The Importance of Building Cairns

I've been hiking mountains as long as I can remember. I grew up at the base of Mount Cabot, the northern-most of New Hampshire's 46 4,000 foot mountains. On the map below, you can see the 90 degree turn where my house was, right where Cummings Brook intersects with Lost Nation Road.

As such, I grew up with an understanding that, once you got above tree line on some of the bigger of New Hampshire's presidential mountains, you were no longer following the blazes that adorned the trailside trees. Instead, you were at the mercy of cairns. Cairns are the piles of rocks that show hikers where to go in order to follow the path. In theory, some once-upon-a-hiker had to have had the foresight to pile the rocks there for future hikers to follow.

Or perhaps the first cairns were left by adventurous souls who simply wanted to leave a trail to follow back down the mountain--a relative breadcrumb trail like that of Hansel and Gretel. Either way, just as I've always loved the trails I grew so familiar with as a young boy, I also have a distinct affinity for cairns and their lasting presence atop some of the most beautiful peaks I've traversed.

I was reminded of cairns last week when I heard two "This I believe" talks, delivered by members of my school's class of 2018. In the first talk, Alex said,

"That view was not the only reward: the journey was...hiking has taught me to...focus on the process, the campaign, the little steps."

Isn't hiking just like life in this way? Yet how often do we simply climb to the summit of a mountain, struggle through the challenges of the journey, ignore the little steps, and remember only the final moment of gratification?

We don't leave cairns for ourselves. We, as a society, don't reflect--in the moment--on the tiny things going right (or wrong) that lead us to the pinnacle.

Georgia delivered her speech after her classmate, and left me with the following:

"I'd never realized how fast something I'd always thought would be there could disappear."

We fail ourselves when we forget to build mental cairns, to highlight and expose ourselves to moments of vulnerability that end up being incredibly fleeting. We put too much stake in our big falls and epic summits while neglecting, as Alex so eloquently noted, "the process, the campaign, the little steps."

Here's to the campaign. To building cairns along the way so others may follow our lead, and so we may find our own way back home.

 And, as always, to learning from the wisdom of our students. 

A Higher Human Standard

I've been thinking so much lately. About everything. You may have been thinking, too. I hope you have. About the pain we feel as we watch each other, and ourselves, fail at being human. I passed a sign that read, "Humane Society" outside an animal shelter the other day and almost burst into tears at the irony.

I don't care any more about anyone hearing or validating my allegiances, perspectives, experiences, or preferences...I just want this to get better for my students, my children, for whoever comes next.

I'm trying to teach my students about the world, but it's getting painful because it feels like I'm fighting a world that wants to be divided...and one that runs counter to my school's mission about recognizing "our common humanity."

The idea that's been tumbling around in my mind is this: we need to reclaim our societal norms. To flip peer pressure on its head. We need to hold each other accountable. But we can't do it from the heights of our haughty and proverbial soap boxes or high horses. We have to start with ourselves by humbly submitting ourselves to the reality that we are all flawed and each of us needs to change if anybody is going to change.

The world won't change. We have to change the world. So here is my proposal:

Today

we live in a troubled world.

It’s a world where our differences have divided us.

Everything has become us versus them.

Nobody is listening.

So nobody is learning.

But

how do we learn to listen?

How do we learn to learn?

The answer is actually simple.

We shift our perspective.

Instead

Of entrenching ourselves in our own beliefs

And allowing the media and society to control

What we believe and how we act...

Instead of waiting to defame our critics, haters, trolls, and naysayers,

We invite

Other human beings to make us aware of our blind spots.

Because we all have them.

All of us.

Just like the athlete who spends time in practice working on their flaws,

we must find the flaws in our own armor

instead of looking to exploit the weaknesses in others.

The future of our collective humanity depends upon it.

But we have to want to change

...we have to want to be collectively better

...to overcome challenges

not people.

Therefore,

We demand

that society-at-large holds us, our sons, our daughters, our neighbors, friends, and foes

to a higher standard.

And we begin not with others,

But with ourselves.

So we don a bracelet, a t-shirt, a hat, a patch, or we simply sign our names beneath a pledge of self-improvement that says,

I want to be better.

I want to see my blind spots.

Please help to gently guide me.

Be my guard rail

And make me aware of that which I cannot see.

We tattoo this on our conscience until it simply becomes a part of who we are.

Where everybody thinks alike,

Nobody thinks very much.

But listening to understand

Those whose views differ from our own

Is the greatest trait we can acquire.

Tomorrow

our children will inherit the world.

They will reap the harvest we sow.

We can shift society toward holding each of us to a higher standard.

But the world will not change.

Society will not change.

Each of us must change.

This isn’t about being perfect.

This isn’t about tearing down people.

It’s about trying to improve humanity by holding a mirror up to ourselves.

By reclaiming the contagious nature of societal pressures

to act and be and see the world through one singular lens.

Nobody learns anything from people who agree with them.

Let’s invite people to help us see our blind spots.

Let’s try to be better

By saying,

Let’s ourselves to a higher human standard

and let it begin with me.

Everybody is Somebody

There's a CD that's been floating around my family's minivan since June. It's kind of miraculous it hasn't been scratched beyond playability given the number of adventures we took between June and August. One particular song on the album, though, has caught my children's fancy--especially my almost four year old son. The song is by the wonderful Taj Mahal, and the introduction to his chorus goes like this:

Everybody is somebody.
Nobody is nobody.


"Dad," my son asked me the other afternoon.
"What does that even mean?"

I tried to explain the notion of identity, inclusivity, pluralism, to his little self, a mere 45 months of living under his belt, as he built a skyscraper out of blocks.

Afterwards he blinked, smiled at me, and said,

"Of course everybody matters...because they're people." Then he was off, scampering away to attend to another project of the utmost importance.

And I was left--as I often am--to bask in the wake of his brilliance.

----------------------------------------------------------------

When I was in high school I had a friend who didn't like rice. He used to joke that "the only thing rice is good for is satisfying one's craving to eat a thousand of something." I don't know how many grains of rice are in a serving, but I do know that a thousand is a big number. And I know that (thanks to Enrico Fermi) if I started counting now, it would take me almost two weeks to count to a million.

A billion, though? Gosh, that would take even longer...but by how much? 

There are roughly 7,500,000,000 people on the planet right now. And, as far as my son and his pal Taj Mahal are concerned, everybody is somebody. I was reminded of this over the course of the summer. I was reminded how human we are...how much people matter. There are 7.5 billion of us, yet each of us matters so much. Remove a blade of grass, a grain of rice, a CD from my minivan, and each is replaceable. But people? We are irreplaceable. Surely some people are remembered longer than others, and you and I will likely not ever be famous. In fact, Emily Esfahani Smith wrote about how we're all destined for ordinary (and why that's okay...and important) in a recent New York Times article. But to the people in our spheres of influence, we matter so much.

But even the humans who are famous are undeniably human, vulnerable, and humbled by the swells of emotion that come with being human. NBA star Isaiah Thomas reminded us of this when he wrote a letter describing how sad being traded made him...how he had two young sons who were so excited to start school in Boston, but now they were moving to Cleveland.

David Torrence died this summer. I was heartbroken. He drowned in a pool. That David was an Olympian distance runner (and American record-holder in the 1000m indoors) matters less than how David lived as a human being. The outpouring of love from those who knew him was staggering, though not surprising. David was amazing. He lived for amazing. He raced hard. He raced fast. He loved people. He lit up rooms. What David did as an athlete was such a minor blip on the register of human impact. What he did off the 400m oval on which he went to work, though...JP Slater said it best, "He was a competitor. But he was also a giver."

We all have the potential to do this, don't we? To give a part of ourselves to something bigger. To stretch beyond our survival and self-interest. To go beyond winning (whatever that means).

All of these ideas swirled in my head as I embarked on the beginning of my school year. It's my tenth year at my school. My twelfth year as a teacher. A decade working with 8th graders. I have the pleasure of getting to know my students in the classroom as thinkers and listeners and learners. But I also have the opportunity to know them as people. As somebodies. These moments happen on the loops we run at cross country practice, during advisory, recess, study hall, and during the field trips we take. Often, the most meaningful moments of learning don't actually take place in the classroom; instead, they take place in the in-between times, the brief encounters when we actually learn something about each other...me and my students, my students and me. As my 4 year-old knows, they're people after all. Somebodies, sure. Irreplaceable, all of them.

(gosh, 30 minutes flies by. PUBLISH.)

We were made for this (a lesson on Ikigai)

This Japanese word, ikigai, is among my favorite words ever. Rob Bell defines it as "the reason you get up in the morning" and I like that, too. I think of it, however, as an understanding of purpose...of believing--of knowing--I was made for this.

Today, though, I've been thinking most explicitly about the righthand part of that graph:

what the World NEEDS

Goodness, doesn't the world need so much right now? 

At my school we have a wonderful mission statement. Our mission is 

...to guide students to reach their intellectual, creative, moral, and physical potential. We value the imagination and curiosity of children and respect childhood as an integral part of life. Our teachers set high academic standards and challenge students to question, to think, to collaborate, and to act with integrity. The school works in partnership with families to teach personal, social, and environmental responsibility and to create a community that honors diversity and our common humanity. New Canaan Country School inspires students to be lifelong learners with the courage and confidence to make a positive contribution to the world.

I love teaching English and World Cultures to eighth graders because I see such a deep, mission-driven connection to the last sentence of this statement. But to truly integrate the idea into the fabric of a student's trajectory, the mission and passion (in the above graphic) must be fully illuminated, fostered, and celebrated.

Thus, students must know

WHAT AM I GOOD AT?

WHAT DO I LOVE?

WHAT DOES THE WORLD NEED?

WHERE DO THESE THREE THINGS INTERSECT?

There are no excuses for our students to lack understanding here. We must give them feedback about what they're good at, we must open avenues into their stories and experiences, we must guide them toward answering big questions about the world, and we must take them to the doorstep of selflessness by encouraging them to help others.

We live in an era of selfies and self-promotion,

but tomorrow's citizens of the world need 

to see the value of ethics and selflessness

and believing in the art of doing GOOD 

in a world of strangers.

As the great, late Grant Wiggins encouraged, we must endeavor to "teach less and provide more feedback." This means that we should be facilitating student inquiry, engagement, and empowering them to dig deeper into the things that matter to them and how they connect with what the world needs.

Last week, Bill Gates shared a flurry of advice, in the form of a series of a dozen or so tweets (which, chronologically, should be read from the bottom up).

Here's Bill Gates suggesting that his wish for young people is that they understand inequity sooner, and surround themselves with people who challenge, teach, and encourage them to be their best selves.

What Mr. Gates is saying, is you need to discover your ikigai.

We all do.

It is imperative. 

There is no other course of action.

And schools are the places this can take place.

Whether inside or outside the curriculum, every teacher must understand and value the links between learning, understanding, becoming inspired, encouraging each other, collaborating, and developing the courage and confidence to go forth and change the world both locally and globally.

...after all, we must till the soil, remove the rocks, sow the seeds, cultivate the plants, weed (and weed, and weed), before we can reap the harvest.

After all, there is a harvest waiting to be shared

and we were made for this.

"Whatever that storm may be"

A novel, a tweet, a short story, an article, and a poem.

This week I absorbed five memorable pieces of "literature."

I read Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher.

I read "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez with my students.

I read "[The Day With All its Pain Ahead is yours]" by Derek Wolcott, again with my students.

I read an article entitled "A revolution in tenderness" by Courtney Martin on Krista Tippett's On Being website.

Finally, I read the following tweet, this morning:

Each of these literary stimuli provided me with an opportunity to reflect. To pause. To slow down and appreciate the importance of simply being AND being simple. So here is what I learned from each of these additions to my own heart's library of canonical merit.

1. Thirteen Reasons Why

Conversation around this book (and the concomitant Netflix series) has been widespread in schools. I read the book because my students were reading it and I always want to understand them better. My takeaway was that it starts a conversation. But the conversation cannot be skipped. We can't let young people walk away from the story of Hannah Baker's suicide thinking "One missed opportunity could have reversed someone's depression, isolation, or mental health struggles." That might work in the role play, the video game, or the Netflix series...but---and I speak from experience here--depression is about the chemicals in our brains, it's beyond convincing, rationalizing, or believing...it is a disorder that extends beyond the widest scope of our collective understanding. Not only does it look different, feel different for everyone, it cannot be understood by anyone outside of the skin they're inhabiting. And the triggers in this book are intense...too intense...dangerously intense. Nevertheless, my biggest take-away is that we need to push the conversation. Kids want to talk. Adults need to talk. Human beings need connection. We need to ask how our friends are and we need to mean it and wait for the answer. We need to be better listeners and reacquaint ourselves with the people with whom we interact. People need people. And that takes all of us. I am not advocating for anyone to read the book, but the book reminded me that there are things we feel that must be acknowledged (a great follow-up book would be Jamie Tworkowski's If You Feel Too Much, or his short memoir article, "To Write Love on Her Arms").

2. "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World."

I read this story with my 8th grade English class. As my students reflected upon the magical realism embedded within the story of Esteban, the giant who washed up on the shores of a small Spanish village, they moved beyond themselves. They grasped the magnitude of a man who was, quite literally, beyond measure, and they saw the human need to believe in someone who could save them. Even in his death and the mystery of his origin, Esteban transforms a village and reframes reality for the lives of the people who encounter his legend. "Just think," one student said, "what it would have been like if we could see the impact that one dead man, and the villagers' willingness to believe in miracles, could have had on the future generations."

3. "[The Day With All its Pain Ahead is yours]"

Derek Wolcott's piece taught me there are stories in the subtexts of the stories we tell, the poems we live. In the contrasting imagery between beauty and pain, Wolcott's words remind us that in the midst of our heart's ache for carpe diem, the world humbles us as it ruins us and destroys us, in ways that--as a direct result of pain experienced, hardship endured, mistakes made--grow and prune us in both wisdom and experience.

4. "A revolution in tenderness"

While TED talks are often criticizes for sustaining a spirit of "slacktivism" without action, in Courtney Martin's response to the Pope's TED talk, she pushes the narrative beyond consumption and assigns emotional homework. While the Pope asks,

 “And what is tenderness? It is the love that comes close and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands. Tenderness means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future.”

Martin replies,

"So this week, I’m going to do an experiment. I’m going to slow down wherever and whenever I feel tenderness — in myself or others — and actually experience it. I’m going to use my eyes and ears to take it in, to express it, to make it real in public. I’m going to, as the TEDsters might say, “disrupt” the dominant culture — not with a new app or a crazy idea — but with the unorthodox assumption that there is room enough for tenderness, here and now, always. Join me?"

Disrupting the dominant culture with tenderness was the life work of Siddartha Gautama, Asoka, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. It's got a good track record of revolution in the midst of weakness.

5. "...worry smaller"

@Jomnysun is one of my favorite follows on Twitter. According to his bio he is "aliebn confuesed abot humamn lamgauge." 

But the reality is that he's so much more than that. He is also an alien confused by the essence of being human, and the art of doing it well. By witnessing the lenses through which an outsider might view the layers of "normalcy" our species has adopted, we can better understand ourselves.

The idea of worrying smaller is a beautiful one. While the idea of "one day at a time" isn't a new one, it is a valuable reminder that, while you only live once, if you do it right once is enough. This doesn't mean perfection, however. Rather, it means remembering to breathe, to cherish, to accept, to collect data from your experiences, to grow wiser in the midst of the storm (whatever that storm may be).

Onward I go

My students have just finished writing poems. Each of them was asked to produce a chapbook of original poems and we spent nearly an hour reading to one another in the reading garden at my school. Every year I am flooded with emotion as I listen to the words of my students...to the emotions they've struggled onto the page...to the way they've put words to what cannot be said.

This year I made a list of the poems they shared. In reading the titles I'm reminded of how much my students feel, how much they know, how much they are learning. The learning they've shared in these poems, though, stretches far beyond knowledge...my students are wiser, their lives are richer, their pain is more aptly identified and catalogued, and they have grown. My, how they've grown. 

May we all feel that sense of freedom and growth, that triumph that comes from putting words to emotions and saying, here world...this was mine, but now it is yours. Do with this what you will and onward I go...

Art & Adventure

I recently made a list of things I enjoy. 

I wanted to do this to help me understand myself, to help me understand that having needs, preferences, desires that are entirely my own is so important...that my entire life, my family, my marriage, my teaching all functions better when I am whole, when I am the best version of myself. In the past I have relied heavily on running, but I now recognize that running has become somewhat of an addiction...something I use to hide from my emotions and the discomfort of life. It's a reset button, but I'm running away from things. I need more introspection and metacognition. I need to find the things I enjoy that help me slow down. I have been racing, racing, racing...and I don't need "reset," I need "pause."

So I made the list.

At the top were the words 

Adventure

Art

Of course there were so many other things on my list. Everything from rivers to switchback single-track trails to splitting wood to campfires to fireflies to coffee...the list went on and on.

But art and adventure encompassed so much of it.

A few weeks ago, my daughter and I visited the Yale Art Museum. I had never been alone with her in a museum like that and I was amazed by her knowledge of great artists. From afar she recognized Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keefe, Monet, and Degas. Walking at her pace, navigating rooms of shocking modern sculptures that defied the angles of our understanding, watching her bypass entire exhibits because they simply didn't strike her fancy...it was all so fascinating to watch her.

Her sense of wonder was most inspired by two sculptures: Hiram Powers' "the Greek slave" and Yinka Shonibare's "Mrs. Pickney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina." 

Each of them struck her deeply as she walked around them, gauging their depth, scrutinizing the artists' intentions, absorbing the sense that there was something deeper going on inside the images...that they were more about life than about art or, better yet, that they served as evidence that life was art. The artists had made her feel something and had spanned the lengths of time between the artist and that scrutinizing, adoring, six year old eye.

I think Naomi is right. It is all art. As we walked together back to the car, she saw art everywhere. In the shadows, the architecture, even in the melting snow. We talked about the poetry of penumbras (Allen Ginsberg), about the architectural genius of Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller, and about Andy Goldsworthy's art in nature.

I realized as I walked, hand in hand with my daughter, that there is so much I still have to learn...there is so little I know. She taught me to see beauty, to find adventure, in moments and minutiae I could have easily missed. 

Yet in the midst of it all, of one thing I was certain.

This I know:

It is all art. It is all an adventure.

Life as an essay

Over the past few days I've had a really fun e-mail exchange with a friend and former colleague. During our time working together I always looked forward to the conversations we'd share and the e-mail exchange felt like an electronic renaissance of nostalgic proportions. The power of connecting with other humans never ceases to amaze me, and I am constantly left in awe of how much I enjoy gaining insight into the innerworkings of other people's brains.

One of the topics of our exchange included mention of recent books we'd read. I shared my enjoyment of Percival Everett's innovative, complicated, Italo Calvino-esque novel, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell.

In the novel, Everett writes,

"To a considerable degree, by the time we have reached a certain age, it varies for each of us, we have said all we meant to say. Everything else is either a reissue or an elucidation, a gloss. Some utterances might be reconstructions of some erased pages, palimpsests of sorts, but it’s mere repetition."

I asked my friend whether he agreed. His response included the following:

"In basic education, don’t we value repetition: keep writing / revising an essay until you get your point across? What if your life or my life is one long essay that keeps getting rewritten … elucidated … polished."

This idea, in turn, got me thinking about another quote I'd read this week as I prepared to discuss Animal Farm with my 8th grade English class. George Orwell, the novella's author, wrote an essay entitled "Why I write," which includes the following passage:

"All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally."

So where does all of this land me in my own understanding of myself, my students, and this journey of life that we share. Well, I do like the idea that our lives do share similarities with the drafting of an essay, but essays tend to get better and better, right? One would hope that each successive draft is more polished than the last. But any writer will tell you that there is a certain uncertainty to writing, too. An author-friend of mine who has been widely published to great critical acclaim, once confessed that he awakens each morning and has to literally look himself in the mirror and remind himself, "I am a good writer" over and over again.

I wonder, then, whether we might be penning essays that--during our weaker moments of struggle and self-doubt and reinvention possess those invariable moments of rambling fluff, misplaced citations, and blatant instances of plagiarism, along with the decorative adjectives and humbug generally of our lives. They're those "purple passages" where we lost the thread of thesis that was stringing everything together so nicely at the outset. Hopefully we all find the course again and the next chapter regains the magic that drew us (and our readers) in during that jaw-dropping introduction.

Life humbles us and can certainly be a "horrible, exhausting struggle," but there is also that opportunity for editing, revising, and refreshing the narrative. The characters have staying power, but the delivery and the elucidation of the soul of our writing--our lives--can, and does, evolve.

The circles we touch

Today I had the opportunity to speak to a group of parents whose children had been offered acceptance to my school. It got me thinking about the fact that their children could end up being in my classroom someday, and would therefore be a part of the future history of my life.

And it got me thinking...

Years before I was born, one summer in the 1970s, my father bought a notebook for 29 cents.

He was driving across America, a relative Kerouac or Steinbeck in his own right. My father espoused on the people he met, the places he stayed, the things he saw and felt. One evening, he flipped open the journal (he'd bought it at the outset of his trip) and touched upon a point that is acutely familiar to those of us who work in schools: People come and go. Students, colleagues, friends. Relationships with parents vary from year to year and the depth and amplitude of connections ebb and flow. But, like the tide, sometimes they come back.

Here's what my dad put on the page:

...upon this circle will touch and sometimes enter strangers, known at first by some of us, or none, and so the circle will grow and change as we travel and move. Eventually each of us in the circle will leave it, some forever, some for a day or a year. As time passes the circle will change, the periphery will fade and new friends will draw near the center. 


Schools are just such human spaces. Spheres of connection and interaction...circles that envelop strangers and draw them close, inviting them to stay or go. I remember returning from the NAIS People of Color Conference in Houston five years ago and thinking, "there is nothing more important than ensuring everyone in this school feels connected to everyone else...that everyone feels known.

I was reminded of this recently when a current student of mine told me she had been accepted to a different school for next year and would not be returning.

Students come and go.

I was reminded, too, of the paper-thin existence of today, of our normalcy, of our able-bodiedness. Things change fast and there is no guarantee of tomorrow. Robin Williams reminds the boys in Dead Poets' Society "Carpe Diem" as they stare at old photographs of  former students from their school. We must seize each day in schools because we don't know what tomorrow holds. This is the oldest any of us have ever been, and we are all trying to be the best versions of ourselves. Teachers want students to be successful. Parents want children to be successful. And young men and women want to be successful, too. We all drive for the same thing and are consumers of the relationships we build.

I've always felt that my students stay the same age as my own wisdom develops from year to year. My students certainly change, but they stay the same, too. Every topic studied is new to them, and just as inspiring. And it is that journey that draws me into the craft of teaching, too.

Sometimes I'll open a file and read something a former student once wrote. A poem, or an essay, or just a note to say thank you. Sometimes I miss my students. I think about my someday future retirement, and how many students I will have known and with whom I will have connected.

Teaching is a profession worthy of attention for anyone who likes celebrating our humanity, our vision, and our propensity for growth. But without the ability to reflect on the craft of being human, it could easily be mistaken for a bunch of correcting papers and writing tests and telling students to sit down and spit out their gum.

What we haven't mastered...yet

My son, Jonah, is four and a half and learning to write his name.
We sit and eat breakfast and we look at the fridge.
Two dinosaur magnets hold up his masterpiece:

a piece of paper on which he has twice
drawn his first and last names.

I say drawn intentionally, because he made shapes,
he formed lines and curves and connections between.

He did not write because he is still learning how.

There is nothing simple about the ways he had to
focus, the way he willed his fingers to grip the pencil
and push it in the way he knew he should.

I feel his pride in the kitchen. I see it in his eyes.

What he's done is hard, but he never doubted he could do it.
He exhausted himself, but never did he hesitate.

He was hopeful because he believed.
He was resilient because he knows, deep down,
"I will get this. I will learn to write my name.
And as I do, it will get easier."

Hope only exists when we believe things can change,
when we adopt that mindset of growth and resilience
that begins in a whisper,

"I can't do this yet.."

then screams in crescendo,

"But I will not stop...I will not stop...because
I believe."

My son believes and, at four and a half,
why should he not?

For he has not yet learned the word
impossible. He has not learned to fail.
He has only learned to press on regardless
in hopeful pursuit of what he hasn't mastered
yet.

Storytelling

"You guys are all made up of stories." - Laconia Therrio

Yesterday, the 8th grade began working on our storytelling unit which meant a visit from Laconia. Laconia visits my school every February to work with students on practicing stories and fables they'll rehearse and perform to younger students. He's been doing it for almost 20 years, coming into classes, modeling stories, workshopping students' development...all in an effort to help them own their stories.

Laconia will often ask, "Do you love your story?" When a student answers, "No," he often replies: "I can tell. I think you should consider choosing a new one."

He oozes wisdom, humor, warmth, and helps the students become confident in their own skin, both as storytellers and as humans. He puts them at ease

The first thing he has them do is write their names on the board.

"Write it however you want," he coaches.

Then, he introduces himself to each student, observing how they've scrawled their names upon the board and suggesting what we might learn about each student based upon the way their names are written. Who wrote in huge block letters? Who added stars or dotted the "i"s with hearts? Who wrote small? Who was rushed and who took their time? Who used cursive?

He also asks students where their families are from. If they say "India," he asks them which state their family came from. If they say "China," he asks whether they speak any Mandarin or Cantonese? If they say no, he teaches them how to greet each other in that language.

Laconia is breaking ground, treading in the grey water between himself and each of them. He makes jokes about having a Greek first name, an Irish middle name, a French last name, and being black...

He tells Jewish folktales, personal stories from his childhood in Louisiana, and African legends.

He scares students with "jump tales" and inspires them with proverbs.

But, through it all he models humility and grace...he shows them that they are now a part of his story, and he is a part of theirs.

I learn from Laconia every year, and I love having him in my classroom because he teaches us that our stories are about so much more than ourselves. Last night my students' English homework was to ask their parents to tell them a story about their grandparents. We are the children of stories and the experience of oral tradition matters in an era of technology, too.

Brene Brown writes,"If we own the story, then we can write the ending." We must do that. We must be courageous with our own stories, and we must listen to the stories of the people around us.

Winning streaks

As a fan of professional sports, I'm well aware of streaks. There are winning streaks, losing streaks, and hitting streaks. There are hot streaks and cold streaks. Pretty much, as long as someone can do something with consistency, they can go on a streak.On paper, they're just patterns, but streaks change attitudes, they change culture...they're contagious.

The above is a list of current streaks for all 30 teams in the National Basketball Association. They are listed in order of the team's overall record. But you know what's cool about that? Four of the top seven teams are on current losing streaks, while three of the worst six teams are on winning streaks. That's the thing about streaks....they gain momentum and can change the course of a team's season. They can bust ballplayers out of slumps and renew their confidence. 

This week I've discussed streaks with my students in an effort to help them understand the importance of noticing patterns in their behavior. I've shared my belief that we have streaks, too. You know, it's that feeling when you say to yourself, "I feel like I'm a passive participant in my own life...like I'm letting life happen to me...like, if I were to be cast in my own life I'd be listed in the credits as brown-haired 8th grade teacher. When we're in slumps like that, we often know what we want to do differently. I wrote about this in last week's post. Recently, when I've wanted to do something new and commit to it--to start a new pattern in my behavior--I start a list of numbers. Let me explain.

Imagine you want to do a better job of consistently flossing your teeth before bed. Just start a list and after you floss, write the number one. Track your flossing "streak" by writing the number two the next day. Maybe you miss a day, or run out of floss, or just can't find the time. That's okay, but your streak is over. The next day, you start over again by writing the number one. Once you get a nice, long streak, though, going back to one feels awful. 

The University of Connecticut women's basketball team has had three winning streaks of over 70 games since the 2000-2001 season. Their current streak has reached 94 games. The team has also won four straight national championships. You know why? Because they hate going back to zero. But I guarantee that the morning they do, they just figure, "time to start another streak."

My students have patterns they want to change, but changing a pattern can be tough. For some students it's a lack of class participation ("Just start a streak of making one comment in class each day and write it down," I suggest), while for others it is staying organized or printing off their homework before class begins. For me, I've decided to start sharing an "I've noticed..." moment with at least one student each day. As a result, I spend all morning trying to notice things about my students, seeking out opportunities to send the message that "I see you." This heightened awareness has made me more responsive and has raised my emotional intelligence. I'm noticing more changes in my students' emotions because I need to acknowledge someone...at first, I needed to notice them because I didn't want my little notebook to start again with the number 1, but now the streak is simply growing because it's become a part of me, a part of my rhythm, my routine, my identity.

I've also started organizing something in my life for five minutes each day. One day it's the medicine cabinet in my bathroom, the next it's my desk at school, or a bookshelf, or the trunk of my car. Just five minutes, but it's a pattern. A streak. A way of keeping myself accountable for being the protagonist of my own life.

What Lefty Layups Can Teach Us About Learning (And Teaching!)

Whenever I encounter a student who doesn't want to fail, who allows perfectionism to reign over their very existence, I think about left-handed layups.

I can vividly recall, as a young basketball player, watching my teammates (myself included) continuously dismiss the opportunity to take an open layup with their left hand simply because they weren't adept at hitting the shot. One might think that practice would be the opportunity to hone the skill, but most of my teammates didn't want to mess it up...they didn't want to fail on a stage.

I see lefty layup moments in my students all the time. Opportunities to fail, to struggle, to improve and develop being side-stepped in favor of an opportunity to guarantee success.


Earlier this week I asked my students to respond to the following prompt:

If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any (human) quality or ability, what would it be?

I wanted to get them thinking about our foibles and blemishes as humans, about our flaws, about our character. As English teachers, we discuss these things as they pertain to literary characters all the time. We look at strengths and, by dissecting them, we begin to see that a perceived strength can often reveal a weakness as well (courage or fearlessness can often reveal a lack of mindfulness or patience, for example).

In this exercise, though, I wanted my students to hold up a mirror. I wanted them to think about the areas they see as opportunities to improve. I wanted them to think about abilities that aren't superhuman, but that can be honed and practiced. That fit into the growth mindset of their learning.

The reality is that we can't wake up tomorrow being more resilient students, more confident speakers, or having better organization skills. We can't become better listeners, or develop sincere compassion overnight. What we can do, though, is begin to grow our awareness.

My students had many things they wish they could change about themselves. They were thoughtful in the exercise, and most of them were willing to share.

One student admitted that she wished she could be more brave...that she owns her identity as a fraidy cat.

The ironic thing about it, though, is that she was being brave in that moment...by digging into the uncomfortable work of being vulnerable in front of others, she was displaying remarkable fortitude. Now, though, I have the incredible opportunity to connect with this student each day and ask her how she's been brave today, or encourage her: "You're so brave!"

For my student who wants to be better organized (this was my goal as well!) I can sit beside him during study hall and ask, "Hey, how's the organization going? Can I help you think about putting all the pieces in place?"

Many of my students wanted to be more confident speakers and contributors in class. With these students in mind, I orchestrated a "silent conversation" in the hallway outside my classroom so they could feel "heard," without having to actually speak. I was able to hold them accountable by providing a baby step toward feeling like their views matter. Next, I might affirm them and suggest that they write a few comments they'd like to share in class each evening as part of their homework. Then, the improvisation of speaking "off the cuff" can be eliminated.



The coolest thing about this exercise, though, was less about what I can do to support and uplift my students, and more about their own areas of self-awareness and their support of each other. When teachers ask students, "what are your goals?" they often respond with quantitative, measurable outcomes: I'd like to make honor roll, do better in math, make the varsity baseball team, for example.

By asking them the skills and qualities they wish they could possess, however, the students are able to unconsciously back into the processes they might go through in developing the very outcomes they crave.

Today I am going to model for my students my first step in becoming more organized. Each of my students will have a folder with their name on it in the back of the room where their graded essays, rough drafts, and revisions will live. I will let my students be my accountability partners in my pursuit of being better organized. I'll let them remind me, just as I will remind them. I will try to model vulnerability and lean into my imperfections in the hope that their perfectionist selves will do the same. One of my greatest strengths in the classroom is my ability to improvise...but improvisers are not always great planners and organizers. I don't procrastinate, but I often sort the details out as I go.

I will let them watch me miss lefty layups, and I will ask them to gauge the impact of my development. I will stumble, jumping off the wrong foot, or feebly attempting to eliminate the number of piles that clutter my classroom...but I will let them in and I will allow myself to fail on the stage. And I will let them help me grow.

Life in the pocket

In the first post I ever wrote on this blog, I noted that I felt there just wasn't enough time to do everything I wanted to do.

I admitted, in that post, that the time existed, it was just a matter of using the time well. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review reiterates this idea (but with research!) that we should be managing our energy, rather than our time.

I looked closely at my energy and time management last month. I thought about my purpose, my ambition, my direction. I talked to trusted friends and shared my observations...of myself. It's a weird thing for me--being introspective. I'm bad at it, notoriously out-of-touch with what I'm feeling and how and why. I'd much rather be an emotional packesel (German for burro, or colloquially, the person who carries everyone else's stuff). But when I got in touch with my emotions, I realized I was spreading myself thin, trying to do everything and do it well.

I was the quarterback in the pocket. I was scrambling. I was being the hero. The human highlight film. I was threading the needle, selling jerseys, accumulating sponsorships. I was doing it all. I was awesome.

Then it struck me. Much of my ambition was thinly disguised narcissism. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't like this realization. But I realized something. I realized that--in this football analogy--I wasn't trusting the pocket. I was ignoring my offensive line. I wasn't exhibiting the patience and poise of a veteran quarterback; the one who wants to have a lengthy career. Instead, I was careening headfirst into the end zone, relishing the roar of the crowd at every flashy play...but I wasn't preserving myself, I was too risky, I was doing it all alone. And it just wasn't sustainable.

I realized that the people in my life who meant the most--the ones I wanted to cheer for me and applaud me--were my metaphorical offensive line. They were the ones who were capable of creating the pocket in which I could thrive. The thing is, though, they also include my colleagues, my students. Sometimes I need to hand off responsibility to my colleagues and friends (running backs), whereas other times my job is to collaborate and set others up for success (wide receivers).

Regardless of how I respond, the important thing is that I remain calm in the pocket. When I can do this, I enable my students to stay calm as well. My family functions more effectively when I take time for myself. And often, this means stepping out of responsibility, setting boundaries, turning people down, saying "no"...disappointing people.

Right now I am focusing on trusting my offensive line and waiting for plays to develop. I am listening to my students more intuitively; I am thinking creatively about what inspires me; and I have taken a step back from some of my own pursuits that have a tendency to become self-absorbed and self-fulfilling (while I don't believe I'm narcissistic or selfish, some of my habits, patterns, and hobbies were simply garnering too much of my energy without benefitting others).

So, how are my students helping me in this endeavor? Well they're my offensive line, my wide receivers. I am remaining present and calm in the pocket and trusting our united experience, alongside each other, as an exercise in teamwork, not in my display as a human highlight reel.