Archive for the ‘narrative’ category

THE BANALITY OF INDIFFERENCE

October 4th, 2010

On Sunday, October 17 and Monday, November 22, grassroots turnaround leaders – educators who lead from the classroom, the principal’s office, the superintendent’s chair, higher education places, and activists’ spaces- will come together to continue to tip the nation’s public education conversation in a different direction than its current state. Make a commitment to join with your educational community colleagues on those days to blog, tweet, and post your thoughts and stories of real new forms of educating- the changes we need to ensure the viability of public education now and into the future. Our nation’s democratic way of life and its economic future depend upon it.

A female executive from a global technology corporation recently shared a story with a group of American teenage girls about a small school in Kenya that serves the most-disadvantaged girls imaginable. The executive spoke softly and eloquently about the intense effort of the Kenyan girls to learn everything they could from print materials that would be quickly tossed aside as unusable in one of our American schools. She said to the American teenagers that they should count every day their good fortune to attend a school with all of its advantages here in America. I’m not sure the young women really understood the story. I’m not sure they can. Americans don’t seem to be hungry learners – not adults, not children.

I don’t think tough issues faced by America’s public schools can be attributed to a lack of heroes in our classrooms. These issues certainly don’t exist because our kids are less intelligent than those in Finland, China, Ireland, or South Korea. And while money is important, the lack of it probably isn’t a root cause of many critical concerns either. After looking at some recent data sources, I wonder if today’s citizens are simply indifferent to learning. After all, there’s a big difference between talking the talk of a personal value for education and walking that walk in how we live a life of learning, or not.

In allocating our paychecks to what’s important to us, we spend annually about half as much on alcoholic beverages (.9%) and not quite 3 times as much on entertainment (almost 5.5%) as we spend on education (1.9%.) We’ve never really used the television as a learning technology as have the UK and many other countries that invest significantly in national educational broadcasting services compared to the U.S. We are not a nation of readers either. In that same paycheck survey, we only spent about .2% of our income on books and 25% of Americans who were surveyed in 2007 reported they did not read a book at all that year. Not one. And, despite the digital devices at their fingertips, 27% of Americans under age 30 accessed no news “yesterday” according to a recent Pew Study. Zero news. Zip.



However, perhaps the most disturbing statistic brought to my attention recently is based on Brookings Institution research. For the first time, the youngest generation of adult citizens in America will attain less education than older generations. This comes at a time when we hear daily that we need more college graduates- knowledge workers- than ever in our history, and we are falling behind the rest of the world. We need to turn around the falling educational attainment rate and make sure all young people can access the highest levels of learning possible including post-secondary learning options. That’s a critical economic vitality problem, too. After all, the best job market for America’s new college graduates today is everywhere else in the world but here.

Strategic planners say that how you spend money and time reflects your core values; you put your money behind what you believe is important to you. We Americans put a lot of value on cars and television. We also put a lot of time into weight loss, despite spending more time than ever on the couch watching television.

 in 2008, Americans owned 2.28 cars per household
 In 2009, Nielson reported an average of 2.24 TVs per household.
 We spend about $42 billion annually on weight loss programs and products.

We also allocate less as a government on education, percentage-wise, than on the military or health care – even in comparison to our geographic neighbor, Mexico.

If public education eventually does fail in America, I am convinced it won’t happen because of children who can’t or won’t learn. It won’t be because of the many dedicated educators in classrooms who have given up lucrative careers they could have pursued in other professions. Instead, I think it will be because of the banality of indifference * among many of today’s citizens to the importance of education, to a value for lifelong learning, and to a commitment to ensuring that the resources necessary to bridge social and cognitive capital are in place for all. I hope we’ve not lost the drive to become educated, but it sure feels as if we’re on our way to becoming a nation that takes education for granted- along with our cars, cartoons, and couches.

Despite media hype to the contrary, I still believe we sustain one of the best public educational systems in the world but I am worried about its future. I fear we are spending a lot of time focused on problems that aren’t the root causes of a national indifference to learning. Why are learners indifferent in some classrooms across America, regardless of socio-economic class, color, or capability of school success? Why do we profess to care about education; yet put our money everyplace but? What can we do to turn around indifference? Do we have the will to do those things? I’m not sure we have what it takes. But, I’m pretty sure it won’t happen if we give away the dialogue to people who care more about material goods than material learning; in politicizing education more than educating young people; and in making money from public school budgets more than investing money in our young people’s future.

October 17. November 22. Be present. Make a difference.

*Hannah Arendt, political theorist, first coined the controversial phrase “banality of evil” in reference to her observations and analysis of Adolph Eichmann on trial.  I have used the phrase banality of indifference in this post after reflecting upon her perspectives.

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Posted in educational reform, narrative, Uncategorized

The Teaching Story: August 2010

August 22nd, 2010

We educators teach learners that stories have a beginning, middle and end. We also know that each annual cycle of our career takes the form of a story, too. Many of us look forward to writing a new story each year-creating fresh learning plans, developing new relationships, redesigning our learning spaces to gain different perspective upon learning. On the flip side, some of us change so little over the course of our careers that we seem to simply repeat the same story over and over; almost as if stuck in the movie Groundhog Day. What leads teachers to choose one or the other of these two career pathways? Years ago, I worked on a little writing project to ask and answer the question: what motivates some teachers to continue evolving practice over the course of their career? After hours of listening to and transcribing audio tapes, a few specific themes emerged from these teachers’ reflections on their practice- or artwork- as one teacher labeled it.

2 generations of teachers; Ashley's retiree mom helping her set up kindergarten

Each year, just before school refreshes its cycle, I hear those teachers’ voices reminding me of their perspectives on the importance of the first day of school. These teachers, all recognized master teachers with years of teaching under their belts and with no intention of ever doing anything else, believed that the power of their successes was grounded in the relationships they began to build with young people in the first moment of the first day. One teacher said to me something akin to this, “When I began teaching, one of the old-timers advised me to not smile ‘til December.. I ignored that advice and think it was one of the best decisions of my career. How can you begin a positive relationship without smiling?” Another said in thinking about a mentor who helped her survive her very first day of school, “A teacher in the math department stepped in to help me with discipline early on. She became a mentor and critical friend for life. Every time I was failing to reach a student, we would talk. She would ask questions. I would think about different approaches. Eventually, I began to realize I owned the change that’s needed, not the learner. Sometime it’s about the relationship. Other times it’s about their needing a different learning strategy from me. Sometimes, they just need more time and – more of my time.”

These teachers engaged in professional careers grounded in efficacy. They believed they were capable of making a difference in every learner’s life and they never gave up on a young person, especially those who challenged them the most. Importantly, they all shared a professional power gained from finding and connecting to one or more critical friends with whom they bonded because of a commonly held belief in their own self-efficacy. They supported each other, listened to each other, pushed each other, and shared with each other. Often, they considered themselves to be part of an underground group of educators who stayed out of the fray of others’ criticizing conversations; not because there isn’t always something to criticize in a school but because they saw those discussions as debilitating to their work with young people. They held a viewpoint about their students and their work that could be labeled as “glass almost always full.”

Paragons of teaching? I don’t think so. Teachers aren’t perfect but I believe teachers who care and work hard are more the norm than the exception. As I walk schools and chat with teachers, step into their rooms, listen to their dreams for the first day and every day afterward with the learners they serve, I think the media, the politicians, and our communities often sell short the many professionals who teach their heart out, day in and out; living their careers inside and outside of work. These teachers know what’s worthy to learn and they put their energy into realizing that work to the greatest degree possible, even if means being a bit of a Neil Postman-like“subversive activity” teacher. They understand the importance of staying current and working to learn new skills. Despite being beleaguered professionally by back-to-school stories such as the recent teacher evaluation coverage of the LA Times, they work on new ideas for learning projects while on unpaid summer leave, rearrange their learning spaces over and over again before pre-service week, put a smile on their faces, and reach out to find the good in each learner who crosses the threshold into class on that first day of school. Our schools, our learners, and our teachers represent a different century of learning than the one Norman Rockwell captured when he painted Happy Birthday, Miss Jones, an image of what once was America’s quintessential teacher. However, today’s teachers still represent the best of what teachers have always been and always will be; educators who make a difference in the lives of the young people they serve.

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Posted in 21st century skills, narrative, Pam Moran, Sphere of Influence, Teacher Efficacy, teaching, voice

Authors, Illustrators, and Teaching: Part 1

October 1st, 2009

Authors and illustrators recently challenged my thinking about teaching.

The National Book Festival is an annual event held on the Mall in Washington, D.C. This year my wife and I attended for the first time. As I listened to various children’s authors and illustrators, I was struck by how much relevance the ideas they communicated had for educators.

First up was Charles Santore. Mr. Santore has illustrated several well-known children’s books, including The Camel’s Lament and versions of classics, such as the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” and the fantasy The Wizard of Oz. He also illustrated this year’s National Book Festival poster.

Because he moved from advertising illustration to children’s literature, many of Mr. Santore’s comments contrasted the two. For example, in illustration, Santore explained, you have to synthesize all the ideas into one, attention-grabbing illustration. However, in illustrating children’s literature, the artist can attend to pacing, even drawing “quiet” pictures that allow the reader to pause and ponder.

This pacing, giving the reader time to imagine and think, mirrors a pace the brain needs for optimal learning. Often called “down-time,” the brain needs to process new content in manageable chunks.1 A teacher who lectures for 45 minutes straight promotes less learning than a teacher who presents information for 10 minutes, engages students in processing new material, and then resumes presenting information for another brief period. To learn, the brain needs to pause and ponder—it needs the story of learning to include “quiet” illustrations.

Up next was one of my favorites: Nikki Grimes. Miss Grimes has authored several of my favorite children’s books, including The Road to Paris. With gifts in both poetry and prose, Miss Grimes captivated the audience with a colorful, poetic journey through several of her works. I cannot explain this sufficiently to help you appreciate it. She used poetry to introduce a color and its affective associations, then illustrated the concepts with passages from her writings. She created a hush in the tent and no one wanted her to stop.

What does this have to do with teaching? It made me think about how little thought I often give to my actual presentation of information. Sure, I think long and seriously about the activities I use to introduce or engage students in processing new information, but Nikki Grimes put that kind of thought into how she actually presented the information.

Hmm, how could I simulate this? Could I combine communication forms to better articulate critical concepts for students? Would a poetic journey through the Pythagorean theorem promote better understanding? One thing is certain: by challenging myself to consider the approach, I’d think more deeply about how I would actually explain the concept, and that would likely improve the words and phrases I used to teach it.

Finally, for this first of two posts, we heard and observed illustrator Kadir Nelson. Without exaggeration, Mr. Nelson is an artistic genius as evidenced in all his books, including the recent Testing the Ice.

A quiet individual, Mr. Nelson let his pens do most of the “talking.” He called two children up to the stage and recreated one of his illustrations with the children filling the roles of the original characters. Two young girls became Jackie Robinson and Yogi Berra, and their faces lit up with excitement and recognition. He actively involved the children, taking their minds to the scene he wanted them to imagine. Wow! In one illustration, he captured an entire narrative—a narrative to which two young girls could emotionally connect.

Narrative is a powerful teaching tool. Stories frame experience. Mark Turner suggests stories are actually fundamental, organizing structures: “Parable is the root of the human mind—of thinking, knowing, acting, creating, and plausibly even of speaking.”2 Neurologist and author Alice W. Flaherty agrees, suggesting metaphors, such as stories, contribute to memory formation and understanding:

…metaphors are cognitively useful because they rephrase an abstract concept in more physical terms. This engages the cortex with its visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory maps, and the limbic system with its emotional charge…[Metaphors] create a sense of understanding by an analogous mechanism. By giving abstract concepts tastes, colors, smells, and emotional resonance, metaphors fix them in our minds and make us feel like we understand them.3

The human mind frequently thinks in terms of stories, communicates in stories, and converts new learning into stories. By framing experience, stories provide a structure for exploring and making sense of experience. Can I structure any of my teaching as narrative? Again, just challenging myself to try will likely improve my teaching.

Pondering pauses, poetic presentations, and narrative frames can inspire and inform my teaching. What I learn from authors and illustrators can become personal professional development if I’m willing to accept the challenges their ideas present.

In Part 2, insights from authors Sharon Creech, Kate DiCamillo, and illustrator Jerry Pinkney.

  1. Sousa, D., How the Brain Learns, 2nd ed., (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc., 2001).
  2. Turner, M., The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), i.
  3. Flaherty, A. W., The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 230.

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Posted in Charles Santore, Education, Kadir Nelson, Kevin Washburn, narrative, National Book Festival, Nikki Grimes, teaching

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