Passion

This week my students have been finishing up their WHOA! (an acronym for worldly history, oddities, anthropology) projects and delivering presentations to their peers. The project's purpose is twofold.

1) Students get exposure to topics in regions we don't formally study in our curriculum by researching anything of cultural relevance that makes them say Whoa!

2) Students learn two fundamental skills of the social studies: appropriate use and formatting of bibliographies and footnotes.

I first rolled out this project a number of years ago after learning that Google has a policy where 20% of each employee’s time should be spent working on a personal project that aligns with something (anything!) about which they are passionate.

I wanted to do the same. To follow each of my student's curiosity, their passion, and to learn something amazing about the world through the lens of their own experience and inquiry.

So what's the result of such a project? Well my students end up learning two of the most boring skills of the year (citations and accountability of sources) through the lens of the most exciting thing they will learn all year.

Furthermore, if they've chosen wisely it's a topic about which they are innately passionate.

But why passion? And why does Google want to invest in things that their employees are passionate about? Well, for starters the word passion comes from the Latin word pati which means "suffer."

Google (and Mr. McDonough!) understand that if someone (an employee or a student) is passionate about something (anything), they will be willing to suffer. ...in fact, if they care about it enough they won't be willing not to suffer. They will want to spend extra time researching, honing their understanding, struggling through articles and excerpts and scholarly journals that challenge them!

I know because that's what I just watched my students do.

If you want to push a student to really reach their ceiling,

and to see what they are capable of,

and to find their growth mindset,

and to experience real, tangible rigor...

let them take over your curriculum.

Invite them into the driver's seat.

Provide the scaffolding and coaching necessary to support them, but simultaneously give them permission to suffer--not because you've mandated it and assigned so much work--but because they simply care so much that they just can't stop.

True vs. Real

The other day I had the pleasure of attending a conference whose wordy title was Integrating Diversity, Stress Management and Interpersonal Communication in our Professional and Personal Lives.

While I had a handful of takeaways, one thing in particular stuck with me.

I always approach professional development opportunities as though I'm tasting a new food. Any time I taste something that takes risks or evolves my own understanding of what (or how) food can be, I think, "I want to add some element of this to my repertoire."

It's never, "I want this recipe and the steps required to recreate it exactly..." I'm just not that type of cook. I like experimenting and adding my own version of something I've tasted to the next innovative meal I try out.

Similarly, I like adding elements of what I've learned or read to my own teaching, my own interactions, my own life.

So what was the big takeaway from my conference?

It was what the facilitator referred to as the difference between

TRUE & REAL.

The facilitator differentiated between the two like this,

Imagine you were cut off on the highway by a speeding driver.

This really happened, so it's true. 

Your bumpers nearly touched and the person was driving very fast.

TRUE.

But how that interaction takes shape inside of you is where REAL comes into play.

If you yell "THAT GUY'S A MANIAC! You're going to get somebody killed, you JERK!"

The truth has taken on REAL meaning within you...it has transformed your emotions. You are off-kilter, shaken, angry.

But, what if, instead, you responded with, "That guy is going really fast. He must be in a hurry. I hope he stays safe. We could have gotten really hurt right there."

By hijacking the moment--a TRUE thing that happened--the way it becomes REAL within us.

When someone says something offensive, do we make the truth (that their comment that landed offensively and was inappropriate) cause to label them a racist or sexist or ignorant (REAL), or do we say "that person said something racist." Making true facts REAL in our hearts can disallow us from coexisting in a meaningful way.

Certainly, we need to stand up for what is right, and we needn't ever ask permission for taking a stand for the things in which we believe...but the manner by which we engage, not outwardly, but within our hearts, is where true becomes real.

True has a connection to facts and reality...while being REAL has a connection to emotional authenticity and the depths of how we interact with the world.

How we interpret TRUE has the potential to derail our cores or empower us onward.

When we tell someone to "Get real," we mean they need to come back to reality and stop living in the clouds.

When we tell someone "I want you to be real right now," we mean we want them to be fully present and authentic with us...that we have the time to hear how they really are.

As I finish up a unit about Lord of the Flies, I have asked my students to be REAL...not to look at the mere TRUTH of the textual evidence, but to apply what they see and learn to their lives, to the inner workings of their hearts. The story ends in disaster and the facts illustrate a broken, hopeless world where humans seek glory, hate, and destroy each other and the world around them. Those are TRUE...but hope in a better tomorrow will require us all to kindle the REAL deep within us that rejects the status quo and grieves for a future TRUTH we know is possible.

During today's "This I Believe" presentations by 9th graders, I listened to a brave and inspiring student their own journey toward self-acceptance, toward recognizing to love their own journey, to be still in moments of anxiety, and to reflect on their identity. 

In reality, I think few will remember the specifics, because it wasn't about this one student. The message was about authenticity. It was about being REAL. It was about the way it feels when someone gets REAL and risks all the perceptions others might place upon them in the name of being themselves.

At one point (well, two points, really) admitted, "I discovered that my path forward had not been defined yet...you are all making your own paths right now."

This is the truth. 

For REAL.

On Campus Like a Butterfly (or 30 minutes in a life)

I love schools.

Not the physical space so much, but the people. I love the energy harnessed by the conversations that happen on a campus. And while I wrote about conversations (riding the windhorse) recently, this week I have been particularly attuned to the way I navigate campus.

As often as I have a schedule that dictates how long I've got to get from one place to the next, the moments I love most are when I get to navigate campus like a butterfly...floating from conversation to conversation, from observation to observation, from thought to thought, and inspiration to inspiration. Yep, that's me, like a butterfly who lets the wind carry it from flower to flower, collecting pollen wherever the wind lands it...no blueprint, just a trust in the breeze, carrying it where it will.

Sometimes I'll transit campus on foot without seeing anyone. Other times, I have a dozen conversations over the course of my walk. Yesterday was such a day.

Here's what happened.

7:25 sunlight over the ridge...glorious sunlight as I walk from the parking lot

7:27 I run into a colleague, the school counselor, and we talk about the sun and about an incredible conversation I had yesterday with the CEO of Factor Philanthropy. In the conversation yesterday we spoke about harnessing the potential of students and schools, and the communities we inhabit...we talked about the principles on which institutions stand and I was energized and I shared all of this  with my colleague. And we departed.

7:32 I walk across campus with the Head of Upper School. We discuss the following day's Community Time and he asks wonderful questions about what the students need, what we need, and how to provide space for the important over the urgent. We stand in the doorway of the Dining Hall and finish our conversation with hope and a promise to finish later. And we departed.



7:40 I am now at a community breakfast (we do this every fall/winter) where many colleagues are seated and eating, talking and connecting. We all have busy days ahead, but now a time to pause. I land at a table with another Division Head, a third grade teacher (who happens to teach my buddy class), two administrative assistants (and a first grader).

7:42 I talk to the division head to follow-up to our conversation from Monday. We pick up where we left off, discussing how Middle School is more about THE THINGS WE EXPERIENCE than it is about THE THINGS WE LEARN. She tells me that the four assurances she gives parents are that the teachers in her building will
let them fly,
let them fall,
pull them out,
& find the good.

Experiences.

7:46 Conversation turns to my third grade teacher colleague. We discuss Buddies and Service Learning and the opportunity for my 8th graders and her 3rd graders to work together to make blankets in February that can be donated around Valentines' Day. We talk about how the activity could draw the group closer together and provide a sense of purpose for everyone involved. She ends the conversation by saying, "I guess it's time to meander back to my room," and I think of that meander as a butterfly (thereby inspiring the topic for this post)

7:50 Seated next to me, the Assistant to the Assistant Head of School asks, "How's your week?"
"I don't give many tests, but I'm giving one today..." is my reply.
"Huh, you don't give many tests? How come?"

I explain the way I've transformed my vocabulary assessments to be more student-centered and to deemphasize the rote memorization of vocabulary. It's nearly time for me to get to advisory, so I politely excuse myself.

7:54 I walk by the Director of Maintenance : "still looking for students to sit on the Faculty/Staff Sustainability committee?"

"Yes! I am. I have one student, but would love two more."

"Alright, I've got some ideas!"

And we departed.

7:57 As I walk across campus, cars are filling the parking lot. I give a handful of waves and even more warm smiles to parents saying goodbye to their kids. My coffee steam swirls in the cold air and I see a parent of a former student. We say hello and I share that I'd recently been thinking of her son because I watched a video of a play I was in during my own adolescence and observed echoes of a performance by her son in last winter's drama production...this led us to discuss his year as a 9th grader at a local independent school...his struggles in honors history...his big test today (one that allowed him to share notes with his classmates)...I mention a family friend who is a sophomore at Williams College and recently admitted, "in my first year and a half of college, I've only had three tests by myself because they're all crowdsourced group tests."...together, the two of us wonder about how the caliber of performance and preparation (and stress?) would increase if a team of three students were given 30 questions that would take 3 hours to answer, requiring them to divide the questions and do their best. "Would this better prepare the students for life after college?" we wonder...we don't answer, but glad for the conversation and the ideas echoing in my head, I make a bee line (B-line? Butterfly line?) for my classroom.

It's 8:05, my students will be in class in 10 minutes, so I walk, a butterfly on a mission, fulfilled, yet driven, my legs heavy with nectar, my heart light with hope.

Ideas fragrant in the breeze, innumerable and sustaining as the air, itself.

Feedback

According to Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, authors of Thanks for the Feedback: the science and art of receiving feedback well (even when it is off base, unfair, poorly delivered, and, frankly, when you're not in the mood), the word "feed-back" finds its origin in the 1860s during the Industrial Revolution when it was used to describe the way that outputs of energy, momentum, or signals are returned to their point of origin in a mechanical system.

I give feedback all the time. I get it less.

A few years ago a trusted friend and colleague admitted that they felt I was more secure in myself than I was when we first met.

"When we first met, I noticed you really liked to make sure everyone knew you were smart. You talked a lot and seemed like you had something to prove. Now, though, I've noticed that you listen more;you are reading the room, reading people, and using what you observe to dictate where you need to go."

Now this was the same colleague who used to begin a piece of criticism with, "Can I give you a piece of feedback I would want to receive if I were in your shoes?"

I loved getting feedback from this person because I always knew it was valuable, honest, and transparent. I also trust them implicitly. Like most people, though, I have a hard time with negative feedback. Yet the more I get it, the more I am able to look at my actions and essence through more evaluative eyes. And I've learned that seeking out feedback ("Can I get some honest feedback?") by asking a really specific questions allows my response to be more appropriate and easily integrated into my life.

As a teacher, on the other hand, the feedback I give tends to be grouped into three categories:

appreciation (thanks)

coaching (here's a better way to do it)

evaluation (here's where you stand)

In my students, I really try to provide all three forms of feedback. In myself, however, I don't usually take the time to reflect deeply and provide feedback to myself. I under appreciate my own accomplishments, I charge forward without reflecting on how to better do something next time, and I don't pause to see where I stand.

But it's that last one that I've focused on in this season of life. I've always cared about how I am perceived (probably to an unhealthy level), but recently I have shifted my self-evaluation to ask,

"What am I missing?"
"Where are my blind spots?"

Now, I've written about these things before, but it's really transformed my own understanding of myself and my students.

In the life of a school, everyone puts out energy, rides varying waves of momentum, and signals are sent and received by the thousand.

Yet when we allow for reflection and take all that energy, momentum, and those signals and invite them to return to their point of origin in the mechanical system that is our brain/hearts (I never can figure out how to distinguish between the two), we enable real growth.

This week I am trying to hold more space for my students. To allow their feedback to dictate the assignments I create, the discussion we have, and the ways I am evaluating and coaching them.

Today we created wild and complicated equations for leadership.

One group believed...

Success as a leader = (GOOD ideas + execution)(confidence/fear)

and execution was

(resources x persuasion) motivation + commitment

It was really fun.

They liked it.

But the reality was, I'd had something else planned. I'd wanted to delve into the writings of some great historical leaders and use their primary sources as a foundation...

but the feedback I was getting from my students was clear:

They were still thinking about the math test they'd just taken and incorporating the element of equations into leadership was what they needed. The energy and momentum would have come to a jolting stop if I hadn't listened to the signals...

Mr. McDonough, here's where we stand.


Here's to listening to the feedback of the world around us.

Loss and Gain

In Old English, the word los meant "destruction."

In Old Norse, it referred to the breaking up of the ranks of an army.

Today, my heart feels destroyed, disorder and confusion muddying the commands from my brain to my body...like an army whose ranks have broken.

Loss is so deep and so raw in my soul as the sun rises today. My friend Tim died yesterday. He's the one who once told me that schools are fragile things. It feels that way today.

Arundhati Roy once wrote a book called The God of Small Things. It deals with maintaining humanity amidst competing familial, societal, political, and cultural forces.

In response to the book, one of my favorite bands, Darlingside, wrote a song entitled "god of loss."

In the song, the quartet croons,

"Yes, we will leave here without a trace

Take a new name and an old shape

I'll be no outlaw, no renegade

Just your faithful god of loss

So meet me by the river

On a boat-shaped piece of earth

We press our bones together

And the spider does its work

With flakes of garlic

And petals from a rose

If it's small enough to carry

You and I can call it home."

 For me, this concept of loss, humanity, and rebuilding in a new way is indistinguishable from the character and impact of my friend and mentor.

The earth lost Tim yesterday just as I was teaching my students the difference between true leadership and false leadership during our study of Lord of the Flies

Strong leaders empower, we all agreed.
Weak leaders only influence.

Influencers cause people to act in a specific way, 
but they don't inspire them to be better. 
That's the work of empowerment.

And this is why, as I wake today, as I navigate the spaces that are tied so irrevocably to my memories of Tim, I feel empowered. He was too great a man to ever be gone and, while all leaders influence, leaders like Tim empower those around them to transform and lead in their own ways. He will forever be in us, not as a memory, but in our every action.

He's right here,

his daily impact bearing a new name,
but harnessing an old shape,
small enough to carry,
you and I can call it home.

This hasn't just been a loss. 
While the loss is incomprehensible, knowing you has been the greatest gain.
Thanks for everything, Tim. 

You are the best of teachers, the best of men.

Right on Time

Buck O'Neil is one of my heroes. I never met the man, but were I to assemble a dinner party of human beings I admire and with whom I would want to spend an evening, Buck would be at the head of the table.

Buck played professional baseball in the negro leagues during the 1930s and 40s. He never got a chance to play in the Major Leagues because he was black. Nevertheless, when Buck was asked about whether he wished he'd been born a little later, or wished that baseball had been desegregated earlier, he responded,

"Waste no tears for me. I didn't come along too early. I was right on time."

I thought of this quote this week as I interacted with my students. We were discussing what defines a good invention as we finished up our study of India.

We spent a day exploring families of the world by using the Gapminder website, Dollar Street.

The website allows people (my students, myself, YOU!) to explore the circumstances of families of the world.* I asked students to brainstorm what they thought these families needed. 

We discussed the importance of asking good questions, of avoiding assumptions that are based upon our own ethnocentric experiences--our own needs.

After the students had conversed amongst themselves about what they perceived families' needs to be, we looked at some of the short passages about each family. There, we discovered, for example, that the Chandmoni Bibi family who lives in Calcutta is actually more concerned with the dangerous traffic outside their home than they are with their level of food insecurity or the $31 dollars per month the father, Abdul Khaled, makes as a day laborer. One student exclaimed, 

"Maybe...I mean, what if...what they actually just need a fence?"

a classmate chimed in,

"But will a fence make them happy?"

Then, a third classmate said, barely audible

"I don't know. What if they don't want to be happy the way we want to be happy...what if they just want to be safe?"

This moment did two things for me. One, it made me incredibly proud of my students. They were dwelling in the "WHAT IFs" of the world. These are the difference-making questions, the ones that transform what is possible, and the ones that raise the ceilings of our collective capabilities, and the ones that innovate and imagine and transform. 

But more importantly, this conversation reminded me of Buck O'Neil. 

The news today has the ability to make us feel unsafe. Especially so for those of us who are parents or educators--the people who spend their lives working with young people and supporting them as they learn to navigate the world. Isn't that all of our wish? For our children to be safe?

But as I listen to my students, as I watch in awe at the marriage between their hopefulness, their insights, and their brimming curiosity, I am reminded that they didn't come along too late or too early...the world needs their ideas and their hope and their unabashed willingness to believe the best and to desire to learn.

They are right on time.

*Given the reality that circumstances are different from culture, it's valuable to recognize how little we actually know about a family's traditions, values, beliefs, or way of life as a result of the stuff they possess, or the places they inhabit. This continues to be a necessary element to the World Cultures curriculum at my school--ensuring we don't misinterpret a group of people's daily life and circumstances as the definitive story of their culture.

Teachers as artists

There's a quotation I've often heard attributed to Pablo Picasso.

"Good artists copy; great artists steal."

I fully believe that great teachers teachers are artists; skilled professionals and performers who are tortured and driven to put themselves--the very essence of who they are--into their craft each day. And, of course, to create beauty in doing it. As such, I borrow and steal from colleagues and friends, from those who inspire me, and from the teachers I had when I was young. I do this all the time. Every day. I once wrote a blog post about my own Mount Rushmore of teachers, but the reality is that I have stolen elements of curriculum, instruction, inspiration, vernacular, engagement, and management from every single teacher, professor, and mentor I've had.

One example slid to the forefront of my life this week.

When I was in third grade, my mother opened a school. This was a somewhat complicated endeavor because we lived in a one-room schoolhouse (built in 1840!) and had to make room for the 12 students (k-8) who inhabited the huge room (that housed the fireplace). We lived in the three bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom and kitchen became the property of the school.

There are innumerable stories about Magical Youth School (M.Y. School for short), but there isn't space in these thirty minutes to go into any of them. The connection I made to my three year experience there came from a recent writing assignment my students completed.

At MY School we had two school publications each week. The "Moose News" and "Yellow Schoolhouse News." The latter of these two periodicals contained any articles, creative writing, artwork students had created that week, while the former was always centered around a topic ("the earth," "dishes," to name a few...).

It was the topical connection that always drew me in. I loved reading about how students (and teachers and parents!) interpreted and experienced topics differently, and how my own vision and perspective linked in (or didn't) with those of others.

The resounding memory, though, was that writing for the "Moose News" each week gave me a voice and an opportunity to develop my own positionality as a writer, a storyteller, but also as a human being.

I returned to this idea of topical writing this week with my eighth graders. I read them some excerpts from The Sun, a literary magazine with a section entitled "Readers Write" that invites readers of the magazine to submit writing on a common theme.

I provided my students with seven different topics from which to choose and asked them to select a story from their own life. I had them draw maps of their neighborhoods and we considered where the most important stories had taken place. We discussed the idea of in media res and considered how closely to the end of the story we could begin. We "exploded the moment" by focusing our writing in on the finest details of the story.

Now, nothing I did was novel or particularly innovative. But it did something for my students. It granted them permission to use their creativity to think about how differently we all think and write and experience the world. It gave them permission to be authors their own understanding...something we need today more than ever as the reality of consuming someone else's narrative threatens our democracy each day.

Whether they were writing about fights, shoes, "the last word," or any of the other themes provided them, my students placed their own lens into the world squarely at the center of their lives for the 45 minutes they were in my classroom.

My hope for my students is that they don't stop with these topics, but rather that they develop a sense of their own experiences and their own wisdom and perspective as being vital to the future of the world. Yes, we can steal like artists, but we also shape the art we make out of our own ideas...something never before seen by anyone anywhere.

One of my students couldn't contain themselves as they wrote.

"Ohmygosh, I love this so much."

That's one of the amazing things about having my classroom be my canvas...there's no need to wait for critics to assign value to my product, because the process speaks for itself.

"Joyful"

Yesterday I watched you chase leaves.

The wind blew and you dropped everything. 

You squealed. 

You leaped.

You held them in your fists.

You jostled each other.

You squinted into the sun.

And then the wind stopped.

And you, my students, stopped too.

A few final yellow leaves came fluttering down around you.

Your cheeks were flushed red and I could tell you felt alive.

You breathed deeply, turned, 

and returned to what we had been doing as a class.

I saw so deep into each of you, my students; my students

who have so much responsibility 

stacked on your growing shoulders. 

You, my students who have been told as you've gotten older

that you can be anything 

when someday arrives on the horizon.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

they ask.

After today, I hope your answer is always "Joyful."

Windhorse

Albert Einstein once famously remarked that "The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

Over the course of this school year I've found myself thinking about this. I've thought about what it means to be a bystander (a person who is present at an event or incident but does not directly take part) and what it means to be an upstander (someone who recognizes when something is wrong and acts to make it right). I think of myself as the latter, but I also recognize that I have unconscious biases of my own. So what happens when the evil is a bias, but it's unconscious? What happens when it stems from a power structure I didn't ask for, but that I've benefitted from? What if I'm one of those who "don't do anything about it" because the it is inside of me?

As a heterosexual white male I understand that there are privileges afforded me by society that others have to work harder for. I like to think I do my best to be an upstander for equality in areas of gender, sex, sexual orientation, and race.

But when I plant myself in that camp, and when I look at the world through a lens that says "I'm an ally"...or "I'm with her"...or "I'm with them"...or whatever the thing I tell myself on a random Thursday might be, I am failing myself because I am not always growing. I am neglecting myself the opportunity to see my own blind spots and to identify my own unconscious biases. I am often standing with someone or something, instead of standing for it.

I want to stand for.

I am now beginning to realize I need to be self critical, to look at my own actions and engagements with the world around me through a lens of criticism and self-evolution.

I am not suggesting that I should be overly hard on myself. Instead, I've endeavored to listen to the messages the people around me are sending, and to consider how my interactions with others might be employing my own unconscious power in harmful ways or in the form of microagressions.

It's been a realization about intent versus impact.


Story 1:

Much of my own growth comes from the incredible colleagues and students with whom I surround myself. The other day a colleague and I were speaking and the conversation steered toward a political topic. My colleague made a polarized statement. It was clear that they assumed I was in agreement. As I cleared my throat to reply, the colleague stopped.

"Will, I'm so sorry. I just made an assumption about your political leanings. That was unfair. I wish I hadn't said that."

The comment took my breath away. Whether or not I agreed with this person mattered so much less than the fact that they took the risk to acknowledge--in the moment--that they had made an assumption. They owned that moment and I left the conversation inspired and empowered to do the same. To look at every conversation as an opportunity to put my own assumptions, biases, and unconscious utilizations of power in check.

Story 2:

The very next day I congratulated a colleague who had received public recognition for an award. The colleague identifies as female and as I walked by her, I said, "Hey, congratulations that's so great. I'm really happy you received that recognition." She was seated and as I passed, I touched her shoulder.

Immediately, I thought, "why on earth did I do that? What if the roles were reversed and she had touched my shoulder? What message did I just send? I wish I hadn't done that."

I sat through the next meeting and caught up to the colleague afterwards. "Hey, I'm going to err on the side of being awkward, but I'm trying to keep my own actions in check. When I congratulated you, I touched your shoulder and I don't know why I did that. It wasn't my place and if you were at all uncomfortable, I'm sorry."

"Wow, that's not awkward at all. And I didn't think anything of it. But THANK YOU for saying that...I'm so glad you said something."

Story 3:

My students have too many tests. They just do. I hate that tests are the simplest way to measure a student's understanding and growth, but it's just the way things are. I try to deemphasize them, make the review process fun, and to work in as many experiential and kinesthetic projects as I can...but they still have too many tests.

So recently I decided to dwell in that place of keeping my power as their teacher in check. It was uncomfortable, but I felt it was necessary. I told them, "So, I've been thinking about all of you and how hard you work. I think you have too many tests. I know I told you we would have periodic vocabulary tests and quizzes throughout the year, but I've changed my mind. We're not going to. I've rethought how vocabulary will work. What I really care about is that you learn new words and that you employ them in the ways you write and speak. I think there's a better way, so stay tuned."

Now, of course, this was different than the interactions with my colleagues, but I don't think I would have approached my students in this way had I not experienced what it was like to get in touch with owning my own blindspots. I was inspired by one colleague and, I'd imagine, I took that energy and transitioned it into inspiring another colleague.

I am in a powerful position with my students. I am their teacher and I can ask them to do things and they desperately want to achieve and they seek my affirmation and praise. But I need to keep that in check. I need to put myself in their shoes. Sure it's more work to toss out those vocab tests I was planning on using and find new and innovative ways to teach vocabulary, but it's worth it.

I always like to think I listen to my students, but it's easy to fall into the trap of, "Well, we need to assess this skill, or this content, so we're going to do it this way..." but my students won't always question me on it because I'm in power. I have to listen to the energy, their mood, the tone of their voices, and think about what messages I'm sending about their worth, their identities, their lives, their time...and how hard I'm willing to work for them (not just how hard they'll work for me).

And it all starts with listening. It starts with conversation...and with being aware of my own roles and patterns in those conversations.

In The Art of Good Conversation, Sakyong Miphram writes about the warrior tradition of Shambhala in which conversation is linked to the concept of windhorse. "Wind," he writes, "is the notion of movement, energy, and expanse. Horse is the notion of riding that energy" (13).

I love this concept. I endeavor to listen to others in my conversations. To seek their energy and movement of ideas. But I also want to listen to my own role in the conversation and how my unconscious areas of power and bias might be impacting others...and then I want to ride that energy into the rest of my life.

In Praise of Pain

I recall a distant phrase from my youth:

"pain is weakness leaving the body."

I probably saw it on locker room walls, on NO FEAR t-shirts, and on athletic shoe commercials.

And, while the slogan feels a little intense, there is something valid about what's being said:  When we hurt, we heal, and we are stronger.

There's been quite a bit written about grit and resilience over the past decade, but there have also been thoughtful critiques penned regarding the limitations of grit as a measurement for success. Personally, I think resilience is important, but it doesn't always make for a perfect result...what it does, though, is make you stronger.

When we hurt--when we allow ourselves to suffer through something we care about--the result is almost always worth it.

There are those age-old coaching adages, "you left it all out there" or "you did all you could." And when people say those things, it's not actually about the result or the outcome. Instead, it's about the effort, about the hard work. It's about trying hard.

This week I had to answer a number of questions, posed by my students about my policies for essay submission.

I have my students submit a rough draft. I grade this assignment for completion (does it, for example, have 600 words? If so, they earn a 100%). But I then remind them that I don't want to read anything "rough." I want to read and grade their best work. So, two days later I have them hand in a final draft. Over those 48 hours, though, my hope is that my students are reworking their rough draft. That they are struggling to make it better. That they are going to great lengths to pore over their ideas and better articulate them. Mark Twain once quipped that "the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." I think he's right, and I want my students to struggle to make their essays the best they can be. I want them to be frustrated. I want them to get writer's block...because writer's block comes when someone says, "Arrrrgghhhh, I know what I'm capable of and it kills me that I just can't get it onto the paper right now!!!" (Note: Steven King once suggested that bad writers never struggle to write because they just write, whereas great writers are constantly torturing themselves with trying to hone their craft)

I want my students to submit something that they have struggled to write. I want them to hand in a product they are proud of not because they are talented writers, but because there was a painful process to get the right words onto the page.

An educator I follow on Twitter, @Aaron_Hogan, posted this the other day to his PLN (personal learning network):


I asked my students this question and everyone looked nervously around. They fidgeted around because they knew what they were supposed to say, how they were supposed to feel, but it wasn't their reality right now.

Sports and art often follow this same reality. Any musician or athlete would tell you that they'd much rather train with people who are a little (or significantly) more talented than them in an effort to improve. Being a big fish in a small pond only gets us so far...the ceiling is often too low and we never see what we're capable of. The pain, though, of setting goals that are really, really complicated and hard can show us what we're capable of. As Henry Ford once admitted, "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses.'"

We need to learn and to push boundaries, and to challenge one another to suffer better, not for the sake of suffering (which is awful), but for the sake of realizing what we're capable of and for what we were made.

Again, Mark Twain had some brilliant insight:

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."

Answering that second question often comes after you've chiseled away many of the simple and commonplace elements of your life, leaving the hard parts that take WORK.

Finding our voices

I have a quiet son. He has listened to his two big siblings his whole life. They are his models. They are bigger than him. They sometimes (often?) speak for him. He is almost five and his thoughts are brilliant and amazing...and we are teaching him to use his voice. We are teaching him his thoughts matter. He knows how to speak (and he's insightful and thoughtful and kind and funny), but what he lacks is the understanding of how and when and why it is important to SPEAK UP.

Today I watched my students speak. They all spoke. We had a trial and some of them were lawyers. Others were court-appointed psychiatrists. Some, still, were witnesses. And they all talked and they were all eloquent and brave and spoke with poise and confidence. They projected, they made eye contact, and they improvised.

I have been thinking for a while about how we teach (or learn) to speak well. It is well documented that one of the most terrifying phobias in our culture is the fear of public speaking. And, with a little thought and conversation, here is my own thinking.

I think we learn to speak on a continuum. It's a spiraling continuum built on trial and error and reflection and opportunity. I once wrote a poem about learning to speak, as a young boy, in a crowd of my noisy, funny, opinionated uncles. It went like this:

The Patio Men

They made it look easy, those family men

with their beers, and their beards, and their wit.

Clad in caps and sweaters, and packing stories

in the stories. Punch lines punched with reckless zeal.

How many stories did it take young us, the boys,

in our waiting and our listening to jab our way in

and stab our own claim to the mic? In our glowing

at the chuckles, and the back slaps, we slide back

through that hole of shoulders, warm in sweater

and cap, to dream of a beard and a story of our own.

I vividly recall what that was like...the practicing and reworking of conversational comfort in a crowd. And now, I see it like this...a circular continuum that begins with the literal voice (listening and emulating and sharing), then gaining confidence, creating stories and ideas, mastering a topic and teaching others, then persuading others of an opinion; debating and discourse comes next, and--through this process--we learn to think on our feet and improvise. We grow to hold the attention of larger groups, and to hold command of a room until...finally, we return to our voice and grow comfortable sharing who we are and from where we've come.

9. Identity (sharing who we really are)

8. Poise (“command of the room”)

7. Improvisation (thinking on one’s feet in a scholarly way)

6. Discourse (debating, discussing, & the art of disagreeing well)

5. Persuasion (“make the audience care”)

4. Mastery (themes and topics, research and delivery)

3. Creation (vision and development of novel ideas)

2. Confidence (speaking on one’s own)

1. Voice (listening and sharing)

Of course, not everyone learns this...but I believe in my son. And I believe in my students. And if they can believe in themselves, they'll be just fine one day.