I have just finished Old School, and there is a chasm where your book used to be. I’ve felt this before – my wife and I call the delicious sense of loss being “bookless;” this however, is different. Maybe because it has taken me a year to read (my fault, for reasons too silly to record), but I think it is because too much of me lived in your characters.
I moved from the British West Indies some thirty years ago, and the Old School experiences in many ways mirrored mine, even though St. Mary’s College, my “old school”, was not one of boarding like yours at the Hill School. It is almost painful to admit that I walk the path of a writer not yet published. In this way I connected with the inner turmoil those characters you created enjoyed, or endured. You have made me realize that as I continue to develop my talents, the life and energy I feel from exploring through my writing, this note included, is the reward. Seeing my name in print, and being enjoyed by readers, while still being valid, is more a payment to my ego, than it is an obligation to my gift. I look forward to reading more of your work, and thank you for the smiles afforded me through Old School. Until then, I will continue to have my students (fifth graders) believe in the “power of the author.” Sincerely, M. Stephen Riviere Teacher, Rancho Santa Fe School
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Do you really have the space in your mind for that stale old dream? Come on, think about it -- you’re never going to do it, be it, feel it. Unless you are. Either way, you deserve the room and energy for taking concerted steps toward something purposeful. You deserve the accomplishment, and the world needs your presence. The old, dusty dreams are distracting you away from how you can enjoy who you already are today. The joy in dream smashing is like clearing out the freezer. You’re never going to eat that stuff -- throw it away.
Here’s what’s delightful: you’ll find something you forgot was even there, and you may even have a way to develop a tasty meal around it. If nothing’s worth saving, guess what’s left? Room for something perfect for NOW. Tastes change. Dreams do too. Poke around your inner Self for ways you wanted to be, and ask yourself honestly, Does this need even still exist? Smashing that dream in order to replace it with something current is EXACTLY what you need to invite some vibrancy into your life. Break the habit of feeling guilty about how you aren’t enough. (Insert cheesy oyster/pearl analogy here). Feeling like shit about yourself is easy to do; it's as comfortable as that holey, not Holy, sweatshirt you insist on wearing. That old dream is freezer-burned. Unless it isn’t, in which case, please start the beautiful snowball rolling downhill -- enjoy being you! I held a student-led parent conference this fall with one of the “blue-jacket” dads in attendance. These guys show up without a tie, but dressed for respect -- respect for the occasion of talking about their children with the teacher, but mostly I believe, to show that they are to be taken seriously. It’s a smart thing to do if you look good in the jacket, but there is nothing more tiresome than a pretender, and why piss off the teacher? His wife was quietly attentive; she’s quite different on her own, not effervescent, but not this. I could feel my abs tighten defensively.
Blue-jacket leaned in, put his elbow on the table touching his index finger and thumb to his lower lip, pausing for effect before making eye contact and speaking. This I could tell was a well practiced maneuver, which admittedly, got my attention. He wanted his son to get into a swanky private school next year, making our year together important. BlueJ: I need my son to be challenged. How are you going to make sure that he does his homework? Me: First, we’ll need him to agree to do it well, and I’ll need you to help him make that happen. Then at school, we can hold him accountable. Once BlueJ heard the magic word, accountable, he leaned back. I could almost hear the smug internal dialogue: My work here is done. It wouldn’t have been productive to close triumphantly; in responding to his question I had given him a thing to do before me, and placed the responsibility squarely with his son. My role remained tertiary, so I allowed him the satisfaction of the last word on that matter. In golf, master instructor Fred Shoemaker, suggests that the best way to learn how to hit a ball straight is to practice hitting left, then right, to let your body instinctively recognize how not to do those things. If right-handers want to spin a ball right (fade), or left (draw), your approach angle must differ from the clubface angle. If, however, the difference is to severe, you’ll have a ball go almost nowhere, no matter how hard you swing. The same thing happens between a teacher and parent, or for that matter, a school and parent body. Both parties must approach the situation, in this case academic achievement, from the same perspective. If BlueJ had set the groundwork well, and followed through with consistency, encouraging his son to develop intrinsic motivation, then it would be easy for this instructor to facilitate and reinforce the perspective behavior in checking for the homework. Alternatively, if BJ didn’t help his kid find a quiet place to work, form good habits, organize his work time against extracurriculars and due dates, and acknowledge independence, then “accountability” would be too entirely on the backs of the teachers. Some parents believe, I’ve already done school, now you do school. They wait for the school to perform the alchemy, the balance of punishment, reward, coaxing, and thanking, to produce the quintessential student. Those kids who’d rather have less to do with their parents, or know they can do a better job without interference, do just fine. Generally however, a hands-free parent approach is too different from the school, and the student grows much slower than with guidance and encouragement from home. Expecting home and classroom to be perfectly synched up is not realistic. Hitting a straight ball is rare. When the approach angles are similar, though, the shape of the shot becomes a thing of beauty. When academic excellence becomes a team affair, school, parent and student all hit the same target. What’s up with the word “grow?” It used to be perfectly happy being passive, the kind of thing that happened without any thinking, or planning. For example, everyone can remember, as a kid, your slightly smelly (in the over-perfumed, powdered sense), Aunty giving you a hug and saying, “Look how big you are!” This never felt good when I was going through my plump, pre-pubescent phase. I was always so confused at how incredulous these older people seemed at the fact that after a few thousand meals, deep breaths, requisite trips to the toilet, and the passage of time, I had grown. They grew -- it shouldn’t be a surprise at all. I didn’t have to do anything deliberate. And that is my point. Growing happens; you don’t force growth, you encourage, or allow it. You take on behaviors, and surround yourself with the right support systems, a little luck, and bingo! You grow. Nowadays, people are growing businesses, growing professional learning networks, growing communities, and market share… For crying out loud, please stop! I’d much rather prefer to expand my profit base, or extend my depth of knowledge. Are you going to grow your strength, or grow stronger? The suffix “er” is remarkably efficient already. Grow your importance, or become more important? Throw the word more in there with your comparative adjective, it’s okay. The language has a certain elegance we should all respect. You just need to take a little time, and let the sentences form more completely in your mind before speaking. What’s the hurry? We need to get back to growing fingernails, and hair, maybe even, if you enjoy that delightful combo of rich food and slothfulness, you can grow fat! We don’t need to be in such a bother all the time, or feel like every positive thing that happens is entirely of our making. Sometimes you need the Universe to cooperate with you, admit it; it’s not just about you growing this, that, or the other! The language needs passive words, and calmer people; just let it be. Now go give Aunty a hug... Sometimes the greatest ideas come from the heart: Compassion is the fifth “C” that makes the other C’s relevant. What purpose is there to do any of the 4 C’s, without acting in a way out of empathy for our brethren? As we broaden the qualification for who belongs in that group, from family and friends, community and country, to all global citizens, the point of focusing on using our creativity to thinking critically and collaboratively, give us more than something to just communicate about -- we move the world forward well.
Resources: (2016). Making Compassion the Fifth C of Learning — The Learner's Way. Retrieved August 20, 2016, from http://thelearnersway.net/ideas/2016/8/14/compassionthefifthc. When I was ten years old, younger than most, I entered Form 1 of 5 in high school. In the British system of education, effective on the island of St. Lucia where I grew up, you needed to take and pass the Common Entrance Examination in order to get on the academic track. If by the age of 13 you had not passed the test, you were sent to vocational school where you would learn a trade; when you graduated you could support yourself and a family, and feel some satisfaction at being a valued part of society. Having done well enough to place first the year the test was given, and then succeeded in school, even today I find it difficult a system to argue against, after fully embracing teaching in the United States for twenty years. In Form 1 I was placed in a classroom according to my last name; in Form 2, the top third of each class (our rankings were posted outside the headmaster’s office at the end of each term), was skimmed off to form the “S” group. The competition was public, fierce, and very important. As a result of my Caribbean high school experience, I was able to relate too closely to the picture Zhao painted about his journey in China. I feel I was taught different things, top among them was grit. When you grow up in a culture where there is a middle class only slightly better off than poor, you know your chances of being “without” are very high. Only the top kids in the class have any chance at the few opportunities that exist in the work world beyond school. Therefore, if you are tackling a mathematics word problem and you “don’t get it” there is no option of skipping it, because your competitors will have stuck with it, impressed the professor, and left you behind -- so you stick with it until you figure out a way to the solution. Of course, there is little room for sports and no time or money from the school for much in the way of arts and extracurriculars. If you make that time, it’s in addition to, not instead of academics. When you get into Form 5, you prepare for and take the GCE’s (General Certificate of Education) in subjects you will further explore in university. Students basically pick their career path in high school -- the option of burning two years of humanities courses in college until you declare a major is nonexistent. The top academic students are very focused, driven, and stressed out. Things have no doubt changed as, for better or worse, high school for this author was a long, long time ago. (Humor). So when Zhao talked about gaokao, the Chinese National College Entrance Exam, it made me shudder. Another thing the British system showed me was that humiliation was not constructive. Since rankings were posted publicly, each of the thirty of us knew exactly where we stood (St. Mary’s College was a Jesuit boys’ school). Generally speaking, there was not a whole lot of shuffling outside of your respective quartile. This did not serve to motivate boys much beyond the lead quartile where the effort given was in truth, way more than U.S. students’, but certainly did little to develop the whole child, or inspire innovation. Zhao reports that China is taking steps away from the intensity that often teaches things outside of what will be needed to succeed in this global, interconnected world. In redefining success they are accepting that “the range of knowledge and abilities that are of value includes more than math and reading.” (Zhao, Kindle Location 2877). Using the metrics created under NCLB, school district teachers are forced to have their instruction strangled by the tests. If communities, from parents to real estate agents, use API scores to judge the school’s success, then that’s what’s going to continue. These output-based measures, Zhao says also make no sense since they don’t account for variables in the child’s life that affect performance, like health, or what’s going on at home at the time of testing. To adjust for these deficiencies, Zhao refers to “an input-oriented accountability system measures the quality of schools by looking at the quality of educational resources and opportunities they provide to each student” (Kindle Locations 2895-2896) as follows: I find that these indicators are hierarchical in nature, almost in the way Abraham Maslow organized his levels of needs through which people are motivated to pass, from physiological to self-actualization. (See graphic below). In that same way that proponents of Maslow do not have self-actualization or self-transcendence (which he later added), as a measurable place to be, I believe that Zhao’s indicators are more focusing and recalibrating than they are a usable accountability tool. In order for a public school using tax dollars to justify replacing testing with an input-oriented accountability system, an exhaustible metric of standards would have to agreed upon, against which to compare an equally exhaustible scoring scale. For instance, how do you measure the level of inspiration a school’s physical environment deserves? Of course, it can be done, but would take a level of commitment unlikely to attain. It would, however, seem to allow the five disciplines of Peter Senge to take hold. (See graphic below). In an environment of continuous learning, people could strive for a shared vision while working toward personal mastery. Teams could provoke and support one another to learn together, while staying aware of the mental constructs they bring to the table, all under the lens of systems thinking. In essence Zhao would beget Senge. In a small school district like Rancho Santa Fe, well-funded by a parent foundation, and very agile in administration, I believe if relieved of the burden or responsibility of remaining a high achieving school per API scores, adoption would happen in a flash. Private schools and Charters with more flexibility, are also well positioned to adopt and adapt. It simply seems healthier to strive toward enabling learning through Zhao’s inputs. Let the journey be led by the natural curiosity and industry of the students, coupled with the dedicated professionalism and vision of the adults in charge. Resources: Cropper, Bill (2009). 5 Learning Disciplines - The Change Forum. Retrieved July 29, 2016, from http://www.thechangeforum.com/Learning_Disciplines.htm. Zhao, Yong (2009-09-18). Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization (Kindle Locations 2895-2896). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Kindle Edition. The support of pursuit of individual passions and interests does not lead to the narrowing of student learning. In the course of mastering that interest, ancillary learning occurs which the student absorbs in order to acquire the tools used in digging deeper into the chosen area. Being allowed to follow one’s path fosters creativity that results in the exploration of ideas previously not considered. When looking at this wholistically, society benefits from the intersection of these individual passions. The diversity of ideas feeds upon itself; it defines our American education system. It is difficult to trust, and arguably inefficient, to allow the interest of the student to drive the course of his education. Establishing an organized system where the child is given grasp of basic skills of communication, computation, research and analysis would seem to accelerate, not hinder, the progress of that student’s pursuit of their interest. I hold as my mission, (stephenriviere.com): “Within an environment of trust, I believe that the better interest of children can be met by allowing them to become aware of what they do well, and care enough about themselves to develop those talents, so that they may become independent, well functioning, satisfied members of our global community. The question is, of course, how to give the student enough room to move, to have the time to contemplate and investigate, within the structure set up for the prescribed “basics” that we otherwise know as state or national standards. Is it fair to have a certain body of knowledge that every citizen should possess? I think so, but with the understanding that a standards based curriculum could infringe upon the space, the autonomy, the student needs to grow in the direction he should. Zhoa (2009) makes a good case that the United States is falling behind India and China, while asking a critical question, “... will these gaps really decide the future of American children?” (Kindle Location 315). Domestically, he claims that “clearly that poverty significantly affects school performance and is responsible for the gaps between the poor, urban, minority students and their middle-class, suburban, white peers. (Kindle Locations 335-336). A drive toward national standards, using NCLB as evidence, pushes the focus toward testing compliance, at a minimum, and leadership at its worst. The tunnel vision that occurs as schools compete to keep up, or outperform, shuts down focus on the arts, social studies, physical education, and anything residing outside of the testing range. He contends that a focus on testing is not only destructive and a distraction from following our natural curiosities, but is a manipulation for the sake of political power. “Public fear enabled American politicians to achieve many things that had not been possible before, including providing federal assistance to public education, an area of power that, because it is not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, was reserved for state and local governments.” (Kindle Locations 453-454). The 1983 NCEE report “A Nation at Risk” served to partner up government with business interests to control the direction of education policies. Despite the emphasis on testing, the system still retains its innate power, otherwise how come the “United States ranked number one out of 131 countries on the 2007–08 Global Competitiveness Index”? (Kindle Locations 733-734). Both India, and in particular, China, understand that the integral factor missing from their especially testing-oriented educational systems is creativity and innovation. It is interesting to note that this is the seventh of Wagner’s (2014) survival skills. A move toward an authoritarian led system stressing standards, accountability and punishment feeds external motivations that stifle individualism and in turn, the innovation that results. “In the lack of standards and evaluation we see one of the greatest values of American culture expressed in education: the value of individuals.” (Kindle Locations 820-821). It is supremely un-American to force homogeneity and conformity; that pervasive nature shines through in our system that celebrates the individual, especially in the context of embracing Horatio Alger. This instructor, is hesitant to accept the Alger narrative in light of the threat the American Dream is currently facing due to extreme income inequities. Zhoa quotes per capita income as an indicator of America’s wealth relative to global competitors without spending much time explaining the an average does not speak to distribution. A main driving force of the American Dream is the notion of “getting someplace”. Envisionment allows you to accept the cost of hard work now in order to reap future benefit -- the same way saving, not spending all of your income now, is more palatable if you know for what you are saving. The concept you hold of your future self, how that feels, tastes, breathes -- how real you can make it, drives you forward. If it is pleasant. If your concept of the future is dismal stagnation, or in the case of many low-income kids, incarceration and suffering, then that produces another kind of incentive: to care less about making any investment in yourself, because there is no point. McDonald’s restaurants across the nation certifiably produce the same burger with stunning, uninteresting reliability. They are miles easier to manage than a fussy chef producing unique and complicated cuisine, but where would you rather eat? What kind of student should our educational system produce? Daniel Pink (2012) suggests we move away from the typical methods of punishment and rewards that are overused in attempting to motivate people. He says three things get people moving, the intrinsic desires for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Letting a student follow their passions takes advantage of exactly those motivators, which will allow them a sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. As a consequence of so purposeful a pursuit, the student’s learning does not narrow, but rather deepens as it spreads, producing the innovation that has allowed our country such continued prosperity. Why crimp that? Resources: Pink, Daniel H. (2012). Drive the surprising truth about what motivates us. Penguin Group, NY. Wagner, Tony (2014-03-11). The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need and What We Can Do About It. Basic Books. Kindle Edition. Zhao, Yong (2009-09-18). Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization (Kindle Location 315). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Kindle Edition. |
AuthorTwenty-one years of teaching, and I'm still fascinated with my role as an educator. What will it be like as a principal? Archives
January 2017
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