So, here we are

This morning I watched a group of 31 ninth graders graduate from the place where I work.

(photo by @JPorterNCCS)

I've always loved graduations. I've loved the music, the list of student names, the speeches, the hopefulness of it. I don't know what it is about the ceremonies, but I just love them. I think about one of my favorite movies, Harold and Maude, in which the two title characters connect as a result of their shared love of funerals. I love graduations. I would attend graduations all the time if I could. I would be a graduation crasher. 

When my wife and I first began dating I was the one who insisted we drive all the way to Syracuse, NY to attend her brother's graduation from college. 

I spoke at my graduation as an 8th grader, and then again at my high school graduation. I wasn't nearly as good as any of the three speakers I heard today, though. No, the 8th grader I watched yesterday, and the two 9th graders who spoke today were simply stunning and had me in tears. 

They spoke about loving each other, and about the unfathomable size of their experience at the school. They made me laugh, and they made me cry. 

That's were so reflective and they were so beautiful as they searched for words to make sense of this moment on the brink.

I love teaching at a school with four divisions. I love that our school has four moments of arrival and departure. I love that even when my former students come back to visit (like many did today), it is a moment of homecoming, a moment of joyful reuniting.

I wish we did this every year. 

In our lives, I mean. 

I think we can learn from graduations.

What if birthdays, or new year's day was a day of delivering reflections about the past year, about making toasts to what we've accomplished, about the things we've learned, the spaces in which we've dwelled, and the people who have had an impact on us. 

What if we celebrated our lives, and the education that takes place each day as we navigate the penumbral nature of our staying and leaving, coming and going, and the nearness and farness of it all...what if every year had a graduation and a moment of embracing to recognize,

Look at what you've done.

It wasn't perfect. But we did it.

And here we are.

We all could not be more proud.

I love graduations because they are celebrations of life and learning, two things that--if we've done our jobs right as teachers--are now synonymous in the hearts of our former students.

School's End as an Estuary

My students are immersed in the midst of exam week right now.

They're prepared.

They're confident.

They're anxious.

This predictably crazy thing happens at the end of the year where everyone gets a little restless. We (and I include myself in this) are not restless because we want summer to arrive more quickly,  though the smells of spring definitely awaken our sleepy senses after months of cold. No, instead, we're restless because we're ready. Ready for the next big thing in our lives. This is a time of year I've referred to on this blog as binding off. But this year I have a new metaphor for the end of school.

This is the estuary.

Estuaries are the places where rivers flow into larger bodies of water, usually the ocean. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 

"Estuaries are among the most productive ecosystems in the world. Many animals rely on estuaries for food, places to breed, and migration stopovers. [But] estuaries are delicate ecosystems."

In a school, I liken the end of the school year to an estuary (can I jargonize* the term and call it an estuaric moment? I think it's actually estuarine) because the end of the year is so productive....it is a moment of such transformation and change. Rivers don't suddenly become oceans, and 8th graders don't suddenly become 9th graders...it has happened gradually, the brackish salt mixing in with the fresh water flow, the pull of the tide, coaxing the river onward and into itself. But it's not just a one dimensional transformation either. Instead, it's a place to breed new ideas, and ways of thinking; it is a stopover on the migratory process of one's education...one's life. The end of the year is a time of saying thank you and goodbye and I have loved sharing a classroom with you...we rely on these times of year not just to hurry up and end the year, but to pause and acknowledge all we've shared, and to reflect.

They're delicate, too.

My own son is just finishing up Kindergarten and he recently had his "portfolio day." This was his opportunity to share his progress and process of being a person who had just spent a year in Kindergarten, with the grown ups in his life. He displayed such amazing poise in his moment...he understood where he had been and how much he had changed.

Every student in his class was ensconced in some area of the classroom, and as I looked around, I knew that every child had evolved, every child's self-portraits were vastly different from the ones they created in the fall, and every child was at a beautifully exciting moment in their process of learning to read. Was everyone in the exact same moment of their own proximal development? 

Of course not.

But that's not the way estuaries work, either. There are meandering flows, and eddies that swirl around, unwilling to voyage out to the sea...there are species that take months to hatch, while others take hours. The ecosystem of an estuary is beautiful, and so is June in the life of a school. I imagine the river banks that never grow tired of seeing a new season of hatchlings, of spawning, of seasons changing and transforming.

We teachers are no different. I like to think we get wiser while our students stay the same age from year to year. This year, as I mentioned before, I challenged myself to write an exam review packet that my students would never throw away. The result was this book and I gave it to my students yesterday.

On the last page, I put the following:

I know that, once it leaves the estuary, fresh water can't go back to its place of origin, back to its source. But each molecule of water has become part of something far more vast and beautiful. It has become something worth acknowledging, something to appreciate. It has become bigger than it could have been alone. Luckily for our time on this earth, we can go back. My reflection to my students begins with my own acknowledgment of where I've been, and all those estuary moments from which I was born again.

*My friend Nate used to use made up words in conversation. If nobody called him on it (because they thought he had used a real word), he said they had been jargonized. I have never forgotten this word and share the story with my eighth graders each year when we discuss etymology and how all words have a moment of origin.

Why I love rookies (a tribute to Michael Finley)

I first encountered a basketball in first grade. It was 1992 and I was in Mrs. Carloni's class at Lancaster Elementary School. Predictably, my favorite time of day was recess when my friends and I would scramble outside to the playground to play basketball. I cared deeply about  understanding the game, learning it, avoiding breaking rules or drawing attention to myself, and being able to fit in. If I did something well....that was a bonus.  

Unfortunately, someone in high school had dunked on the one basketball hoop at the playground and the rim had broken off, so we were forced to throw the basketball against the brick wall of the school building where our gym teacher, Mr. Judson had drawn a small square about 7 feet up with chalk.

I didn't have a television at home, nor did I have a family that cared much for organized sports, so when everyone began scrambling to identify themselves as members of the Dream Team, I was at a loss. The first day I asked my friend, Derek, to pick for me. Luckily he told me to be Scottie Pippen, so every day I would yell "I'm Pippen!" before everyone else.

It was during these games that I began to learn that you don't score "goals" or dribble with two hands in basketball. Furthermore, passing the ball to your friends always made them happy and made them want you on their team. I also learned about boxing out, that nobody liked people who said "that was a foul" or argued when other people said, "that was a foul." There was always someone else who would say it for you if it was, or wasn't a foul.

The result of these days was that I became a pretty good teammate and I began to love the game of basketball. I eventually made a 5/6 travel team as a 5th grader, sprained my ankle in the first game and rode the bench for most of the season. I learned how much I loved playing. The next year I got a chance to start and our team played a ridiculous 28 games, winning 27 of them. I can hardly take any credit, though my best game came in our one loss to Lisbon (NH). I scored 14 points. Normally (as in, nearly every game) I would score 4. I was the epitome of a role player. I didn't make many mistakes. I listened to my coaches, supported my teammates, and I played hard (I like to think of the image below as a testament of my sixth grade ferocity).

During my 4th grade year we had had the chance to house sit for some neighbors who had PrimeStar which meant I could watch an NBA basketball game for the first time. The game I happened to see was between the Orlando Magic and the Phoenix Suns. I taped the game and re-watched it innumerable times. The Magic won handily riding Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway to 60 points. Most impressive for me, though, was a rookie named Michael Finley on the Suns. 

Phoenix was without their best player, Charles Barkley, and the rookie Finley was getting the start. He ended up scoring 18 points and leading the team. He was number 4 (my birthday was 4/4/84 and I would always try to choose jersey numbers that were somehow derived from the number: 4, 40, 44, 31 (3+1)) and had gone to Wisconsin (my mom went to UW-Stout and I had mistakenly thought that meant she'd been at Madison and rooted for the Badgers)...but most importantly, he was new to the NBA and the idea of a ROOKIE had never occurred to me. As a 4th grader, I too was new to basketball and though Michael Finley is like me...I'm a rookie. I'm figuring it out...it's all new.

To this day, Michael Finley is always my answer to the question, "who is your favorite basketball player?" and I love knowing the story. He was my first ROOKIE, my first connection to someone to whom I could relate and I loved his game as an athletic shooting/slashing 6'7" wing player. But it was his connection to my own experience that I loved. When he won a championship during my senior year of college, I rooted hard for him. By then I was a Celtics fan, but Finley remained the object of my NBA fascination and love. He signed a contract with my beloved Celtics in 2009 and played with them in the NBA finals, losing to the Lakers. In the middle of his career, he did average 20 points per game for five straight years and was named to a couple All-Star games. He scored over 17,000 points in his 16 year NBA career.

By the time he ended up on my team, he wasn't a rookie any more. He was a seasoned pro, but the next phase of his career (that of a movie producer of great films like The Butler) was awaiting. It was time to be a rookie again.

My basketball career lasted through high school. I was rarely the high scorer, rebounder, or assist-tosser on my teams. I was often, though not always, the captain.  I earned four technical fouls in my high school career. If there was one thing I was, though, I was loyal. Kind of like my affinity for that rookie I watched one night on the Phoenix Suns.

I wonder how many people out there have Michael Finley atop their Mount Rushmore of NBA stars? 

So what does Michael Finley have to do with my job as a teacher?

I love rookies and I think of my students as just that. They are 8th graders and in so many ways, this is their first foray into being small adults. They are on the brink of High School and THEY ARE READY. I love rooting for rookies and seeing them exceed expectations. I am proud of them already for whatever it is they become. They remind me that I, too, am new at so many things. And I love that. I love being reminded of all the ways I, too, am a rookie, still tossing a ball against Mr. Judson's chalk-drawn hoop on the playground and being a student of the game.

In Media Res

Here's the thing with writing a blog every week.

Sometimes there's just not time.

This has been one of those weeks, so I'm working with six (6!!!!) minutes this week.

Here goes.

We're in the middle of things (exam preparation, the annual World Congress Symposium, end of spring sports, spring fever...everything) and my students just finished up some amazing presentations this morning.

Like, they were out-of-this-world impressive.

Yet, there's more work to be done.

They presented on problems that are present tense problems.

Their solutions, though? They must be in the future perfect tense.

By this, I mean that the problems are going to be solved. My students taught me that. They are centered in a positionality that is hopeful and pessimistic. And I say that because "positionality" takes into account the conditions that caused a position to be adopted...this includes time and space and my students are in media res (in the middle of things).

They are amazing and fantastic and so involved in a really exciting time to be a young person.

As they reminded me today, the problems they believe they will someday solve are not their fault, but they are their responsibility.

You Can't Teach Poise

About a year ago I walked out of the auditorium at my school into the bright May sunshine. I had just finished watching the eighth grade deliver their World Congress speeches at our annual symposium. In groups of 12-17, they had researched topics connected to global concerns in the areas of Environment, Human Rights, Energy, and Health.

I happened to run into one of the student's parents as they waited for their child.

"You can't teach poise!" I said, and gave them a knowing look. They smiled back with a we're-so-proud-of-our-daughter look they had every right to express.

But this week, as I watch my students prepare for this year's World Congress that takes place next week, I am struck by the fact that they have developed poise.

My students have grown more confident, but I'm not sure I actually taught them how to do it. They have developed it within themselves.

Some things happen suddenly.

Others happen gradually.

(My friend Ben reminded me of that lately).

My students have poise, sure. But how could I be responsible? Next year, they will suddenly become high schoolers...but they will only be two months older than they are in June. Their growth into the mindset, and framework, and expectations of high school will be gradual.

This week I connected with two of my former students. One is a freshman in college, the other a high school senior.

The former of the two sent me one of his recent rhetoric papers. His topic? "The Prospect of Presidential Iconic Photography." The student's paper was tremendous because he looked deeply, tenderly, into the nature of our own perceptions of power and emotion. He didn't simply analyze trends and push to make correlations. He looked forward to the future to identify where we're going and how we might endeavor to think differently about our collective memory of our leaders and icons in a future where images can be so tainted and misperceived....but so, too, can our leaders and icons.

The other student sat in with his youngest sister during Grandparents and Special Friends Day. He spoke to me about the importance of schools in inciting change. "Mr. McDonough, just think about the position a school is in to mobilize people...the human capital is immeasurable, but so is the opportunity with transportation and adults to guide students to seize opportunity! Schools are the places that will change the world. They have to be."

How did I become who I am? I look in the mirror and I wonder who the man staring back at me really is.

These realizations have come to them gradually. Just as my own realizations have slowly dawned on me.

You can't teach poise, but you grow to have it by watching others and by having the confidence to take a risk. Poise happens both gradually and suddenly...we're thrust into the spotlight and poise is SUDDENLY demanded of us, or we practice and rehearse like my students do.

My students are delivering speeches next week. And they will have poise, but they will also have the opportunity to arrest the attention of their audience. They will speak, collectively, for thirty minutes. But for their individual two minutes at the microphone, they can do anything they want...they can make every member of the audience feel ANYTHING, and they'll do it with words, and they'll do it with poise.

I can't wait to let myself feel things as I watch them, strewn to the winds of emotion by the whim and fancy of my brilliant students.

things about getting a dog

My family decided to add a member to our family this week.

Enter Mollie.

Mollie is a 2-year-old doxle (a mix between a daschund and a beagle) who represents our first foray into the world of owning a pet as a family.

There are lots of things I'm beginning to process in my new life as a "dog person" and many of them connect to my world in the classroom.

Here are four (I'm sure there'll be more) things that apply to my work this week in the classroom

Thing 1 about getting a dog.

it gives us a sense of united purpose

Our whole family has this unifying sense that we have a job to do. The same is said for the classroom where never before has a greater importance been put on collaboration. Removing egos and our own desires from the equation increases our emotional intelligence and invites us to better understand others, showing them empathy, and eventually becoming a stronger team.

This week it's been beginning to focus back on World Congress which is two weeks away. Monday and Tuesday we will have alumni in the fields of Environment, Health, Human Rights, Energy, and Climate Change speaking to task forces to inspire them and remind them that the purpose of their research is the lifeblood of many people out there committing their lives to good.

Thing 2 about getting a dog.

it reminds us that we are not in control

Nothing says "you are not in control" like a doggie bath gone wrong, a pup who won't sleep, or that moment when I drop the leash just as a squirrel zips by. In my classroom experience, scrapping a lesson plan in favor of student enthusiasm is often the best course of action.

This teacher's guide to surviving Fortnite is my most recent foray into this area.

Thing 3 about getting a dog.

it it brings joy.

When my 4-year-old was in tears, there was suddenly an addition to Mom's lap to console him: Mollie's tongue. Post-dinner dance parties being interrupted by a thrashing, maniacal joyous solo? Yup. Definitely been some of those in the past week.

But it has reminded me, too, that I need to incorporate joy into my classroom each day. And, I mean, there's often joy, but I mean a deliberate, intentional break from the status quo to embrace something fun or funny or just plain student-directed.

This week it was inviting my students to write their own Hack PhD topics. I detailed them on my Twitter feed @MrMcDonough, so feel free to take a look. It was so fun to see them acknowledging the things they love.

Thing 4 about getting a dog.

it connects you to the people around you

No matter what, people stop and talk to you when you're walking your dog. I never knew this. The closest thing I knew to it was walking around with an infant, but even that felt more polarizing than having a dog. 

We need people. In schools, too. So much of school climate is beyond the Xs and Os of teaching. It's about the humans with whom we interact.

Thanks, Mollie.

the things we share

Two young people are standing at the front of my classroom. Sometimes they are identified as "my students," but that term cannot define them.

They are guiding the group of other young people in an exercise about the importance of words. Sometimes they call each other classmates, but that moniker won't last forever and most of them will drift apart and grow into adulthood on their own.

Today, though, they share a space and their ideas are interconnected.

The two students are leading a seminar in which they facilitate discussion around Isabel Allende's short story, "Two Words." The story is enveloped in magical realism and details the life of the mystical Belisa Crepusculario, a woman who "made her living selling words." She gives two words to "the Colonel," a political candidate and hardened man of war for whom Belisa has just written a speech. She describes him as "the loneliest man in the world." Intoxicated and overwhelmed by these two words, the Colonel's life is transformed and his existence takes on an entirely new trajectory.

They ask us to "write down 3 times that words...have had an impact on your life."

They come so easily to me. I jot down four.

A police report about a car accident in which I was the driver.

Two letters from teachers, each scrawled in the pages of a book.

A professor's rhetorical question, "You're not planning on majoring in English, right?"

Each of them has guided my life and sent me on a trajectory...but there have been so many more. I could list the words spoken to me by coaches, friends, parents, colleagues, my own children, that have pushed me forward, backward, or sideways.

These words matter so much, so when I think about my students and the ways they're growing up, and out, and onward, I'm overwhelmed by what I say (or don't) to them. 

So I'm writing them a letter. I'm taking a risk and putting words to what can't be said because in an age of distraction--an age where knowing who someone is requisite to understanding how someone is--we are attaching meaning to the things that don't matter...to interests and allegiances and preferences and hobbies. We don't actually know each other, we just know about each other. We dwell on the surface and we're lonely in the midst of the barrage of social media and a veneer of over-scheduled interactions. 

My letter is going to be a book. And it is a book of gratitude. And it is going to be incomplete. A draft. And I will solicit their feedback. And it will become a living document that they will play a role in refining for my students next year. I want it to enable them to have a conversation with me that will never end.

I have taught them so many things that they won't remember...and this letter will be both their final exam review as well as a reminder of all the things that DO matter...the things I want them to carry beyond my classroom walls.

I want them to remember a handful of words that they won't throw out when the exam is over. So I'm writing them a letter that is also a book. And, just like my two teachers who gifted me with words scrawled into the pages of books so many years ago, I will write them notes.

Those two young people are now guiding the conversation about how much words matter.

Maya Angelou was right..."people will forget what you said and what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

I aim to tell my students how they made me think. I can't drive away the melancholy with two words like Belisa Crepusculario, but I can tell them how they made me feel. I can tell them the things I shared, the things they shared...the things we shared that have changed my life.

The greatest race: the human one

Photo by Rob Cummings

This image is not your typical starting line of a running race. Running races tend to be intense affairs with anxiety, nerves, expectation, and anticipation thick in the inches of air between participants. On Sunday, however, I had the pleasure of running one of the most beautiful races I've ever encountered. The joy was simply explosive. The race--the Leatherman's Loop--includes harrowing river crossings, 45 degree pitches up impossibly sandy inclines, shoe-sucking mud flats, but more than anything, it is a race about beauty of the human spirit.

My friends Sean and Matt used to often greet each other in their days as summer camp leaders with the booming call and response,

"It's a great day for a race!"

"The huuuuuumannnnn race!"


And that reality returned to me on Sunday. I loved that, just prior to the starting pistol there was a requisite acknowledgement of the runners around you. That's the image above. Each of the 1,300+ participants extending a greeting to the human beings around them.

Then, there was a blessing, read by the race's "spiritual advisor."


Beauty below me as I run.
Beauty above me as I run.
beauty beside me as I run.
beauty inside me As I run.
I see beauty all around me.
In beauty may we walk.
in beauty may we see.
in beauty may we all be.

And finally, instead of leading off the 10k race with a gun, a song was sung with the ending chords constituting the race's commencement.

Now, what does this have to do with my students and my role as a teacher/learner in the classroom? Well, there's a Ugandan saying (that I know thanks to www.runjanji.com) called
Anazina Takumba!

This translates to, "If you are going to dance, THEN DANCE!"

This was the essence of the Leatherman's Loop. If we are going to do something--anything!--it is worth doing well, but it is also worth doing joyfully, gleefully, and with reckless abandon. It doesn't mean that it can't be difficult, or that it is going to be enjoyable during every second (because I can guarantee you that this race HURT), but just like dancing, we need to be overtaken by the things we do, not just do them as participants. There is beauty within us and "Anazina Takumba!" grants us permission to let that beauty out.

I want my students to love what they're doing, and find joy in it. I want their final 8 weeks of school to feel celebratory. Of course, I want them to feel challenged, because what is an accomplishment, what is growth, without overcoming obstacles, but I also want them to stop and see the beauty in who they've become.

After all, if you can't stop to find the beauty in the midst of the mud flats, why are you out there in the first place?

Anazina Takumba!

I just love trying

I just finished up my final student-led parent conference of the spring. It's a process during which I get to observe the self-reflections of my advisees. Some of them are awkward, some of them side step the truth, some of them are at a loss for words...but then I realize I am awkward. I side step the truth. I am at a loss for words. My students are just so human, and I have watched them grow from naive middle schoolers to reflective, thoughtful young adults on the brink of high school.

I love so much about these conferences. I love hearing parents say, "I am so proud of you." I love grabbing a box of tissues for teary eyes. I love hearing students wax poetic about the things they've loved and the challenges they've conquered.

But this year, what I loved most was one particularly resilient and optimistic student's response to my question, "why do you think this year has been so successful for you?"

The student paused.
Thought deeply.
Started to speak.
Stopped.
Reconsidered.
Inhaled deeply.
Then, finally,
and with a shrug,
admitted,

"...I just love trying."

We fumble through life as it humbles us again and again, but is there anything that spells success and growth better than that phrase? In a world that celebrates winning and besting and defeating...let's celebrate trying.

On Fire

I have been thinking about burning lately. About the word, but also what it means to metaphorically burn the candle at both ends. And about my students' colloquial use of "lit," and "burn," and "flamed," and "on fire," "roasted," and "scorch," and "smoked." (That's good, good/bad, bad, good, bad, good, good if you're following along at home).

Here's the way that Google helps me understand four different forms of the word "burning."

   on fire.

"    a burning building"

synonyms:

blazing, flaming, fiery, ignited, glowing, red-hot, smoldering, igneous

• very hot or bright.

  
  

  "burning desert sands"

  
  

  synonyms:

  extremely hot, red-hot, fiery, blistering, scorching, searing, sweltering, torrid
• very keenly or deeply felt; intense.

  
  

  "he had a burning ambition to climb to the upper reaches of management"

  
  

  synonyms:

  intense, passionate, deep-seated, profound, wholehearted, strong, ardent, fervent, urgent, fierce, eager, frantic, consuming, uncontrollable "a burning desire"

• of urgent interest and importance; exciting or calling for debate.

  
  

  "democracy remains a burning issue"

  
  

  synonyms:

  important, crucial, significant, vital, essential, pivotal; More

When combined, these four definitions help me to better understand that beautiful line from Kerouac's On the Road that I've mentioned on this blog before:


“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!” 


Kerouac's people who burn, burn, burn are all these things. They feel things with urgent interest,and experience the world intensely; the essence and impact they have on those around them is often hot and bright, and they ignite others with their glowing energy....they kindle relationships and ideas and innovation. "And everybody goes 'Awww!'"

I recently finished Neil Pasricha's book The Happiness Equation. It's one of those books that makes me think about myself a great deal. There were so many things I loved about it and it spawned so many ideas deep within my core. One of the things I took from the book was Pasricha's recommendation that, when dividing our time, we dwell in places of "space" or places of "burn." Essentially, his encouragement is to either be firing on all cylinders like a burning roman candle, or soaking in the quiet of our own peace, wherever and whenever that may be. It is only by listening to the pulse of ourselves and the world around us that we can truly create and have the energy to burn brightly.

Here is the image Pasricha creates to illustrate the way we spend our time thinking and doing.

I've been inspired recently by a few people who burn...who think and do LOUDLY, and MASSIVELY, and BRILLIANTLY. Their brains inspire mine in ways both direct and subtle.



Brittany Stinson wrote a highly acclaimed college essay a few years ago about Costco which ends with the following paragraph:

My intense desire to know, to explore beyond the bounds of rational thought; this is what defines me. Costco fuels my insatiability and cultivates curiosity within me at a cellular level. Encoded to immerse myself in the unknown, I find it difficult to complacently accept the "what"; I want to hunt for the "whys" and dissect the "hows." In essence, I subsist on discovery.

I find this beautiful and inspiring. I know that were I to start a company--any company, doing anything--I would want someone with this Brittany Stinson DNA on board. She is the type of person Kerouac was seeking...I can just tell.

Another person whose imagination and drive I love is Sam Harnett. Sam went to college with me, but we never knew each other. I knew who he was and I always saw him and he just walked around looking inspired. He started a radio podcast called "The World According to Sound." It's brilliant and beautiful and just explodes the idea of sound, as well as the notion of how brief (yet deep) an audio show can be. I love it and it makes my own ideas explode. I shared a few episodes with my students to illustrate the ability to do so much with so little, and to listen to the things we might be missing that are all around us.

Now here's the crazy thing...his brother, Ben Harnett, who I found via Twitter, is also totally inspiring. Must've been something in their childhoods. Ben--a man of many inspiring talents--had this idea to create and publish a poetry chapbook and give it away to the first people who signed up on a Google Doc. He titled it Animal. Then, a while later, he did the same thing with Vegetable. My students loved it...they were baffled that it was free, but loved it even more as it occurred to them that he simply wanted people to read his poems and to set them free. When word reached them (and me) that Ben was releasing Mineral this spring, we clamored to ensure our name got on the Google Doc. A really neat way to share art with the world.

Finally, both my friends Katie Nelson and Jesse Lindsey inspire me with their respective musical innovation. Katie recently released an album entitled Lavender and Lace: An Anthology of Queens. The album is a collection of songs written from the perspective of 13 different queens from history. It inspires me to think deeply about the ways story and art and history all make up the fabric of the human story. Katie is coming to my classroom later this year and I just can't wait. My students will love that she grasps her ikigai (the reason she gets up in the morning) and her energy is beyond contagious. She, like Ben, wants to set her masterpiece free in the hearts, minds, and souls of her audience.

Jesse, on the other hand, is a longtime friend who writes songs and records them on his rock blog, http://www.mounteverestweekly.com/. Every Monday, he posts a new song and the story behind it. He's been going at it for 385 weeks, every Monday. I shared his song "A tether" with my students when we were writing our own personal mission statements in class...I wanted them to think about both dreaming and staying close to home, about departing and staying tethered to that which defines them. I wanted most of all, though, for them to love the courage Jesse had in facing his fears and (like this blog) putting himself out there to an audience, however small. One student even wondered aloud whether the title, Mount Everest, might be an allusion to the biggest hurdle one could possibly overcome on the planet.

Finally, I was so inspired by one student who couldn't contain her enthusiasm with Animal Farm this week. "Mr. McDonough!" she exclaimed in the hall, "I don't even have words....I just love how it's about power and about society, but it's about animals so it's just...it's just...ahhhhhhhh!" and off she ran. 14 and on fire. Subsisting on discovery.

Values

My friend Crista created this list of values and the other day I had the pleasure of talking with her about it. Among many other things, Crista is a "life coach" and has helped many to better understand themselves, their trajectories, their purposes, their identities. One of the exercises she conducts is to ask people 

"which values would you want to impart to your teenage self to guide you to a successful future?"

As both a teacher of adolescents and someone who was once a teenager myself, I love that question so much. We don't have the opportunity to literally revisit our pasts, but we can revisit them in an effort to reflect upon what was missing and how our values now could be influenced by both the values we had and those we lacked in our youth.

But the exercise also allowed me to think about my students and the young people with whom I interact. It made me consider the wisdom I've developed as a result of many mistakes made in my younger years.

This morning I sat at a diner with my friend Greg, who asked me if I could identify the people in my life who serve as my mentors, as well as the people I mentor.

"Will, you need to know who they are...and they need to know that you view them that way. How do you communicate that you see them in these ways?"

I do have mentors, as well as people I see as being influenced by me, but I'm not certain I do a good enough job of communicating that. On the list above connecting with others represents one of my core values in life. I love it, I need it, I feel the most myself when I connect with others. But I want to be more intentional in the ways I connect.

Today I wrote six cards to the six 9th grade students who spoke at yesterday's student-led walkout. They were simply stunning, elegant, and borderline prophetic in sharing their words. They are the product of their great teachers who have given them opportunities to speak, to write, and to get in touch with their emotions...but they also have great hearts. In life, mentorship, I learned (as I watched them speak), isn't binary. We enter into relationship with people and wisdom can be bestowed, and we can become inspired, but it can work both ways. We connect with others by dwelling in a place of mutual respect, and by listening with a goal of finding meaning in each other.

Yesterday I saw TRUTH and FORTITUDE modeled by my students. I am grateful I had mentors in my adolescence who were able to model those tenets for me as well.

The final words I wrote on those letters to the 9th graders?

"I hope there is a version of you in 9th grade when when my own children arrive in the Upper School in another seven years."

I can't rely on my own parenting to guide my children...for they will seek their own relationships with others; they will have their own values; and they will one day reflect back on their own adolescences and say, "I wish I could impart that value upon my teenage self."

My students are ahhhmazing

On February 15th, the morning after 17 students and educators were killed in the midst of their school day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, three of my former students--current 9th graders--stood before their classmates and spoke. Their topics weren't focused solely on the events of the day prior, but I ripped out a piece of paper and jotted down a few of their words. I was simply awestruck. I wanted to save their words. I wanted, thirty years from now, when they are running for president, or raising amazing children, or teaching 8th graders, to have these words be a part of my memory of them.

But then it occurred to me that I don't have to wait thirty years. They are amazing right now. They deserve my attention. They are AMAZING. RIGHT. NOW.

And they are ready for their moment. They are not giving away their shot.

Say, did I mention Alexander Hamilton was 19 in 1776?

Nineteen.

Right now as I write this, they (and some of their classmates) are literally outside my classroom in the hallway talking about what they want their response to be, and how to pull our school together in a moment of unity on March 14th when they participate in the national walk out.

It makes me think of the Hawaiian phrase, Na Kuleana. It means "Our Responsibility," but has deeper implications about a collective responsibility to the earth, its people, and ourselves.

Too often, we place curricular ceilings on our students based upon the textbooks we use, the rooms in which we teach. We talk too much, and we ignore the world; we place ourselves at the center of our worlds, and--by default--that centers our classrooms around us, the teachers.

My responsibility is to listen better, and to invite my students to take over.

Today one of my students asked, when referring to a Clay Shirky TED talk we'd watched in class, "Wait, why can't we create something like that?!"

Tonight I am doing some research so that tomorrow I can tell her that we can.

After all, as my brilliant former student so beautifully said last week, "...we can't resign to believing that this is how the world should work." I should take his classmate's advice and tell him how I feel.

Looking Up & Going Back

There are two signs on the wall of my classroom.

Well, to be fair, there are more than two signs in my classroom, but two in particular have caught my attention in the past week. One says, "You are enough" while the other reads, "Be your best self."

I've thought about these two expressions in the past week because I believe both of them fully. I believe my students should strive to be their best. I believe they have an innate sense of what it feels like to be their best...not to achieve their best, but the be the version of themselves of which they are most proud, most satisfied, most secure. There are some days when we just feel good about who we are and how we have navigated the day. Other days pass and we feel like we've been passive participants who merely went through the motions. This is a philosophy: a principle used to guide one's practices. We aspire to be our best selves because we believe it's important.

When it comes to believing we are enough, however, it doesn't mean we're resolving to embrace the status quo and never aspire. Instead, we're adopting a mindset: an attitude with intention. If we adopt an attitude of realizing that we don't have to be anything other than what we are, we give ourselves permission to be our best selves, not as the people we wish we could be, but as the people we are. Right here. Right now. Today.

But can we simultaneously strive to be our best while also acknowledging that we already are enough? Yes. Because one has to do with our actions, while the other has to do with our identities.

There's a saying in Japanese that epitomizes the nature of wanting to be our best.

Ue ni wa ue ga aru.

It translates literally as, "Above up, there is something even higher above up."

It connects to the unattainable pursuit of being our best selves, but also recognizing that we will always see opportunities to improve.  We, humans, are ambitious.

The growth mindset of "I can get better" comes to mind here. We can be our best selves today by simply being ourselves, by caring for ourselves.

Another word, though, comes from the Ghanaian Twi language.

It's just as beautiful.

Sankofa literally means "go back and get it" and is often associated with the proverb, "Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi," which translates as "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten."

Ue ni wa ue ga aru reminds us that there is always something higher, something worth reaching for, something to become...but sankofa tells of a truth buried in our pasts...it tells us that what we have done, what we have learned, is sometimes sufficient to show us where we're going. We have histories, experiences, and wisdom, and it is from our pasts that our philosophies and beliefs are formed, and from where our identities take shape.

In our futures, and our presents, though...that is the world of our mindsets, our attitudes and our intentions in each day. We must strive and struggle forward while staying tethered to that which we know is true about ourselves and the things for which we stand, the reasons we exist.

How do we do both? How do I send the message to my 8th graders as I share their trimester grades--and write paragraphs of commentary on how much I enjoy teaching them, how much potential they each have, and how they might endeavor to become the best versions of themselves--that they are enough?

I can't stand grading my students...attaching letters to their growth and progress. But I love telling them why I enjoy having them in my classroom, and the ways they inspire me.

So, how then do I remind them of sankofa, and the importance of reflecting back on the fall, on 7th grade, on their entire experience as a student, as a thinker, as a learner, as an explorer, to better understand who they are today?

How do I also remind them of Ue ni wa ue ga aru and the value of adopting a growth mindset that clamors for the clouds and pursues the impossibility of learning everything, seeking anything, and deciphering meaning in their own lives, always looking up, and out, and onwards?


I think I'll start by making two new signs for my classroom wall.

sankofa

&

Ue ni wa ue ga aru

and I'll give their curiosity the gift of that mere simplicity.

Building Bridges

Nobody inspires me quite like my mother. 

She was once a children's librarian, and I feel like her entire life is spent being a relative librarian of the world. She loves nothing more than to share the things she loves with the people she loves (and, lest you think she only shares things within a small circle of people, she loves everyone she meets. Really.).

She has started initiatives in the communities of which she is a part called Operation Cooperation and Project R.E.A.D (Ready, Excited, Able, Determined), has referred to herself on her curriculum vitae as Coordinator of J.O.Y. (Joining our Youth), and once founded her own school called Magical Youth School (MY School for short). She's amazing and awesome and a little crazy. She owns that. And it only makes her more amazing.

Yet, for anyone who has met someone like my mother--someone's whose whole existence is centered on loving and inspiring the people around her--you know that accolades and CV bylines fail to do justice to the essence of that person, to the way they make them feel.

I inherited many of my mother's traits and gifts, but also some of her foibles (being scattered, dangerously optimistic, and allowing ourselves to be pulled in a million directions at once being placed most prominently on our Mount Rushmore of flaws). And you know what? I couldn't be more grateful. For all of it.

A few years ago my mom shared a story with me. I believe the story is one engrained in the lore of Northern Vermont, but the internet has given me few indicators about where it originated. I imagine Willem Lange adopting it into his storytelling repertoire and telling it to his neighbors around a wood stove. It's the stuff of griots: wisdom as old as mountains, passed down through generations.

Here's the story:

Once upon a time, two brothers who lived on adjoining farms fell into conflict. It was the first serious rift in 40 years of farming side by side, sharing machinery, and trading labor and goods as needed without a hitch. Then the long collaboration fell apart. It began with a small misunderstanding and it grew into a major difference, and finally it exploded into an exchange of bitter words followed by weeks of silence.

One morning there was a knock on John's door. He opened it to find a man with a carpenter's toolbox. "I'm looking for a few days work" he said. "Perhaps you would have a few small jobs here and there. Could I help you?" "Yes," said the older brother. "I do have a job for you. Look across the creek at that farm. That's my neighbor, in fact, it's my younger brother. Last week there was a meadow between us and he took his bulldozer to the river levee and now there is a creek between us. Well, he may have done this to spite me, but I'll go him one better. See that pile of lumber curing by the barn? I want you to build me a fence -- an 8-foot fence -- so I won't need to see his place anymore. Cool him down, anyhow." The carpenter said, "I think I understand the situation. Show me the nails and the post-hole digger and I'll be able to do a job that pleases you."

The older brother had to go to town for supplies, so he helped the carpenter get the materials ready and then he was off for the day. The carpenter worked hard all that day measuring, sawing, nailing. About sunset when the farmer returned, the carpenter had just finished his job.

The farmer's eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped. There was no fence there at all. It was a bridge -- a bridge stretching from one side of the creek to the other! A fine piece of work -- handrails and all -- and the neighbor, his younger brother, was coming across, his hand outstretched. "You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I've said and done." The two brothers stood at each end of the bridge, and then they met in the middle, taking each other's hand.

They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox on his shoulder. "No, wait! Stay a few days. I've a lot of other projects for you," said the older brother. "I'd love to stay on," the carpenter said, "but, I have many more bridges to build."

I am thinking of this story today because (a) my students are completing their storytelling unit over the next four weeks. As I've detailed before, they spend two weeks working with Laconia Therrio, a  master storyteller and extraordinary human being, who inspires them to believe in the power of their stories (fables and tales they've selected from cultures around the world), but also to believe in themselves as uniquely qualified to tell their stories in a way nobody else can. But (b) this story also resonates because I was up last night, and early again this morning, trying to know how to respond to yesterday's tragic school shooting in Florida. 

17 families woke up this morning without a piece of themselves, and the ripples of this pain run far deeper than the community where the horror took place.

That's reality. And it is absolutely awful. I wish it wasn't that way. Of course I do. But we live in an imperfect world. It's broken and there is pain. There always has been.

But I also believe in bridges. I believe that to escape the darkness of a moment, we have to stand together and allow ourselves to shine like stars in the blackness, in the void. It might seem hopeless, but if there was truly no GOOD in the world, no hope...then we humans would have given up long ago. We would have allowed ourselves to decompose into a brutal and ugly breed of animal. And perhaps some would argue we have. That we've already arrived at the bottom of that pit. 

But we all know what it feels like to be our best selves. We know what it feels like to feel good about ourselves, and to reach out and connect with the people around us. The world needs more bridges. It doesn't need uniformity, but it does need unity. The world needs unity.

And this is the message I will share today with my students. It's a message my mom would love. We all need to be more like librarians. We need to connect with people...we need to seek to understand them...and then, with no purpose beyond the pure joy of seeing them experience love, we need to try to find what it is that they're looking for. Most people don't know it themselves. The brother in the story above thought he needed a to build a fence...librarians like my mom know how to listen to the whisper of the world, and endeavor to inspire others by connecting with them in meaningful ways, ways that matter, that build bridges.

Whenever my mother finds something she thinks someone will love (whether a book, a piece of art, an encouraging word, a cord of seasoned firewood, or a typewriter), she gives it freely and merely asks (when applicable),

When you're done...just pass this on to the universe.

As her son, I've often mimicked this line with a sarcastic breed of filial love and admiration, but I think she's right. We need to share what we've got, what inspires us, with everyone. Let it spread across the universe.

We need to build bridges because we need to heal. And then we need to pass our healing on...to the universe.

Questions

Questions saved me

when I was young and

anxious

A condition as permanent

as skin

I would ask

and ask

and ask

Gradually I grew

to love the questions

as much as the sanctuary

between them

the creak of eaves

the inhale before

the silence just after

I have always appreciated questions. As the poem above suggests, they have provided me throughout my life with a sense of security. If I was asking, or being asked, a question, it meant there was something safe, something stimulating, something connective between me and another person.  And even the pauses between questions and answers provided me with a sense of anticipation that delighted (and continues to delight me).

This week, my students are leaning into questions through exploring "Ubi Sunt" poems (literally, "Where are [they]?" in Latin), as well as Pablo Neruda's Book of Questions and Padgett Powell's The Interrogative Mood.

We're looking at questions as launching points for poems, realizing that there are often poems that rest beneath the surface of our consciousness, and that sometimes all we need in order to unearth the beauty of our own understanding, our own voice, is a good question.

So here's to a week of questions--good, meaningful questions--that can take us places we didn't realize we needed to go.