterday.

Without going into a lot of details, the "candy coating" is wearing off, and the "honeymoon" appears to be over with OOTA. It has nothing to do with a falling out or any particular incident. I do not even mean to imply that there is anything wrong with transitioning to the next phase. There was just a noticeable change in mood and atmosphere. The burdens that students carry started becoming much more apparent. There were a few absences. We struggled through changing Apple IDs and other tedious activities.  It was a mess yesterday.

I went home drained and discouraged. I saw pain in my students' eyes from the weights that they carry. I longed to be able to somehow make their lives better so they could be kids and not deal with the adult-sized burdens that some of them bear. I was frustrated that I allowed myself to become rattled by things of little lasting significance.

I was a mess.

Then the sun rose and it was a new day in more ways than one. Smiles were back. Fantastic progress was made on the projects that they are creating. Students were spilling their guts in their blogs. I felt the fire ignite within my own soul again. I saw students get excited about what they were blogging about moments after initially moaning about having to write anything. I saw students figure out ways to get around obstacles on their own. I saw them write with honesty and openness. I saw spelling mistake after spelling mistake. I saw some students momentarily off task. I saw students help each other. I saw a student return from being absent and not miss a single beat with his project. I saw a student display more independence and willingness to take charge of his learning than he has displayed so far. I saw students laying on tables, but on task. I saw students working collaboratively in the hall. I saw students taking selfies.

It was a mess.

And I loved every moment of it...

"You Say You Want a Revolution..."

I spent most of class on Friday and Monday amazed as I watched student presentations that were created to answer the question, "What is Project Based Learning." It was an assignment that was a spur of the moment idea thanks to some honest feedback from a student (an iPad held up for me to read a screenshot that said 'Boring').  There were few guidelines other than to use any resource in the room to create some kind of product to explain Project Based Learning. It was the first opportunity to really let them explore and experiment on their own.

My first reaction was amazement that they could come up with such great presentations using technology that was brand new to them to communicate a teaching method that is also brand new to them. There were special effects in Keynote. There were great movies made with iMovie. There were films using stop motion animation, fantastic character voices, and legos. There was a high level of "razzle dazzle."

And then I really listened.

I will be honest that what I heard made me a bit uncomfortable. I did not ask them to make any judgments or comparisons or to take a particular side, yet student after student spoke with something in between passion and certainty that PBL is a better way for them to learn. They talked about past experiences that did not necessarily meet their needs. They spoke about "better" and "more exciting."

I started to squirm.

I did not squirm because I don't believe or agree with them, but because I do believe them and agree with them with every fiber of my being. I may or may not have joked (your Honor) with several people over the summer about staging an academic revolution. Where students are shown another way to learn and they rise up and demand it. All I kept thinking as I sat through the presentations was, "Holy smokes they're actually doing that!" "Revolution Leader" is not on my resume, but I'm willing to learn.

As I sat and listened and watched, there was excitement in their eyes as they explained that they could work at their own pace, that the learning would be relevant, that the projects themselves would be both how they learned and how they demonstrated their learning. There was smile after smile on students' faces as they talked about what this year is going to involve. Their own pace. No tests. Hands-on projects. Flexible instruction. Authentic assessments. Relevant content Engaging application. What I heard and saw, in a word, was hope.

Then it hit me. They have totally bought into this new endeavor. What kept going through my mind was, "I better deliver." They were all-in and actually excited to be here and to learn in a new way.

The revolution is beginning and there is no turning back. 

My hope is that we can stage a revolution that does more building than tearing down. If we need to clear some space and tear down some barriers or old structures, so be it, but only if we can build something better. One of the most beautiful things about this revolution is that I have only a shadow of an idea of what the "something better" looks like.

The only thing I am certain of is that we can and must build it together.

Lessons From a Bean Field

I found myself in awe today of the fact that I get to teach. I get to dedicate my life to helping young minds grow. I get to help my students along the journey towards becoming the people that they always dreamed they could be.

Part of that journey took place in a Maine bean field.

A colleague of mine, who I hold in the highest regards, organized a trip to a local farm for the entire 7th grade as well as the students in my program. We boarded and rode hot buses on an unseasonably hot and humid day, then filed out into a very organized plan-of-attack at the farm. We all bent down and grabbed handful after handful of fresh, tender green beans, put them in buckets and then into bushel baskets that will soon be served to our students for lunches. He has been doing this for a while and I am amazed at the passion that comes through when he speaks to the students about the Farm to School program, the benefits of eating locally grown crops, and the wonder and amazement that nature can produce such diverse and delicious bounties. It was great to see him teaching to and from the heart today.

In the midst of this great experience were a few events that unsettled me a bit. Actually they rattled me to my core. Rather than going into detail or even giving an overview, I think it is more important to share the lessons I learned from them. With this year and this blog I choose to stay positive and look for ways to help be a part of solutions. Problems arise, I understand, but for me to just vent about them without offering any plan for a solution or how I will use those problems to help me and my students grow would be to go through this life without a sense of joy or eager expectation of how I can help make the world a better place.

Geez. There's that Hallmark moment again. My apologies.

So the lessons from the bean field:

I choose to seek out the positive in students, however hidden it may sometimes be. I choose to pick and choose my battles understanding that my tone of voice or the words that are said can quickly undo any progress that has been made to build a connection with a student. I choose to let go of my expectations if they do not put the needs of my students first. I choose to remember that what is best is not always easy, and what is easy is not always best. Whether that is in regards to my choices and behavior or my students'. My students need as many people modeling for them how to choose what is best over what is easy. I choose to be one of those individuals.

I choose these things, but they are not one-time choices. I must make and remake these choices dozens of times a day. Sometimes I choose poorly. Sometimes I take the path that is easy, rather than the one that is best. Some days are a string of poor choices. But I can also choose to allow those days filled with poor choices and me dropping the ball to become learning experiences for me and those around me.

 I choose today to teach to and from the heart.

Now cue the sappy music...

Teaching with and to the heart

I received an email last night from a colleague who has been a huge support and resource for this new endeavor I am undertaking this year. The email contained a link to a blog written about school and educational reform. It was inspiring. It was controversial. It was thought provoking. I loved it. It got me thinking deeper about several experiences from the past week.

Act I

First, a very eye-opening experience from the week before school, as we teachers were opening and setting up classrooms that had been freshly cleaned and ready for a new year of wear and tear. We are a middle school in Maine, which means that we have the incredibly fortunate opportunity to be part of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative and have 1:1 devices for all seventh and eighth graders. This year marked a milestone for several reasons. The first is that it is time to get new devices. The second is that for the first time, those new devices are not laptops. They are iPads.

Please note, this is not a post about brand loyalty or drawing a line in the sand about being a "PC Guy" or "Mac Guy." All I will say about that is that I am very aware of how fortunate we are to be in a state that not only says it values technology and education, but that opens up doors to give our students top-of-the-line technology that will help enhance their learning experience.

Ok. Back to the show.

With this new technology comes a huge learning curve for us as teachers. How do we support students on devices some of us know little about? How do we take advantage of the fact that we can customize an iPad with different apps to meet the individual needs of students, while at the same time not allow that to be abused by anyone? How do we best use this new technology?

These and many more questions have been floating around the building for a while now. Without going into a lot of detail, there has been a significant amount of anxiety and tension around the new technology and how to use and manage it. There are some that are stressed and yet willing to learn something new. There are those who, by appearance, have given up before they have even started because it seems too hard. There are some that want their old laptops back so as to not have to learn the new devices. There are those who are psyched out of their minds and can't wait to see what how we can use this technology to better meet the needs of our students. There are those who may have a bit of a stress-medley and have a little helping of all those outlooks.

After seeing all these different reactions, it hit me that we have an extraordinary opportunity to better understand our students. We, as teachers, are a group who have chosen to dedicate our lives to a profession that is focussed on learning. That's what we are supposed to be all about: how to teach students how to learn. (There is a whole other conversation there on whether we are truly doing that or just teaching how to jump through hoops and regurgitate information, but I'm too tired to tackle all of that in one post.) We have a remarkable teachable moment if we choose to acknowledge it. Here we are, professionals, exhibiting the exact same behaviors and modes of thinking that our students do on a daily basis about reading, writing, math, and science. If we can allow ourselves to pause a moment and recognize how we are responding to this new challenge, and see that it is not that different than our students' responses, we may be able to make some significant progress in the lives of our students. We now know first hand what it is like to be too intimidated to try. We now know exactly what it feels like to be so overwhelmed with what is being asked of us that we refuse to let go of something. We now know what it's like to be scared to show others that we don't really have all the answers.

My hope is that we will remember this feeling when our students are feeling the same way and not necessarily handling it in the best way. Maybe we will be a bit slower to get frustrated when they turn and joke with another student to cover their fear or frustration. Maybe we will be able to extend more grace or compassion when our reading or math assignment causes students to shut down. Maybe we will have a bit more patience and perspective when our students refuse to do the previous night's assignment. I hope so.

Act II

I promise to make this shorter.

I had an extraordinary experience sitting in class at the end of the day on our first day of school. Because of how we scheduled this new endeavor, I get to be in with my students while one of my colleagues teaches science. We will eventually team-teach, or I'll meet with small groups or one-on-one to help meet the students' needs, but for Tuesday, I got to sit with them and participate in the class.

I sat next to a student who I knew needed to make connections with teachers in order to be successful. When that connection is absent, this particular student has historically had a very difficult time. So I believe it was with the best intentions that I found myself wanting to talk to him and joke around when the teacher was talking. Yes, I admit it! I wanted to make him laugh and build some trust between us. It had nothing to do with wanting to sabotage my colleague, for whom I have an enormous amount of respect. It had nothing to do with wanting to sabotage the rest of the class. It had everything to do with wanting to build a connection. Thankfully, I realized all of this before I actually started joking around. I was struck by the fact that it took a significant amount of self-control and self-awareness to stay on task, despite my good intentions. How can we, or how can I, expect my students to exhibit the same level of self-control and self-awareness every moment or every day, when it was so difficult for me, an adult and teacher more than twice their age?

The Finale

Back to reforming schools.

Both of these experiences I have shared, along with many others I have had both as a teacher and student, make me a firm believer in reforming schools. On my particularly passionate days, I may even say that we need to call for a revolution. However, I do not believe it will start or even end with legislators, despite their best intentions. Laws, regulations, policies, and even technology and standards will not really reform education. I believe that it begins and ends with teachers teaching with their heart and to the students' hearts.

You can cue the Hallmark After School Special soundtrack now.

Despite sounding kind of corny, I truly believe that teaching is about hearts as well as minds. I believe that a lot of work needs to be done to improve how we teach from and to both, but too often it is the heart that is left out of the equation. We tend to think a lot about numbers, grades, statistics. We tend to ignore feelings and character, or simply reduce them to values that never quite make it into our curriculum.  I would like to commit to focussing on individual hearts and minds that need a tremendous amount of care and guidance. I would like to commit to creating a culture in my classroom that engages the mind and the heart. When we care more about quantifiable data than we do the individual whose "output" is being quantified, we miss the opportunity to help form hearts and minds.

School reform begins when we focus on forming the hearts and minds of our students.

I know I have talked a lot about "we" or "teachers," but I want this to start with me. I want to commit to focussing all my energy on helping to be a part of forming healthy, inquisitive, thoughtful, awe-filled hearts and minds. I want to teach with my heart and my mind. I want to truly embrace the credo that I came up with and wrote on the board my very first day of teaching: "We seek to embrace awe, and wonder, and amazement of the world around us as we strive to become the individuals we always dreamed we could be."

School reform is possible. But it does not begin with the school. It begins with the hearts and minds of teachers engaging, challenging, guiding, and enriching the hearts and minds of their students.

In Total Awe...

I committed to updating this blog once a week thinking that that would be a stretch given my history with journaling. However, after just four days, I wish that I could find a way to pour all of my observations and thoughts on paper as soon as possible. I'll try to keep this one brief.

Here's a bit of background first:

This "program" was designed to help meet the needs of students who have not been successful, for whatever reason, in a traditional classroom setting. There are as many different reasons why they haven't been successful as there are students in the class. This program will be as rigorous as a traditional classroom, but every effort will be made to meet the individual needs of every single student. I could go on and on about what I want this to be and my role and yadda, yadda, yadda. Two of my students articulated the heart of this program with the phrase, "The freedom to learn in our own way." Boom. (For more info, there is a quick overview on one of the pages of my website A New Path at WJHS

Now to the part that I cannot communicate without getting choked up. We were building off of an activity from yesterday where they were put in charge of coming up with a name for the program. For a bit more detail, read the post from yesterday.

How they applied their learning from yesterday to today was extraordinary. There were small groups meeting to discuss potential names. Leaders arose and went back and forth between students who were not engaged or not participating. The names were focussed on trying to represent who we are and who we want to be. The silly names were a thing of the past. They looked like they had been doing this for months. On day four.

I stopped them at the end of ten minutes and read my observations and we discussed how they felt it went. We all agreed that it was much more productive than yesterday. We then decided to go through and see what we came up with for names.


There were lots of suggstions involving paths, pathways, new beginnings, etc.

Awesome.

Then they hit me with it. The name that they voted for is the acronym OOTA.

It stands for

Out Of The Ashes.

Boom.

I cannot say that or think it without getting tears in my eyes. When I asked what that meant, multiple students communicated the following (I am combining several students' statements), "We have all had a really rough time with school in the past and felt buried in ashes. Now we want to rise from that, kind of like a Phoenix, and become something better."

Yeah.

I'm going to let that speak for itself. I cannot wait to see them again on Monday.

Wow.

Students are engaged.

Students are laughing.

Students are learning.

Students are participating.

Students are exploring.

Students are experimenting.


I cannot begin to explain how amazing it is to write those sentences as observations of things in the present, rather than goals for the future. It's messy, there's lots that I need to learn and change, but man is this exciting.  I have heard some incredible things from students this week. When we were working on our expectations for each other and me, one student responded to the question, "What do you need from me (the teacher)," with, "The freedom to learn." Another student immediately added, "The freedom to learn in our own way." Wow. In that one phrase, my students articulated what I believe to be at the very core of this new endeavor.

I have received incredibly touching and encouraging emails from parents about the changes they have already seen in their son or daughter. I am humbled and honored to be a part of that change, though it is absolutely a team effort by all those who are working with me behind the scenes.

Today was amazing. We did some creative problem solving/team building activities that were fun for some, and challenging for others. We talked about how one of the activities could be a metaphor for how we want to work and what they need from me to be successful. One of the coolest things happened after I gave them a short 5 minute pitch on what this program is, what my role will be, and where we want students to be able to go. I told them they needed to name the program and that I would not be saying a word for ten minutes. I sat and wrote down what I saw and heard, and it was amazing. It began with a relatively high volume of people shouting out suggestions or critiquing other suggestions. It then became completely chaotic with few individual voices heard and no progress made. Some students just sat there. One was laying on a table. I will admit it was difficult to not step in. But I wanted and still want them to experiment and learn to explore and navigate on their own. At the peak of the chaos, I began hearing some students say things like, "This is NOT working." "We're getting nowhere." "I'm going to leave." Then came the suggestions like, "We need to be quiet." "How about we raise our hand." "We need to focus." Then it began to quiet down. Not silent, mind you, but much more conducive to having a discussion. Then they started working it out on their own.

I stopped them at the end of ten minutes to share what I saw and heard without making any judgments. They thought they had failed. Then I shared with them how amazed I was that in just ten minutes, on the third day of school, they were able to recognize what they were meant to be doing, experiment with how to meet the goal, see what was not working, devise a plan for how to fix the problem, and proceed to execute their plan. All without any input whatsoever from an adult. I thought they were incredible. It was wonderful to see the recognition on their faces that they did something well that they thought they failed at.

I commented to someone today that I feel that if the school year were to end today, I could write at least multiple chapters, if not an entire book, of what I have learned and observed these past few days. It has been incredibly exciting, invigorating, terrifying, and enlightening. It has been incredibly meaningful for me from a personal standpoint as well. For the first time I really feel like I am doing exactly what I was made to do.

Already I love this year. I am growing as a learner and teacher, and my students are as well.  We are experimenting and trying new things. We are sharing ideas. We are laughing and smiling in school. We are pushing ourselves as learners. We are reflecting on our learning. Day three complete.

I cannot wait for tomorrow.

I'm antsy....

It's 9:34 on September 2. In less than 24 hours, all of the philosophizing, planning, strategizing, reading, discussing, revising, and hoping will all come together as my students walk through the doors for the first time. Commence antsiness...

I am by nature a very analytical person. I was talking about this with my wife yesterday and we both articulated that when I think about something, it  consumes me. This is a rather nice way to say that I can become mildly obsessed. I need to think about things from multiple angles. I work and re-work scenarios in my mind. It doesn't matter if I am thinking about a woodworking project, how to help my son with his bedtime routine, what I want to make my wife for Christmas, or teaching.

While the end result is a well-thought out position or plan for the subject of my thoughts, it is, needless to say, an exhausting process. Not only is it exhausting, but it is quite difficult for me to think about multiple things at once. Truth be told, I am terrible at it. I tend to get into "modes" or "zones" and let everything else drift from the center of my focus. Despite being able to still see things in my periphery, it is certainly not with the same amount of clarity with which I see what my current subject of focus.

All that is to say that it has been difficult to have something as monumental as designing a new curriculum, course, and strategy for reaching students going through my mind for six months, while also trying to balance out all of my other interests and responsibilities. I worked each Monday over the course of the summer, and then four days a week for three weeks in August planning this new endeavor. For the sake of my family, I tried very hard to "turn off" when I was home and just focus on having a wonderful summer with my amazing wife and crazy boys. Which we did.

Then came August 28. The first teacher workshop day back.

It's time.

The shift.

The "zone."

Time to finally allow teaching to move closer to the center of my focus where it will remain for the next nine months. There is a whole other blog post to write sometime about being committed to having a healthy balance this year between school and family.

But here I sit. In Panera. The sounds of fancy coffee machines gurgling, large amounts of ice being poured for who-knows-why, patrons jabbering, and a Dylan-esque station coming through the speakers directly above me all compete for my attention. Now that I think about it, it's not a bad metaphor for what I have been writing about. I am focussed on getting this post completed and my thoughts out about all that I am feeling the day before "game day," and yet so many things compete for my attention.

At the end of the day, all I really am sure of right now is that I absolutely cannot wait for those students to walk through the doors to my classroom. I cannot wait to begin this journey together. I know I have so much to learn about this new journey and about them and about myself and my craft. But I cannot wait. To fall flat on my face, to see my students succeed, to end the day with a smile on my face. All of it. Bring it on.

I'm ansty and I just want it to be here. I feel a bit like I did when I swam in high school. Months of prep. Countless decisions each day about how to better prepare my body and mind for States at the end of the season. Now here I am, about to jump in the water, getting my mind into the zone. Who knows how the race will end, but for me, it was never really about the end of the race. I loved the adrenaline as I stepped up onto the block. I loved that everything went quiet and my mind was focussed on only one thing. I loved the feel of my arms through the water. I loved the feeling as I flipped my body and slammed my feet against the wall to change directions. I loved pushing my body as hard as possible. I loved mind and body united, for once, on a single focus. I just loved the race.

I am so excited to jump back in the water...