Getting where we're going

Maps are dominating my 8th grade world cultures classroom this week. Conversations about maps, about what they look like, what they can do, how they can be...how they can change us and the ways we think and understand and relate to each other.

The world of maps is a world of transforming possibilities. Maps help us navigate, but they can also be abstractions, diagrams of relationships, or interactions over times.

Maps can reveal how diseases spread, how plants and animals form food chains within an ecosystem, how society evolves as a result of correlating sets of data, delivered on maps. One of my favorite TED talks is Amy Robinson Sterling's 2013 talk about mapping the brain.

Maps are awesome and we've been looking at Gapminder, the CIA World Factbook this week as we all try to make sense of cultural, social, political, and geographic transformations, struggles, successes, and opportunities on the continent of Africa.

The best moments, though, have occurred when my students get out from behind their maps, detatch themselves from pages of data, and connect with each other. They lean into the work of their peers and become overtaken by moments of "Whoa, that's so cool!" and "Your maps are so awesome!"  and "Hey, did you see ----------'s maps yet? Their correlations are CRAZY!" They are looking for correlations, but they're also looking for connections.

They are adolescents. They are academics. But they are also undeniably human animals who crave interaction with one another.

I asked them as they left class the other day, "Who's not having fun with their data? Who is frustrated?" 

A few hands went up.

"That's okay! Share what you're looking at with your classmates in study hall today; if you're still frustrated in the morning, come find me and we can make sure we find some fun in it together!"

It wasn't about me. It wasn't about them. It was about us. About the connections, and about being frustrated...frustrated alongside each other. Because when we invite others into our frustration, our trials, we aren't alone any more.

Doesn't that kind of make us like road maps? Aren't we networks of spiraling connections between things?

Some days we're zooming on interstates, connecting with gobs of other off ramps and roundabouts, brimming with ideas, going somewhere.

Other days we're one lane dirt roads through the forest...we're going slow, taking our time, wandering, rambling through the day.

But what about the days that are parkways or bi-ways or alleys or cul-de-sacs? What of the dead ends, the bridges, the toll plazas, the one-way streets? 

There are purposes for all these things, but I think the key is that we don't always stay in our own cars. We need to carpool; we need to take public transportation; we need to drive; but we also need to be passengers. 

And sometimes we have to walk.

How are you getting where you need to go today?

Being Great vs. Being Good

This week has found my students looking at life through the perspective of a journalist. I've asked them to seek out stories worth telling; stories that might not be headline-grabbing on the surface, but that--with a bit of investigation--might yield some morsel of interest and societal value. The stories that inspire and uplift are the stories they're seeking.

Most news stories, my thoughtful students noted, tend focus on emotions. Whether the emotions are fear, anger, sadness, or some element of human desire, my students recognize that the media likes to sensationalize and polarize.

But my students? They're focusing this week on finding GOOD in the world around them and seeking out human stories that make them feel inspired and compelled to do good, themselves.

It's no accident that this exercise is taking place around Martin Luther King, Jr.'s weekend: he is a man whose legacy has been gilded with grandeur. We've also continued reading Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus and my students are struggling to define what, exactly, makes a person GREAT. Is it their deeds or their heart?

"Can you be great and flawed?" they ask.
"Well, aren't we all flawed?" another student suggests.
"Can't you stay dignified and humble, though, even in the midst of your flaws?"
"Is being great the same thing as being good?"

These are the questions my students are asking each other. They're really good. The students and the questions.
One student struck me when they remarked,

"Isn't goodness about thinking about others, but greatness [comes from] thinking about yourself?"

Wow. I'm not sure whether I agree (I simply need more time to digest it), but I love the question. I love the sentiment. I love the way my brilliant, beautiful-minded students are dissecting the ways history has defined great men and women, and they are questioning, questioning, questioning the merits of that greatness...always.

Robert Hutchins once had this to say about education:
"Education is not to reform students or amuse them or to make them expert technicians. It is to unsettle their minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects, teach them to think straight, if possible."   

My students are thinking straight, inflaming their intellects, widening their horizons...and, throughout it all, they are unsettling my mind.

They are good.
And I think that's great.

On Memories

"What are you doing today that is worthy of a memory?"

Each week a local Rabbi asks himself this question. It is one of a list of five that is posted to his refrigerator and this morning I asked it of my students. We are in the midst of reading Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Adichie, and many of the memories the 13 year-old protagonist narrator, Kambili, shares are negative.

We create many memories in our lives, but we also neglect to remember things. Some of the memories we recall are positive, while others are not. Some are reignited by smells, songs, places, or people...but they are mysterious. And memories fade. 

But what if we approached each day with a goal of creating a memory, either for ourselves or for someone else? What if our goal was to make memory positive? What if we tried to live in such a way that was worthy of creating positive memories for those around us?

My students acknowledged that their memories of second grade were littered with embarrassment, joy, and humor...but that they really only had five or six STRONG memories. As someone more than twice the age of my students, I have even fewer. Yet where do these memories go? How do we make them stay?

My students went on to discuss how we can make negative memories that will likely stay with us forever ("If I make a bad decision," said one student, "I'll probably remember it, whether I'm found out or not...the emotion will just be that strong."). But taking the time to speak into someone's life, to compliment someone, or to go out of one's way to touch the life of another (even if it's a note thanking the postal worker for delivering your mail each day), could be lifelong. My students understood this, underSTAND this...and the timing with a weekend celebrating Dr. King's beautiful dream feels fitting.

I still remember the autumn day I went for a run as a fourteen year old and encountered an elderly man whose truck had died at the edge of a logging road where he'd been hunting. I stopped and asked how I could help. This was in the day before cell phones, so he confessed that he'd probably just walk four miles home and return with his wife and their second car to jumpstart the vehicle. Unabashedly optimistic, I suggested that I run and tell her about the predicament instead. The man gave me directions and I took off at a quick trot. I had never run more than three miles in my life, but ran over eight that day. I will never forget the way it felt to fall asleep that night, tired in body and full in spirit.

Those are the memories we have control over...we don't need Thursdays to dissolve into Fridays, or winter to slowly become spring...opportunities to make today memorable in the future history of our lives are everywhere. We won't remember every day of our lives, but we can do our best to ensure that somebody does. We can be important, nameless characters in other people's stories, too. As teachers, this isn't just a possibility, it's a responsibility.