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.
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