"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.