Orientation to Time

I think often about time.

I reflect on the past.
I try to plan for the future.
I do my best to stay grounded on my own two feet in the flexible immediacy of the present.

I am, however,  a much better improvisor by nature than I am a planner or reflector (though I work really hard to improve in both areas).
I find comfort in being able to know, in the moment, that I can read people's expressions and gauge how they feel. I can react and respond accordingly and there is no guessing or overanalyzing involved. Living in the present keeps my anxieties about what's happened in the past at bay and I can't catastrophize about the future.

I am also acutely aware of the passage of time through my own children's growth and experience as well as my reflections and attempts at growing myself, continuing to be a student of my own life.

Recently, though, I have become inspired by the notion of our individual orientations to time. Specifically, the idea that each of us orients our understanding, our consciousness, our actions, according to time. And we do so differently.

Some people center themselves and find comfort in the past.
Some people center themselves and find comfort in the present.
Some people center themselves and find comfort in the future.

I asked my students today to write about their own orientations to time because I was curious to hear them discuss the topic with one another. I genuinely wanted to understand them better and to see how they would discuss notions of goal-setting, reflection, anxiety, and the navigation of their days. They are teenagers and I want to better understand them.

But the conversation led us somewhere I couldn't have predicted, too. It led us to discuss the nature of "paradigm shifts."

The term paradigm shifts originally referred to a change in our understanding of a scientific theory. But in listening to my students as they engaged in a seminar-style conversation, I heard them build on one another's ideas. I watched their grasp of the relationship between patterns and shifts in thinking and understanding develop as they spoke and shared ideas.

Finally, they came to the resolution that a paradigm shift--one of those moments that causes us to reflect in such a way that we say, "this is a moment that changed my life--my thinking--forever"--actually requires us to dwell in all three mind frames of time simultaneously.

To experience a paradigm shift, they argued,

Requires us to reflect (past)
Requires us to be courageous (present)
Requires us to imagine and establish a vision (future)


And then, of course, there is a leap of faith involved.

Some students called it an epiphany. Others liked the word Hallelujah. Others still talked about Eureka moments.

I loved listening to them discuss their own anxieties about dwelling on the past, or planning for the future, or knowing how to interact with the fast-moving decisions of the present.

For me, it was a moment in which I experienced my own paradigm shift about what it really means to study my students. To endeavor to understand them fully.

I am running out of time with them, but I am also gaining the opportunity to share space in such a way that we can dwell equally in the past, the present, and the future.

Today was a moment that feels--and perhaps I'm exaggerating here--like it could change everything.

It reminds me of the second half of a poem, written by Charlie Daniels as he traveled to the funeral of Ronnie Van Zant. When I think about this poem I don't only associate it with death, but with life as well.

"...So say it loud and let it ring,
We are all a part of everything.
The future, present, and the past,
Fly on proud bird you're free at last."


I think paradigm shifts should feel that way, too. They're part of the future, the present, and the past...and by leaning into the leaps of faith and by embracing our own "Eurekas!" and "Ah-has!" we can free ourselves.

The Middle of the Middle of Me

I was inspired a few weeks ago to begin riding my bike to work. 

Again. 

You see, I did this out of necessity back in 2010 when I famously completed a daily triathlon for the ages by riding my bike 4 miles through the streets of New Haven, jumping on the 5:56 train toward Manhattan, getting off in Stamford and sprinting (with my bike!) to catch the 34A bus at 6:22, before riding the final three miles to school. It was crazy. And I did it twice a day for all but three days of the school year.

So what changed? Well, two of my students recently wrote research papers about the impact of car travel for their world congress. They described how the average car ride in America is under 4 miles. I checked my odometer and realized my morning and afternoon commute was 3.9 miles. No excuse for driving. My uncle owns a bike shop and gave me a great deal on a birthday present and I was off and running.

The best thing about it, though? Sure, it could be the way the environment is positively impacted by the reduction of fossil fuels. Sure, the roads are safer without another car on them in the morning. But the most immediate outcome has been the outcome on me.

Riding my bike to work just feels right. 

I notice the subtlety (and the severity) of every hill. 

I see stone walls and trees I would have otherwise missed. 

I hear birds. I recognize changes in temperature, however subtle.

I breathe air and I smell the world. 

It just feels right to take it slow aboard two wheels and these legs of mine.

When I arrive to school I feel more fully myself. Whatever I've thought or experienced along the way has awoken something in me that enables me to connect to the people around me in more meaningful ways. 

I am so grateful to my students for researching bicycles and for submitting essays that ended with a clear call to action. I wanted them to do this. I asked them to...but I didn't realize they would impact me so. Because who am I as their teacher if I ask them to do something, if I encourage them to raise the ceiling of their capabilities, and then I don't listen to them and take their urging seriously?

My students are amazing. 

A hero of mine, Brother Blue, used to say he told stories "from the middle of the middle of me, to the middle of the middle of you." When Brother Blue said this, he was talking about generating a heart connection with people. 

That's what I feel like bicycling to work has done to me. It has opened up the middle of the middle of me. It has churned awake my heart and I am more present in the day, more willing to hold my own needs loosely and to interact with the world around me, the people around me, and to speak directly, listen intently, and hone in on the middle of the middle of them. By listening to my students and taking their advice, I have gained a gift deeper than I realized. 

Isn't this how it works sometimes? Don't we take risks and act bravely for one reason, only to learn that we have become better, clearer versions of ourselves in the process?

The things we put in frames

My students were polishing up drafts of their essays this week, written in response to George Orwell's novel, Animal Farm. I always ask my students to list two specific goals for each essay in the "Header" of the document. Their goals, I explain, should come from the feedback they received in response to a previous essay. This way they are always evolving as writers and that header serves as a constant reminder of a specific area for growth.

One of my students came to me looking concerned.

"Mr. McDonough, I know I need to do a better job of framing my quotations, but I just don't know what that means."

I explained that things that are important need frames so we can focus on them and appreciate their value...that nobody just wants a piece of artwork floating around their house or being nailed against the wall. Sure, refrigerators are great places for art, but quotations need to be introduced and analyzed in an essay--surrounded so that we completely understand their value.

We value the things we put in frames...we want people to notice and celebrate them. The same goes for textual evidence in your essays.

The student thanked me for the clarification and off they went.

But I continued thinking. My students learn so many things. They ask so many great questions...I wonder why we don't frame ideas...why we don't frame the brilliant moments of inspiration and the quotations my students utter during class each day.

So I changed that.

I brought in two old frames that had been kicking around my garage. They'll now be used to frame and highlight things my students are learning and wondering about throughout the rest of the year.

The first question is a change in the understanding of power and manipulation. I love that my students are learning this because it is applicable to everything they will do and be.

I love the second, however, because of the tense the student chose. They wrote "...what would happen," not "what would have happened." They are thinking not of the past, but of the future. What would China become, or be capable of becoming, if a moment in the past had changed.

I know my students will be wondering the same about their own lives and the choices they make...the memories and experiences they choose to put in frames.

many things can be true at once

"Many things can be true at once." 

                                   -Lina Juarbe i Botella

These words were spoken to me at a conference I attended last week and they have been attached to my consciousness ever since. I haven't been able to shake them. They've awakened something in me that is real and rich and painful and beautiful.

I suppose, in a sense, this awakening has made the statement true. Many things can indeed be true at once.

It is April 4th as I write this. The day of my birth. 

Yes, it's my birthday.

I love having it be my birthday and I simultaneously hate it. 

Many things are true at once.

I love the day because it is mine. It is a day to be celebrated. A day to acknowledge where I've been and where I'm going.

I simultaneously dislike the attention and the pressure for the day to be special and I also recognize that 24 years ago, on my 11th birthday, my father collapsed before I could even hear the words "Happy Birthday." He had suffered a massive stroke. I think my birthday, from that day onward, represented the reality that our hopes and dreams and anticipation can be quickly cast from us...even on the most joyful of days.

Last week I had the opportunity to be a guest on my first ever podcast. The experience was really exciting, but it was also a little disappointing. I was critical of myself and the way I sounded, the number of times I said "like," and how over-caffeinated I sounded. Do I really talk like that? I wondered.

 I simultaneously wanted everyone and no one to listen to it.

The experience was many things being true at once.

I also know that I came across as successful as confident and as enthusiastic. But those truths seem to overshadow the anxiety and depression that are also constant factors in my life, that are also elements of my identity and who I am. It is easy to look optimistic and engaged and enthusiastic and driven on the outside, but that also makes it harder to suffer on the inside because I don't want to let anyone down by being vulnerable. Saying "I'm not okay." is the hardest sentence in the world for me to speak.

I also neglected to mention the impact my own wife has on my ability to "do it all." Behind every successful person is someone behind the scenes making everything possible and supporting the person in moments of weakness and self-doubt, picking up the pieces so someone else can shine. My wife is that person. I forgot to mention her on the podcast.

I, myself, confirm that many things can be true at once.

So what on earth does this have to do with my students?

Well hearing this truth spoken to me last week has attuned me to who my students are and to all they bring to the classroom. 

Like me, there are many things that are simultaneously true about their lives as well.

We just finished Animal Farm and I was struck by how many of my students are choosing to write essays that connect Orwell's novella to their own lives. They are looking at meaty, important topics that come from their hearts and their experiences. They are not electing to focus their energy on intellectual pieces that provide textual evidence or that approach the topic from a position of literary analysis.

Can they do that? Yeah, sure they can. In fact, they've done it a ton this year already. But they're ready to go deeper. Many things are true in their lives, but if they don't open themselves up to the fact that life can be messy and leaning into the discomfort that comes from sharing part of themselves, they're missing an opportunity to grow as writers. 

Writers write what they know. 

Today I asked my students to respond to the following prompt:

What would it take for today to be a historic day in your life?

My students wrote in such brave and beautiful ways. 

They wrote about how much easier it is to make a day historic in a negative way than a positive one.

They admitted the risk involved in doing something memorable or something that could have positive impact.

They recognized that many of the "historic" actions they might do would actually be pivotal and historic moments in the lives of someone else...that their impact might never be realized.

But what if each of my students left school today with a goal of being that stranger who, twenty years from now, is the topic of someone's TED talk. What it the TED talk begins with a person saying,

"Twenty years ago I had a moment I would define as historic because it changed everything for me. And it started the moment a 14 year old kid walked up to me..."

What could that kid have done? What could they have said?

Many things can be true at once, but one of my jobs is to empower my students to believe in themselves as change agents in the trajectory of the world.

And then there's me. It's my 35th birthday. What if today ends up being the day that I ask my students to respond to a prompt and one of them goes out and does something a little differently and it changes someone.

Or what if it doesn't.

My English class today mattered. But it was also just an English class where we spent time together. I'm sure some of my students were bored. Others might have been inspired.

Many things can be true at once.

And that is okay.