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.

Sapiens

I am sitting in my living room. I watch hot steam curl from my coffee mug into the dark. A sliver of pink glances against the horizon outside my window. 

A new dawn.

It always takes me a while to settle into a routine away from school. I am just so driven during the school year. Driven by my love of learning, by my perfectionism, by my desire to do EVERYTHING, by my students, by my colleagues. I just never stop. (Every day I'm hustlin').

But here I am, embracing the stillness of dawn.

Since break began six days ago I've been working my way through Noah Yuval Harari's book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. The book highlights so many of the complicated (and in many cases downright coincidental) origins of how and why we are the way we are as humans. 

One of the most stirring realizations I've had is that we aren't meant to be so overwhelmed. It's just not the way we were originally made. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, for example, actually didn't work all that much. The common misperception is that they spent all day, backs to the sun, gathering and hunting all in the effort to survive. Really, though, they were communal and differed from their neanderthal cousins because of their propensity for storytelling and imagining. Yet it was that very trait (imagination) that allowed them to become so complicated, to develop social hierarchies based upon social imaginaries, and to care deeply about invisible things like numbers.

And here I am, knocking on the door of the year 2018 C.E. This is the present tense of our history as humans, and out there somewhere my students are living their lives and loving the people around them. Sure, there are things that are stressing them out and things that are making them more busy than they'd like, but I hope--like me--they are finding time to sit and be still. Finding time to merely exist. Because many of us have the convenience and privilege to not have to worry about survival...we can take time to reflect and imagine and to turn off our devices and wait for something, anything (a drawing, a poem, a recipe, a game, a conversation, a cuddle with a pet, a walk in the cold) to draw us in and to serve as a catalyst for a new idea that's never existed.

Our lives are written in the present tense, but we make it so complicated. We've got these beautiful sapien brains that can create so much. Here are the two results of our human imagination that have inspired me most in the past week (this and this other one). It makes me think of the wonderful line penned by Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations: 

“Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies—it happens when society adopts new behaviors.”

Here's to our collective potential as humankind. Let's slow down and let our imaginations run.

The things we build

Far too often, school exists as a fait accompli. A thing that has already happened or been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept it. 

Students complete assignments assigned by teachers.

But what else in life operates in this way? We get to respond and engage with nearly everything else that comes our way and the learning we undertake in life is so often self-directed and driven by our own interests and engagement. 

So it was with this in mind that I approached this week's assignments for my students. 

Today I shared with them an idea I've had to create a "Periodic Table of Religion." They're in the midst of learning about the Periodic Table of Elements in Science, so I figured I'd tap into their expertise and gauge what a religious table might look like.

They quickly taught me about the characteristics of the elemental table ("What is its function?" I asked.)

Okay, I thought. So, then, how could we apply the functionality of this table to one about religion? How could it be useful to us? They quickly got to work brainstorming the types of information that could be valuable in a Periodic Table of Religion.

See, this is the thing. My students had a better list of ideas than I ever could have developed on my own. I had the idea, but instead of framing it as an assignment (fait accompli), I allowed my students to play a role in the vision. I can't wait to see what they do with it.

I've been thinking about how my students apply their own learning to the world around them lately. I've been considering what types of jobs they might someday have and how the ways they think (and are allowed to think) in school are preparing them. As such, three of my current students and I are writing an article about buildings. We're looking at a current building project on our campus (a new dining hall) and asking, "How is building a dining hall like writing an 8th grade essay?"

We understand the steps in crafting an essay:

1. Process
1. Choose a topic
2. Research
3. Outline
4. Rough Draft
5. Edit
6. Proofread
7. Final Draft
8. Revise (Revised final draft → the “polishing” stage)
9. Publish

When buildings are finished, they represent a fait accompli. Yet, in How Buildings Learn, author Stewart Brand notes,

Papers are constantly building and rebuilding until...well...they aren't. But the interpretations continue. As we read (and re-read!) our favorite books, don't we glean new meaning? Aren't poems and plays and speeches crystalline, as Brand suggests buildings can be in their uses and function?

So, I wonder, as I close in on my 30 minutes of reflection, how our learning might be like this. My students learned about the Periodic Table of Elements from their Science teacher...but how does that apply to the rest of their lives? How does it change the way they think about order and organization? How can the measuring of stuff be shifted and tilted and applied to something totally divergent?

Even though some assignments feel static (like my students' vocabulary quiz tomorrow), their use of the words is fluid, crystalline.

Their learning exists simultaneously in the past, present, and future tenses of their lives' stories.

Perhaps, then, building isn't the right way to think about my students...I am not building them, nor are they building themselves.

Our dining hall and our essays will one day be finished (or...abandoned?) and sent out into the world to be used and appreciated. But my students are building something that is both built and grown. It is both innate and extrinsic.

Strong Humans

Over the past week, I've appreciated sitting alongside my students and supporting them in their writing of essays about Lord of the Flies. Only that's just the half of it. I've LOVED it. I've asked them questions both big and small (I wonder how the rhythm would change if you gave your reader a break in this paragraph; your conclusion is universal in its appeal, but why does this topic matter to you?), and I've taken the time to digest and explore the sharp, young voices beginning to emerge from each analysis.

But I've also been struck by the contemporary relevance of their topic choices. Each of them is dissecting Golding's novel through the lens of human nature. They're looking beneath the characters for symbols that are universally applicable. And they're thinking beautiful, brilliant thoughts. While some students are opting to focus on one philosophical belief (Hobbes, Aristotle, Locke, etc.), others are looking at feminism, and asking the question "Why did Golding choose to write the novel without any female characters?

They're asking HUGE questions, and taking big risks. They're discussing power, developing joke webs to both develop creative titles and embrace their inner adolescent (e.g. "No Mama, No Drama" or "Golding's Daughterless Doom" or "Hopeless Humanity"), and engaging in deliberative dialogue with one another.

And nobody has brought up TIME magazine's person of the year, or #MeToo, or the current state of "human nature" in Washington, DC, or Jerusalem, or the Levant, or anywhere else. And that's good. It's healthy. They're still kids. But what they're doing by engaging in these conversations is placing themselves steadfastly in the path of their future selves, their future consciences. They realize that,  even in the absence of women, Piggy and Simon were the two most caring, compassionate, logical, comforting (motherly) characters...and even they are killed. And, frankly, that breaks my students hearts.

Golding wrote a novel about boys and what boys do in groups. For a very long time the narrative about power and humankind has been about men, because they're the only ones in the room. But that's changing, and my students are ready. All of them--male and female--realize that Golding was really asking us to consider who will come to save us from our island.

Someday my students will be the powerful, the decision-makers, the leaders. And I trust that they will choose good and treat one another well.

Sure, they've reminded me that they are emerging as strong writers...but they have also reminded me that the future is in good hands...that they are emerging as strong humans as well.

Who Inspires Me? (a sequel)

"Will, I think you might be looking at inspiration too one-dimensionally. You are inspired by so many people...but it just isn't always packaged the same way--the way you might think."

That was my wife responding to my post from yesterday.*

And, as I sat on my living room couch, my mind began to drift toward all the people I interact with who inspire me.

They inspire me not because of their textbook, Eureka-like moments of garrulous, collective, firework-inducing INSPIRATION, necessarily, but rather because of their inspiring

humility,

willingness to listen (to understand, not to respond),

commitment to social justice,

love of their students,

simultaneous commitment to both discipline AND fun,

clear and direct channels of communication,

penchant for making eye contact,

playfulness, 

eagerness to become excited about the things that excite their students,

unabashed love of YA fiction,

Twitter feed,

positivity,

joy (even in the face of inopportune circumstances),

devotion to the mission of the school,

tendency to ask, "Can I give you some feedback I would want to hear if I were you?",

gentleness,

sense of humor,

eye contact,

love of change and challenge,

love of tradition,

curiosity,

organization,

penmanship,

desire to celebrate EVERYTHING worth celebrating.

So, thanks to them...they're worth celebrating for sure.

*And so is my spouse/partner/confidant/inspiration/friend who, nearly a decade ago, first caught my attention because she challenged me in a way nobody else ever had.

Who Inspires You?

I was recently asked the following question:

"Which of your colleagues are you most inspired by?"

I am embarrassed to admit that the question terrified me. I knew I should have an answer...that I should be able to enthusiastically and emphatically dive into a conversation about how I am inspired and by whom.

But I couldn't. I didn't have an answer. I was embarrassed.

And it really threw me for a loop.

You see, I know what it feels like to be inspired. I love being inspired, and I genuinely feel inspired often. But right now, in my current season of life, I'm just not making the time to connect with my colleagues in ways that are pedagogically inspiring. I am allowing paperwork, preparation, and the minutiae of my job to take the helm.

In writing about fatherhood, Dave Simmons once wrote that in order to spend quality time with our children we must first commit to having a larger quantity of time with our children. They aren't efficient (our kids); instead of quickly maximizing time together,

"What they do is suddenly--no one can predict when--spin around, open up, and take a long swig of Dad. The little hole in the window opens up and lets you in. Then they shut it, go back to their preoccupation and shut you in a holding mode again...You have to hang around."

Though children and colleagues differ, by simply spending time around my colleagues I can become more inspired. So what have I done since that initial conversation? I have twice placed myself near colleagues to do work, eat lunch, and I've prioritized asking a question, sharing an idea, affirming them for a strength I admire, or discussing a dilemma.

The result has been great and the 50 minutes have been both illuminating and inspiring. I was inspired by being near them, by spending time around them, and by allowing the silence between us to invite the window to open up.

If we don't know who we're inspired by, we're probably failing ourselves and putting a ceiling on our propensity to be inspired and to reach the heights of which we are capable.

Trust the Process

The Philadelphia 76ers basketball team has a saying: "Trust the Process."

The suggestion therein is that fans of their team should know that, while the team might not experience a great deal of immediate success, the long-range results will far outweigh the struggles of today. 

The process versus product conversation has been at the forefront of educational dialogue as well, ever since I became a teacher eleven years ago. Recently, I had a conversation with a student who was concerned about why he had earned a B+ on his revised essay. The revisions, I had to agree, were great, but the essay was still not quite of the A caliber given the expectations outlined on the rubric. As I returned home that evening, however, I couldn't stop thinking about the student and the effort he had put into his revisions. His process had most certainly been A+, but the product was a B+...so why wasn't I grading the effort and energy he had put into improving? Why wasn't I celebrating the growth?

Well, the conclusion is that I am now. Henceforth I will be grading revisions for the quality of the process, not the product. While final drafts still earn grades for the quality of mechanics, grammar, organization, and analysis, the revisions will earn grades based upon how the student receives feedback and applies it to the revision.

With all writers, we must be more like the Philadelphia 76ers and trust the process. We could spend months working on the first paragraphs of essays, just as my kindergarten son spends months in art class learning how to use materials without any pressure to produce a museum-quality piece of art...it's about process. My son delights in mixing paint colors to see what will happen, and relishes the opportunity to use duct tape to affix a handful of feathers to a slide projector reel. Is he creating art? Yes, but what he's really doing is being granted permission to experiment and grow, and to find joy in the process of developing his own artistic style. My young writers, too, should be playing with words and developing their own narrative voices as they learn to appreciate the process of writing, not just the constant feedback about the product.

I am a better teacher today than I was a week ago because I allowed my student's questions to open a door to my own questions. And perhaps my attempts at dwelling in the process will fail...but if I do, I can have faith in my own ability to reflect and improve, to adapt and grow...I, too, must trust the process.

Closer to Fine

During this first week in October I have the pleasure of sitting down with the parents of my students to discuss the year thus far. We get to talk about each child as a student, a citizen, and a human being. It's a lovely time and, regardless of how a student is doing, the focus always remains centered upon who the student is. Right now. Today.

We don't know who the students will become. How could we? One day they will wake up, look in the mirror, and realize that they've grown up. Another day they'll wake to find they've grown old. The process of aging and becoming wise, though, isn't binary, it's gradual.

My students are beginning to read Lord of the Flies this week in English class. In world cultures, those same students are learning about Zoroaster, the 7th Century (BCE) Persian mystic who first proclaimed that the world was a battleground between forces of good and evil. The conversations we've had remain centered around the reality that there are few truths in the world.

It reminds me of the Indigo Girls' song, "Closer to Fine." The lyrics begin,

I'm tryin' to tell you somethin' 'bout my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It's only life after all, yeah

Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety 'til I sank it
I'm crawling on your shores

And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

As the chorus suggests, the lines we follow do tend to be crooked. But they ultimately arrive us someplace new. The sense of arrival, however, is fleeting because--like most things, life is not binary. Humans are so quick to place boundaries and boxes around us as groups, but we fail ourselves when we do that.

My friend Ben recently shared a way of thinking about this topic when he described two different ways of thinking about Christianity. One way is the conventional means of viewing followers of Jesus as either being "in" or "out." Again, it's a binary method of identifying people and is known as a "bounded set." The other approach, however, is known as a "centered set" and refers to the direction of a person's movement.

But this needn't only apply to Christians.

Our thinking of other humans can be either bounded or centered.

For the boys of Lord of the Flies, they are too bounded. If they centered around being saved, and coexisting, they could succeed. But the "us" versus "them" narrative takes over.

The Indigo Girls would assuredly believe that every step on the "crooked line" either moves them closer to fine, or farther from fine. When I talk with my students...when I talk with their parents...what I ultimately want is to help them draw closer to fine. To grow closer to believing that they matter, that they are enough. They are so deep, so rich in their understanding and their curiosity.  Who they are is not binary. I don't have good students and bad students; weak students and strong students. Social scientists and scholars no longer refer to nations as undeveloped or developed. Instead, we now refer to countries as either developing or developed, but the reality is that all countries are in the process of developing into something. We, too, are not bounded sets in life. We are centered sets who are moving somewhere.

We are moving, always.

I love teaching my moving, evolving, growing students (no matter how centered, or uncentered they are). They help me draw closer to fine.

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.

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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.