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.