Self Care is Brave

There are so many things I could have written about this week. So many good and beautiful things.

But I didn't.

I said "No."

I went outside and sat in the sun for thirty minutes instead.

I closed my eyes and I breathed.

It's what I needed.

Today, that was enough.

#selfcareisbrave
#IamEnough

Swiss Army knife thinking

This week I spent a great deal of time alongside my students as they studied the geography of South Asia, and simultaneously collaborated on a group project (their task was to create a board game proposal that included some link to Hinduism).

On both activities, many students expressed their curiosity (and, yes, their skepticism) about my rationale for the assignments.

"Mr. McDonough, if we can search any of these places [rivers, countries, cities, mountain ranges, etc.] on Google Maps, why do we need to memorize them?"

or

"Can we please not work in a group? We are not collaborating AT ALL. I need a different group."


See, I didn't see these questions as a threat, or as an inappropriate questioning of my authority, or an insubordination of any kind whatsoever. Instead, I loved the questions. I leaned into them. They meant that my students were doing exactly what I wish for them to do...they were challenging the status quo and they were seeking clarity. They were questioning and they were being curious about the process of their learning. They were not threatened by what my response might be, and they willingly engaged me in conversation. They trust me.

I knew I had to have an answer. And I do.

So, here's what I said.

Firstly, the reason I have you memorize places in the world is not because I want you to know where they are on a map. Rather, my goals are twofold. One, when you read the news and hear about an earthquake in Kathmandu or a wedding in Mumbai, or an organization cleaning up waste in the Ganges, I want you to have context. Being an engaged cosmopolitan citizen (yes, they know the term) is about having awareness, and when you meet your college roommate and you learn that they are from India, I would love for your next question to be, "oh which state?" or "which part?" or "Oh, is that near Kalimpong?" I want you to be able to see that there are so many things to learn and that knowing even a little bit more increases your cultural capital and allows you to have empathy for the experiences of others; it allows you to engage with human beings in a new and deepened way. If globalization is the "widening, deepening, and speeding up of global interconnectivity," we too must widen and deepen our understandings to keep up with the pace of the world around us.

So, you're right, my student...Google saves time, but awareness about the world connects lives. Cultural capital keeps us curious, but Google just keeps us informed.

And what about those group projects, you ask?

Well, I've been reading David Epstein's new book, Range: why generalists thrive in a specialized world and I've been wildly inspired. I want you to collaborate so you can feel the satisfaction that comes from building something that pushes you to adapt and rethink on the fly. I wanted you to face a deadline and face critics who were invested in the performance as much as you are because they are your partners and teammates. I wanted you to see that there is beauty in the messiness of being finished and admitting "this is good enough....not perfect, but enough for today." I wanted you to toil together. And, yes, my students, I wanted you to struggle. Because the struggle is part of it. And you are learning about yourself as a member of the group, and about the strengths and shortcomings of your own role and identity.

Oh, and I wanted the board game to be fun, and for you to think laterally about the marketing plan and about Hindi and how you might incorporate the language, and about competition, and about the Caste System and the Himalayas and about the landscape of South Asia and the exchange rate of rupees and your own curiosity and brilliance. I wanted you to incorporate as much (or as little) as you possibly could and to be given free rein for your ideas to get BIG. I wanted you to use your abstract thinking skills and I wanted you to see the abstractions in the ideas  of your classmates. I wanted to give you many days to problem solve and to rethink your ideas because I love listening to the ways your ideas merge and transform. And I love watching you have time to do things slowly.*

I know you think that you would rather study on your own and take a test at the end because you know what you need to do to solve that equation, and to get a 100%. But the world's problems aren't solved alone. And you don't get 100% on really anything in life. Life just isn't that binary. And YOU aren't binary. And this IS life. Already. Right here. The real world isn't out there waiting for you...it's right here in your hands, and at your feet, and in your lungs, and in your minds.

And we need you to think beyond the tests and the scores and the grades and the isolated studying. Epstein agrees in that book I'm reading, Range. He writes that the current model of education and specialization within academia

"...must change...if students are to capitalize on their unprecedented capacity for abstract thought. They must be taught to think before being taught what to think about. Students come prepared with scientific spectacles, but do not leave carrying a scientific-reasoning Swiss Army knife." -David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (referring specifically to the work of James Flynn).

I want you to think like Swiss Army knives, my students, so you're ready to do anything. I want to watch you transform the world...and that is why I assigned you this work.

And please, never stop asking me why I do.


*these two paragraphs are, coincidentally, exactly the kind of learning environment my son has in his kindergarten class. Kind of beautiful how I am trying to remind my 8th graders to learn like the once did...back when it came so easy.

This above all...

These were the slides I shared with my 9th grade life skills students on the first day of class this year.

I am teaching them life skills and I genuinely wanted their input...what did they see as the non-negotiable skills they'd need to lead a fulfilling life?

Their responses stunned me.

While each of the three groups of students articulated it differently, they all landed on the reality that one student described as 

"Um, I guess it seems like all of our goals [including relationships, offspring, careers, etc.] have to do with how we treat people. Isn't a fulfilling life all connected to the way we are with others?"

This was so simply put, but so beautiful. 

Isn't that the case with many things? The simplest ones often end up being the most beautiful.

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

Two weeks later I introduced them to a new exercise. It was about our core values.

The most important person in our relationships with others, I suggested, is the one we have with ourselves. 

In Act I, Scene III of Hamlet, Polonius quips,

This above all- to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.

And so it was that my students embarked on an exercise that invited them to think about the people who had impacted them, and the experiences they'd had losing track of time.

What were you doing?

Who were you with?

When are you your favorite version of yourself?

Next, I asked them to choose from a list of values the values that resonated most deeply with each of them. They chose ten, then reduced that number to the three core values that were most central to their existence.

The results were incredible.

One student spoke about ABUNDANCE.

"Was that even on the list?" a classmate asked.

"Yeah, they're alphabetical. It was first." Then, the student paused. "And can I just say that I don't mean I value abundance as in I want to have the most; instead, it's that I recognize that there is enough already and I just value the fight to ensure that everyone has a piece of the pie."

Another student spoke about CONFRONTATION as a value and their frustration with people who "let me have my way without digging in and debating me about my beliefs and ideas." It reminded me of Steve Jobs' contention that he needed to surround himself with "lions" who would challenge him and question his every move and insight. He realized that he, himself, was a lion, and he needed to be checked to yield the best results.

My student realized this, too.

Another student wrote TRADITION, LOYALTY, HONOR as their three. Their classmates were in awe. They didn't see their classmate this way...but that didn't matter. They understood their values now and it changed the way they treated them.

See, understanding our values isn't just about ourselves. It's also about the people we lead; but it's also about the people we follow--those who inspire us. It's about our families and role models who have led by example, who have passed down their values as well.

And that's where the beauty of discussing values in the classroom comes in. Our school is committed to the partnership between families and the school, and discussing values invites these elements of our shared mission and unified intention: we all desire to help students succeed. Families want this and so do educators. But we also all want our children to grow up to be fulfilled, and to lead meaningful lives. 

I only get to be these students' teacher for one year. 

My life skills classes meet 22 times this year.

That's less than 24 hours of time.

They get to spend their entire lives with themselves. Their families get to be their families forever. Their parents are always their parents. I will one day be their "former teacher" or their "8th grade teacher."

So what is the impact of a conversation about values?

Well, I don't know whether we can definitively say what the impact is right now. We might need to wait until my students are 40. 

What I do know is this: during parents' night for my kindergartener last week, the teacher indicated that there are two goals for every kindergartner. They hope that by first grade each child will have a friend (and know how to make more), and they will understand themselves (as people and learners).

Those are big goals for a 5 year-old, but they're beautiful goals. They're goals that we can partner with as parents...and they're goals I would love to have for my own students as well.

And making friends and knowing oneself? Maybe those are the things we need to learn this year.

The world needs more friends and more self awareness, too.

You know what else the world needs, though?

My ninth grade students.

Musing

One of the websites I visit most frequently is etymonline.com, a website devoted to the origins of words. You see, I love words. I cherish them. I think they are brilliant in the ways they can make us feel things, and I think they are beautiful in the ways they sometimes fail to articulate the things we feel.

As Mark Twain once famously quipped, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug."

Words can be that big (and, truth be told, even those subtle fireflies are my favorite animal).

Today I found myself curious about the word muse and its origin. 

The word muse (and Muse, for that matter) is of particular interest to me this year because in many ways this year has felt different than any other. I have changed classrooms, transformed much of my curriculum, and I am doing more than I've ever done. I am a hustling whirlwind of activity on many days, and I am often stressed, anxious, and very much not well.

But I am also more consistently at peace, more aligned with my needs, patient with my faults, and generally fulfilled.

The moments of insecurity and self doubt still come, but in those moments I invite my own weakness and meet it. There is a running adage that goes, 

"You can let pain sit in the front seat, but don't EVER let it change the music."

The suggestion here is that during the course of a running race we will feel pain. And when the pain arrives we can invite it in. Welcome it. 

"Hi pain, I was wondering when you'd get here."

But what we can't do is allow pain to become the definitive tone...we can't change our difficult moments, but we can change how we respond to them. My grandmother, Ros McDonough, once wrote, "Just to show our weakness, the storm comes."

Which brings me to my Muse. My inspiration. The heart of my entire creative existence. 

When I met Nicole Chenell, the woman who (SPOILER ALERT!) would 13 months later become my partner and spouse, I was amazed by the way she challenged me. She inspired me, yes, but her inspiration came in the form and flavor of forcing me to think differently about the world...and about everything in it. She linked ideas, dug into difficult topics, and listened so brilliantly to better understand the world and people around her.

So, yes, eleven years later Nicole remains my Muse and my favorite musing partner.

But here is the way she has inspired me in the classroom: she has forced me to think about myself first. She has encouraged and questioned my motives, my outlook, my values, my dreams, and the lens through which I see the world. 

This ability has always been there. It's part of her essence, her innsaei. We often have joked that she is the "good listener" of our neighborhood, or the "world's therapist" because of the ways people open up to her (always embracing a depth and vulnerability that stretches beyond the familiarity of their relationship with her) at the park, the bus stop, while walking the dog.

But recently, Nicole has also taken some risks in a new direction. She has founded a life coaching business. And the growth and vulnerability she, herself, has displayed in reinventing herself has inspired my own creativity and my own vision for what's possible in my classroom and my life.

Her website, her Instagram profile...it's all the stuff of brilliant genius. It is helpful and hopeful and beautifully observant. It is a call to action and a treasure just waiting to be found. 

And it reminds me of my students. The world--and their crashing course through it--is ready for them and their brilliant ideas. They are in their infancy, but their thoughts and questions are real...they are big...and nobody else has their ideas. Nicole, my Muse, has been home with our kids for nine years and now she is breaking out of her chrysalis, spreading her wings, and letting the breeze float her to the next just right thing...always moving, always musing, waiting for the next idea to pollinate and spread. Just like my students, those students of the world who bring magic to my classroom each day.

And I suppose that's where I actually fall in love with the etymology of muse again. The moment when I read "to loiter, waste time" a smile broke across my face. Daydreaming is part of being creative. Nicole taught me that. Butterflies don't know which flower needs pollinating, they let the breeze float them to the next right flower for that moment.

And that's what musing--and Muses--do, they invite the big magic into our next great idea.

wonderfully dangerous

I introduced my students to an app called "The Most Dangerous Writing App" this week. Now, I don't know why it's called that, but I used it for five minutes and produced the following piece of writing:


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

I'm working this week with my students on some writing. Well, I suppose I am always working with my students on writing. This week, however, was different because I introduced them to an application on the internet that was first shared with me by my cousin, Preston Noon. Preston is someone who inspires me whenever we connect. He is a really fascinating thinker and I love connecting with him on a wide variety of topics.

What Preston shared with me was an application called "The Most Dangerous Writing App." The app erases everything you've written if you stop writing for five seconds.

Like, the words you've written are completely gone. Forever.

So I introduced my eighth graders to this idea. I invited them to answer one of three writing prompts, and the only goal was to not stop writing. The three prompts were creative and relatively open-ended. They included

1) you are an astronaut. Describe your perfect day.

2) what can happen in a second?

3) A houseplant is dying. Tell it why it needs to live.

Their assignment was just to keep writing, to not stop writing...to churn out ideas and a direction for their words and their thinking.

For so many students this caused immediate anxiety, but it also helped them realize what a beneficial tool this could be.

Fear can be a motivator, but so too can the challenge of competition. If a student is able to stay on task for five quick minutes, what can't they do?

If they KNOW their work will be erased, they won't be interrupted by things like the internet, text messages, a desire to run to the fridge and grab a snack...no, instead they will just write like their hair is on fire.

The sound right now as I write this is electric. Deep exhales and inhales married to the clickity-clack of typing on their laptops.

Nobody is stopping, I'm not sure anyone is even breathing. But we are all writing...and as I write this on my own computer, I'm a little scared but I'm also a little excited and empowered. What if I used this every day and just got in the practice of letting my words flow, my ideas snap onto the page with an immediate urgency...

What if all my ideas made their way to the page.
What if I learned to sustain a task and work with no interruptions.

What if this was the most dangerous writing app, not because it will destroy us but because we will all turn into Alexander Hamiltons .

"Why do you write like you're running out of time..."

And the chorus chimes, "That man is...NONSTOP."

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

This experience of writing beside my students in this manner was inspiring. It was compelling. It was addictive. I always write when my students write, but this felt different. It felt like I was writing like a man on fire (just like I'd hoped my students would be). So, perhaps that's why it's called "the most dangerous," because danger can also mean wild, it can also mean untamed.

When we face danger we are vulnerable. 

When we take risks, we are in danger.

Ands when we write, we invite vulnerability.

When we write we take risks.

And when an app invites you to take risks without thinking, our inhibitions shut off and we begin to write things and feel things we didn't know we were feeling.

And that can be wonderfully dangerous to shifting the core of the status quo.

Expectations

Every fall I have the opportunity to fall in love with school again.

I suppose it's become sort of an expectation of mine.

I have always loved school, but I have also always loved the feeling of falling in love with something. It's that newness--that feeling of everything being a "first time" and a shocking delight. When we fall in love we float, we daydream, we imagine what might become.

With a school year I still feel that way. The rebirth of possibility and ideas and relationships. Even the air seems to buzz with a coolly snapping crispness.

During these first weeks of school I like to articulate the expectations I have of my students. None of them have to do with performance, but all of them have to do with the relationship I'm developing with them. Things like honesty and communication and avoiding chronic tardiness are topics we discuss often.

But I also love that my students arrive with expectations of me. I love that they come in thinking they know what English class will feel like or how they will receive feedback.

And then I love surprising them. And I love being surprised by them.

Yesterday I slipped a student a handwritten note acknowledging their contributions to discussion and sharing how excited I was to teach them this year.

Later, the student returned.

"Mr. McDonough, I didn't expect that. Thank you so much for writing those words. It really means a lot. I am excited for the year."

I smiled, took the student's extended hand and replied,

"I didn't expect you to come back to thank me. Thank you."

May this be a year of exceeding the expectations--however lofty--others have for us, and of communicating deeply and meaningfully in ways that make people float, daydream, and imagine what might become.

Bandwidth

I don't know if I am going to continue this blog.

Writing those words feels good.
It feels cathartic. Real.

Sometimes just acknowledging my own indecision can help me to find the ground beneath my feet. From there I can better identify where I am...where I'm going to ultimately land.

And right now, I don't know where that is.

The new school year is stretched before me and I am excited--probably as excited as I've ever been. And you should know that I have always been excited about school starting. Even when I was a little kid; yet this year feels particularly electric.

I've moved to a new classroom.
I have big ideas...ideas that have grown and evolved over the summer.
I have excited students and I've met many of their parents who are excited for them.
I'm teaching a new course.
I am eager to be led by inspiring new leaders.
I am tutoring some really wonderful students.

In so many ways I am doing so much--so much that I love.

And, still, I am worried. I am worried about my bandwidth and about whether or not I can handle it all.

So I might not. I might elect to give something up, and it might be this blog.

But for today it has felt good to write this. I write as my students write. They are writing about what their life will look like twenty years from now if they've had a fulfilling life.

My life, 20 years removed from eighth grade, is one of inspiration. I feel grounded. I am here. I know where I am, even if I don't know where I will ultimately land. For today, that is fulfilling. For today--the second day of school--that is enough.

arrivals & departures

It is the end of the school year. 

In fact, next week at this time we will have held our closing exercises and the class of 2019 will be on the brink of whatever comes next. Yet those graduating students are not alone in their new adventures; for each student experiences a moving up and a moving on. 

It is a time of arrival.

And it is a time of departure.

I wrote earlier this year that many things can be true at once, and this echoes through my heart at this time of year.

I am reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh entitled Work: How to find joy and meaning in each hour of the day in which the author describes the nature of mindful walking. He writes,

"Bring your full attention to the contact between your foot and the ground. Breathing in, you make one step with your left foot. You can say to yourself: "I have arrived." This is not a declaration; this is a practice. You have to really arrive. "Arrive where?" you may ask. Arrive in the here and now. According to this teaching and practice, life is only available in the here and now. The past has already gone. The future is not yet here. There is only one moment when you can be truly alive, and that is the present moment. When you breathe out, you make another step with your right foot and say, "I am home." My true home is not in the past, not in the future. My true home is life itself--it is in the here and now. I have arrived at my true home; I feel at ease in my true home. I don't need to run anymore."

Perhaps, like the Zeno's paradox of the arrow (in which he questions whether an arrow in flight actually exists because it is either moving into, or out of, a space and, therefore, is never actually in a place because you can't pause it's movement to identify its location) Thich Nhat Hanh is onto something compelling, something that can tether us to the relationship between ourselves and the earth, between time and place, between what's just been and what will be.

I am leaning into the arrivals and the departures of the school year, of summer, of my relationships with my incredible students. I am aware of the departure of beloved friends and colleagues and of the loss of innocence, of feelings of security and feelings of vulnerability.

In all of it, though, I am going to resist the urge to speed up.

Instead, I slow my cadence and whisper, even in the departing.

"I have arrived. 

I am home."

We cannot change our circumstances, we can only choose the role we play in the moment we're living.

Here to be here

I really enjoy reading, but the book I've been reading this week has been particularly touching. You see, my mother shared this collection of essays, a word from the field, that her friend Brendan compiled a few years ago. I was drawn to Brendan's words because, firstly, they were beautiful reflections on adventure, life, art, self-exploration, and the thin line between nature and humanity.

There were three moments, however, that struck me most deeply. The first was the following passage.

Like Brendan, I too am still much the same kid I was twenty years ago though I often fear I've changed. Like him I am excited by beauty and a little too easily hurt by the world. I still need to be cared for and, yes, I am still searching for poetry in daily life.

It made me happy to read Brendan's words and to know that others reflect in the ways I do. We grow and we stay the same. We take baby steps forward, we shed our skin, our hair changes, our joints grow creaky...but at the end of the day, we are still the little children we once were if we allow ourselves to be.

I was also touched by the words he shared from Peter Matthiessen: 

"I am here to be here."

I shared these words with my students today as we prepared together for their final exam in my world cultures course. "What," I asked them, "would a Taoist say about this line?" "How about a Buddhist?" "And a Confucian scholar?"

In essence, I wanted them to prepare for the exam by looking through the lens of this statement...by asking "Why are we here?" because that's what belief is...and it is so central to the ways we build culture.

Culture answers the question, Why are we here?

I also encouraged my students to read these lines as they prepare for their English exam...which characters about whom we've read this year would identify with these words? Who stays the same? Who changes? Who, over the course of the novels we've read, transforms and loses themselves? Who finds themselves?

Everything can be an opportunity to think deeply about what we are learning. Everything is a lens into our minds. Everything is connected. And when my students ask "Does this matter?" during an exam review session, I always say, "It all matters! Yes!" then I add, "but it won't necessarily help you get an A."

In his next essay I was reminded that I am here. Teaching at my school. Learning alongside my students. Befriending so many in this community. We have boarded a ship together and we are tacking for the horizon, whatever it may bring.

These are uncertain times. But I am certain that our ability to cling together will sustain us, whatever the storm may be.

On a deeply personal level, this notion of "sister ships," those "parallel lives" we didn't chose, but that have still left a mark on us resonated with me. 

I reflect often on decisions I've made and circumstances in which I've found myself. I daydream sometimes about what might have been. Not because I wish for a different outcome, but simply because I am a dreamer and I wonder where those ghost ships are and who may have taken my place at the helm of that story.

Brendan wrote these words as he navigated Escalante, one of my favorite places in Southern Utah. I happened to have walked the same steps he walked as he wrote about these "sister ships." I even slept beneath the same outcropping of rock he described, gazing up at a ribbon of stars and the ancient petroglyphs on the wall of stone behind me. I walked and slept among these magnificent rock canyons of Death Hollow with my father just before I moved to Connecticut in 2008 to take the job I now love. That hike was my swan song to southern Utah...that ship sailed off in another direction. But the beauty was that my father had also left Utah when he, too, was in his twenties. He embarked on a new adventure, one that included my arrival to the world.

There's something magic about space and time. I am aware of that with a week to go until my students are no longer my students, off on their own ships, navigating new seas.

And here I am. Here to be here. Glad to be aboard this ship, churning slowly forward alongside these shipmates, ready to face the mysteries of the deep. Here to be here.

How We Think About Power

At the recommendation of one of my students, I decided, instead of requiring my students to read the same novel to conclude our time together in English class, that I would instead invite each of them to select their own "choice reading" book from a list I compiled in collaboration with our school librarian and the incredible support of the #NCTEvillage hashtag on Twitter.

The eleven books we ended up with were united by their connection to POWER as a literary theme.

On Wednesday of this week I decided to encourage the class (and their grandparents who happened to be on campus!) to lean into an opportunity to think laterally.

This was a different way of thinking for them, but it represents such an important skill in their lives. I asked them to take the scientific formula for power (one with which they were quite familiar from their work this month in Physics class) and ask, "is this formula the same for societal power?" Can we metaphorically think of the power that humans wield (political, social, familial, etc.) in such a simple output-based manner?

 

As always, my students took the bait and off they went. They didn't settle for "yes" and "no." 

Instead, I listened in awe as they discussed the nature of manipulation and circumstance and luck and birthright and inherited power and fear and mentorship and courage and relationships...none of those elements are evident in the formula above. But they also were able to acknowledge that if Archie (the newest royal baby at Buckingham Palace) was like a bouncy ball, his starting point was simply higher than others...that he was likely to bounce higher (i.e. have more power) than others because he needed less force...the gravity of circumstance would simply propel him by merely existing.

It was so neat to watch them all being lateral thinkers. They applied their scientific understanding and slid back and forth from the literal to the figurative, from the physical to the metaphorical...from the quantitative to the qualitative. 

I was proud of their thinking, sure. They are more than ready for the final exam, and they are more than ready for 9th grade. But the pride I saw in the eyes of their grandparents and special friends was even more exciting. They have the long view on their grandchildren's lives and they know that an ability to think so flexibly and to courageously take risks in the classroom will be skills that support their growth and achievement...because knowledge, after all, is power.

A Mindset of Scarcity

Yesterday I found myself in a car for two hours and seized the opportunity to listen to an audio version of Brene Brown's The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings on Authenticity, Connection and Courage.

In the first 30 minutes or so, Brown explains that we live in an age of perceived scarcity. From the moment we wake up ("I didn't get enough sleep!") to the moment our head hits the pillow ("I didn't get enough done!") we have grown to adopt a mindset that we aren't enough or haven't done enough.

The same is true for my students.

But as Brown explains, the solution to the scarcity mindset is not abundance. Instead, it's the opposite...

For my students, I believe it's about being present. About finding joy. About reading for pleasure. Finding things to be interested in. 

In short, as Cathy Vatterott noted in a recent Educational Leadership article entitled "The Teens Are Not Alright," teens need, more than anything, "Time to just be teens."

This week and next my students are working together to turn their research on independent World Congress topics into collaborative speeches. The World Congress Symposium takes place in another twelve days and their task is a big one. But it's a task that is so similar to the projects they will undertake when they are older. Whether in high school, college, or their careers after graduation, they will be parts of teams and they will need to incorporate their skill sets into the complex chemistry of the groups of which they are a part. They will have deadlines and they will need to manage their time. 

But they won't be required to be on task 100% of the time. Their energy will ebb and flow. They will need comic relief. They will need breaks. They will need to be doing things for pleasure outside of the workplace, pursuing their interests, finding pleasure and joy, and connecting with other humans.

So as I watch my students working hard, I am not so myopic to think that they need to be on task all the time. What I can do for them, though, is name and affirm these strengths when I see them. I can ask them questions based on how I perceive and observe their energy.

"I notice how much you value humor...that's such an important part of who you are."

or

"You seem so genuinely excited about timing your speech...that's a really cool thing. What do you think it is about revising and rehearsing that you enjoy so much?"

or 

"So when do you think your group will need a study break? Let's look at the clock and be realistic about how much you can get done before you reward yourselves with a few minutes of down time."

By discussing time and the ways that energy shifts in a group, I hope I can help them gradually shift their awareness of the scarcity mindset. Maybe I can help them hold their perfectionism more loosely, and relax in the midst of their excessive workloads (whether perceived or real). 

I think teens can be reflective in the midst of being teens. Sometimes they just need a gentle nudge to believe there's enough time for it.

Naming our Gifts

Back when I was in college I worked for Red Bull.

My job title was student brand manager and my role was to make connections on my college campus with people and groups who were "on brand" with the Red Bull identity.

It spoke to many of my strengths as an enthusiastic extrovert who loved making connections with people, was optimistic and found great joy seeking fun in the outdoors.


Among my responsibilities I was also supposed to "seed" Red Bull to people at the exact right moment when it would have a positive impact on them (at the gym, in the library, heading to a campus job, etc.)

Oh, and once a year I would attend a retreat for all the other American Red Bull SBMs. At these retreats we would do many activities, but one of the most memorable was when we were asked to watch potential commercials for Red Bull. The commercials were all over the place. Some were funny. Some weren't. Some were offensive. Others were crazy.

And the purpose? Red Bull wanted to see where their guardrails were. They wanted us to say "Hey, commercial A is way too offensive, but commercial F is right on the border between funny and going too far."

We were their focus group and the experience of sharing hundreds of ideas with a group of people without concern for the terrible ideas was just incredible. It was Brainstorming in a way I'd never brainstormed before, and I imagine Red Bull ended up with the best ads that straddled the self-mocking, fun-loving, risk-taking nature of their brand.

Weirdly, I was reminded of this annual retreat today during my time with my students.

We have been learning about Japanese culture and today I had the chance to share some insights about the Japanese verb ikigai. I've written about it before, but it literally is made up of two Japanese words: iki (life), and gai (purpose). It is, in essence, the reason you get up in the morning...the thing you were meant to do.

As we talked about this I wrote some verbs that Tim Tamashiro uses when he discusses ikigai.

To Serve
To Create
To Delight
To Nourish
To Provide
To Teach
To Heal
To Connect
To Build

I asked students to write the verb to which they feel the greatest sense of connection...the one they feel like they instinctively do when they want to do good.

Then, on the other side of the card I had them write some element of our shared experience here at school that they saw as an opportunity to serve/create/delight/nourish/provide/teach/heal/connect/build.

And the result was amazing. They were so brilliant and so thoughtful and they care so much.

They truly are servers and creators and delighters and nourishers and providers and teachers and healers and connectors and builders.

All I did was gave them permission to (A) affirm their own strengths and gifts in an area of human connection, and (b) asked them to identify opportunities to use those gifts.

Then, we shared all the ideas. And we discussed the idea of "low-hanging fruit" and the small ways that cultural shifts can begin. And they all got so excited to be 9th grade leaders next year, or--for the students who will be heading elsewhere for their first year of high school--they became so excited about imagining what their classmates will do next year.

It felt a little like those Red Bull sessions when we'd ask, "Who does Red Bull want to be?" and "Where are the guardrails of what works and what is possible and effective?" "What are we capable of?"

This is how we impact culture, right? We find ways to empower people to use their energy, their gifts, to dig into transforming relationships slowly...one at a time...until a movement happens. Perhaps our life purpose--our ikigai--is actually a collective purpose toward which humanity is always moving. It requires each of us to use our strengths to impact the world around us.

Only my students are better than Red Bull because they're not selling anything...they are trying to make tomorrow better than today. You can't put a pricetag on that. And you certainly can't serve it up in a can.

Orientation to Time

I think often about time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To experience a paradigm shift, they argued,

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

The Middle of the Middle of Me

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

Again. 

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

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

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

Riding my bike to work just feels right. 

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

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

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

I breathe air and I smell the world. 

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

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

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

My students are amazing. 

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

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

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

The things we put in frames

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

One of my students came to me looking concerned.

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

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

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

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

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

So I changed that.

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

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

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

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

many things can be true at once

"Many things can be true at once." 

                                   -Lina Juarbe i Botella

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

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

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

Yes, it's my birthday.

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

Many things are true at once.

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

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

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

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

The experience was many things being true at once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writers write what they know. 

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

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

My students wrote in such brave and beautiful ways. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or what if it doesn't.

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

Many things can be true at once.

And that is okay.

Living Laterally

This week I found joy in reading my students' writing. They had written incredible, poignant, scholarly works on some of the biggest problems facing the world today. They discussed the causes of these issues and they investigated solutions. They showed optimism and they were unwavering in their individual calls to action.

I couldn't have been more impressed.

At least, that is until today. Today they handed in their collections of original poems, each bound and stapled together in a small chapbook for me to read over spring break.

And I was more impressed.

While their World Congress papers were scholarly, brimming with footnotes and evidence of their research, their poems reflected the unspoken stories and songs, joys and pains, of their hearts.

Their World Congress topics had been assigned, but their poetry topics had been discovered deep within the shadowy depths of their own inner selves.


We need to think like that, don't we? We need to be flexible and jump laterally between disciplines, reminding ourselves that there are so many things to love in life and that we have the ability to be eternally curious about what we're capable of doing, creating, and becoming.

One of my earliest mentors was my best friend's grandfather. His name was Harry. I didn't see Harry very often, but whenever I did it felt as though he lit me up with an electricity the likes of which I'd never encountered. He was just so alive and so excited to ask me BIG questions and to engage in BIG adventures.

I recall one time we had dinner at his house. He had made a schematic drawing of a "Big Mac" and told us we were going to be assembling our own Big Macs for dinner. The only problem, he admitted, was that he wasn't sure he'd gotten the "Special Sauce" right, so he needed us to assemble it and see if we could taste test it to get the proportions right. So of we went to the kitchen with jars of mayonnaise, ketchup bottles, sauces, and tinctures, and spoons, and herbs. Ultimately, I think he knew that the sauce was just a variation of 1,000 Island Dressing, but we probably made a half dozen of our own "special sauces" that night. And most importantly, he drew us (young as we were) into his world of fascination with everything and anything...even a Tuesday night dinner in July.

I recently was reminded of Harry and the way he woke up something within me. I searched his name and saw that he'd died in 2016. The Obituary from The Vineyard Gazette (before moving to New Hampshire he'd made his home for 30 years on Martha's Vineyard) follows. It made me smile deeply to know that my memory of Harry aligned with reality. I'd been in elementary school when we made Big Macs in his kitchen, but sometimes the legends and memories of our childhoods--just like my students' poems--put words to truths that simply cannot be said.

...He loved to go to the dump (not the transfer station) and hold court, or to the library where he would take slips from all the exotic plants. (“It’s a win-win, they needed pruning anyway,” he would say.)

He brought his family to [Martha's Vineyard] in the 1960s and told his son and daughter over and over that this was a special place, that they should always remember it, that it wasn’t ordinary, that they were blessed to be here.

He wouldn’t talk about the typical Vineyard attributes that all the world knows about; instead he would talk about the midnight walks he took, insomnia providing him an unexpected gift, from his home on William street, down to the boat wharf, down to Beach Road, meeting those who also couldn’t sleep, returning with many more adventurous tales than his dreams would ever give.

He would talk of cold, foggy, Sunday afternoons at Lucy Vincent, gathering driftwood with his wife and kids, using it to create makeshift dwellings complete with chimneys and Sterno campfires, heating hot chocolate, and hoping there were other brave souls venturing out to the beach on those days, who would see the cozy shelters and wonder who the lucky ones were inside.

He talked of the teen gatherings at the Ryder house, laughter abounding, of waking his children up in the middle of the night to walk William street in the deafening silence of a good Christmas snow.

Starting in the Vineyard school system, then doing whatever possible to keep his family on the Island, he paid the price of being a visionary in all things. He was not always understood or easy to work with — but oh, how he loved the Vineyard.

He especially loved the Island people, the everyday, honest, straightforward open people, and the creative, outside-the-box people.

I hope, when I'm in my eighties that I, too, am seeking out people like this...the everyday, honest, straightforward open people, and the creative, outside-the-box people.

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