Courage

A few weeks ago I had the fortune of attending one of four two day retreats lead by The Northeast Center for Courage and Renewal. The short version is that this is a retreat based in the work of Parker Palmer, whose books you should read if you haven't. There are four retreats, one for each season. I will write more about my experience at the retreat and the remaining three as I find the time (and I will find the time soon, promise). It has just been so long since I posted, and I really do want to get into the habit...which means I have to start somewhere. Which is right here. (Write here.) With this little blurb and a video clip or two.

"Refuse to make the other the enemy."

David Whyte and the Conversational Nature of Reality

Now: Moving Forward and Looking Backward

This school year hasn't been the easy golden year I was told to expect. Having taught all of my courses before and being comfortable at my school in my third year there did not equate to ease. Now that I am headed in to the last few weeks of the school year, I can start to gain perspective on the year as a whole. And through that fact, I now realize what I have gained this year. While it wasn't ease by any means, it was something I needed much more.

Self-acceptance. I am human. Being human--my self--on stage in front of 100 vulnerable, critical, beautiful people each day is draining. It's many sunshiny things, and it's also rainy--makes you want to curl up in pajamas by the fire at 5:00 p.m. with everyone in the house on gag order. And that's okay.

A favorite past coworker of mine in Maine shared one of the simplest and most valuable ways of understanding the world. Faith was a senior clinician at the addiction treatment program I was a measly admissions assistant. She was in her 50s or 60s--vivacious, wise, confident, calm, forgetful, upbeat. (In a former life she was a social worker on an army base in Germany.) We were interacting with a particularly tough client who was making choices for herself and her children that were hard to fathom. Faith reframed my view: "You know what I've learned about most about people doing this work for 30 years? Everyone is doing the best that they possibly can. If they could do better, they would. We have to assume that everyone is doing what they think is best in any given moment or situation no matter the results. If anyone could--with the tools and experiences and resources with them in that moment--achieve better, could muster better, they would. You just have to assume that." I've recalled Faith's words so many times since 2005.

Just as I must accept my students and assume that they are doing the best they can--some with crippling barriers in their way, this all also applies to me. To all of us.

It's okay if every single lesson isn't completely airtight. (Then, it's okay if a student doesn't give every single assignment 110% effort and creativity.) It's okay if I get those papers back a few days later than I expected. (It's okay if a student occasionally passes in work late.) It's okay if that graduate paper isn't given another revision. (It's okay if a student doesn't transform that draft into a masterpiece.) Because I am--we are--human. And the irony is that when I stop wasting energy worrying about striving for more, I'm more able to actually achieve it.

For a hundred reasons, I grew up to be a perfectionist. For a million reasons, the concept of perfection can be a deathtrap for teachers (and students). The idea of the "tragic gap" has helped free me from the confines of perfection, of linear success, of fixed mindset. I can stand "between what is and what could be." Gracefully, in time, I will be able to exist on that line. We always want more and better for ourselves. We have glimpses of the ideal, glimmers that beg us to hope and heal and strive; we have glimpses of the depravity and darkness that breed doubt and fear and cynicism. (The horror! The horror!)

And we must co-create our experience by living and reflecting, by moving forward and looking backward simultaneously. It's a form of stillness. To get to now, that elusive present moment, standing between what is and what could be.

Cheers--to living the examined live in community.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week

To Be of Use

by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best

jump into work head first

without dallying in the shallows

and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.

They seem to become natives of that element,

the black sleek heads of seals

bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,

who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge

in the task, who go into the fields to harvest

and work in a row and pass the bags along,

who are not parlor generals and field deserters

but move in a common rhythm

when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.

Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

But the thing worth doing well done

has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

Greek amphoras for wine or oil, 

Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums

but you know they were made to be used. 

The pitcher cries for water to carry

and a person for work that is real.

Entangled

This seems to be a lesson we all need to learn over and over (case in point). In the big picture, I think I'm somewhere in the middle of that particularly entangled mass in the middle. Small picture, I cycle through this trajectory fourteen times a day.

(PHOTO CREDIT: Demetri Martin, “This is a book“)

Freedom To vs. Freedom From

I'm incredibly intrigued by the concept of the "flipped classroom." Khan Academy doesn't have any great videos on crafting a thesis statement or the ideals and values of the British Romantic Poets, so I have to wait until I have the time to make my own videos. Until that time presents itself to me, this is good fuel for conceiving of how a flipped classroom may remove some constraints of the more traditional classroom to allow me to differentiate and embody a more constructivist approach. 

Best Practices for a Flipped Classroom: 

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/flipped-classroom-best-practices-andrew-miller

Common Core Implementation

So, this blog is a place where I can be totally honest and not fear the ridicule of any nay-sayers, right? If you don't like my perspective and don't enjoy entertaining others' perspectives, I'm sure you can find one better suited to your own among the 455568291 other blogs out there.

That said, now I just have to be honest and say that I don't fear the Common Core State Standards. It was love at first sight, really. (I know, you're sick as you read...) They provide clear categories for standards that helped me to create some very valuable rubrics last summer. Rubrics I've used to guide a bulk of my instruction and assessment. I've had students goal-set based on their proficiency level on the rubrics. I've sent home reports of how students are performing based on these standards and suggestions for improvement in the coming semester. Like I said--I'm wholly in love! So much so that I may have rushed in too fast without really reflecting or processing the specific implications and intentions of the CCSS--not in a detrimental way--but in that I'm now really enjoying doing some ground-level thinking.

The Holy Grail of CCSS implementation framework:
http://pages.solution-tree.com/CCSSWebinarRecordingPart1.html?from=seriesregpage

Follow the Fear; Make It Count

A video worth sharing with your students or TAs:

What am I Currently Reading? Well, Since You Asked...

I know, I'm behind the times. I'm busy. Yadda, yadda, yadda, grading, grading, grading, writing papers, writing papers, writing papers, maintaining sanity (only just a little bit of that one).

I FINALLY started reading this last week. I already love Ms. Carol, yet I haven't even read her entire book yet. Don't you worry. I've had lackluster powerpoints about it delivered to me at a sticky August inservice day. I've even blindly directed others toward reading it.

Really and honestly, another reason I haven't read it this year is that I made a concerted effort to read a few novels (The Marriage Plot, for one) before I let myself start another (non-grad school related) book entirely on education. But now I'm baaaaack.

I haven't decided if I'll wait until I'm done to do a formal review (how fancy of me, eh? Going back to the book review days of my brief newsgirl career) or if I'll post some quotes and thoughts along the way. You and I will have to wait and see.

Finally.

This blog has been in the making for years. And....wait for it...here it is!

Really, this is a place for me to dump my thoughts on all things education. I read so many articles and studies and books on education on a weekly basis. Paired with new ideas I come across from my colleagues, classmates, and professors (and occasionally myself), I need a place to jot it all down. A placeholder, documenter, link dump, review space, anything really to keep it all safe and sound out of my inbox and head.

I reached my final straw when I read a solid, succinct article about teaching reading that I linked to through my daily ASCD e-newsletter. Then, I got distracted. I think I had to run to a NEASC meeting, actually. (Don't hide your jealousy. It's okay. I, too, love acronyms.) I didn't bookmark this golden nugget of information; it's not in my history. Now it is lost forever. I can't find that week-old email (but, don't you worry, I can find all of the other emails from ASCD, all 2467 of them). So, next time I will pop the link into a blog draft and come back to it to reflect and share.

I know, you can hardly wait, Internet. I can't either. Let's do this.