The Line

Colleague Denise Lindner has been accepted as a teacher intern at Nancie Atwell’s Center for Teaching and Learning in Edgecomb, Maine. Denise’s star qualities, evident to everyone who works with her, distinguished her from a wide national pool of applicants. She’s at the Center all next week.

Visit Denise’s blog and leave questions about Nancie’s work and school.

For those of you not familiar with Nancie Atwell’s groundbreaking work in turning the classroom into a genuine and rigorous experience of literacy, watch her “talkabout” videos here, about mid-page (Scholastic won’t let me embed them).

Good gracious. Harry Brighouse tagged me for this in JULY. I don’t know whether to be ashamed at my lack of blog monitoring skills, or perversely proud that the wiles of technology haven’t sucked me in that far. Anyway, forgive me, Harry– I just saw this link.

I have to confess that all I have by way of an mp3 player is a 4 year old Shuffle, which I use mainly on long car trips, one ear bud dangling out of sight in my lap so as not to attract the attention of the police. This is because the only audio technology I have in my car is a cassette player.

I’m sensing a theme.

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1) Britney Spears, “Stronger”

2) Duran Duran, “Is There Something I Should Know”

3) Aguilera/Pink/Mya/Lil’ Kim (isn’t she in jail now?), “Moulin Rouge”

4) Big and Rich, “Ride a Horse, Save a Cowboy”

5) And the entirety of Janet Jackson’s album “Rhythm Nation,” which I still play in the house when there is much laundry to fold.

Tagging Kate Olson, who wrote an absolutely lovely post in response to “Better” and for which I thank her profusely.

Learn from the people

Plan with the people

Begin with what they have

Learn what they know

Of the best leaders

When the task is accomplished

The people remark

We have done it ourselves

~ Lao-tzu

Atul Gawande writes a heck of a book. And that’s off hours from his day job as a surgeon.

I hope to write a post shortly that kicks around his stinging observations of medical malpractice suits– malpractice having been heralded by some as a model for teacher accountability. (Quick summary of my 180 on that idea after reading Gawande: Um, not so much.)

For now, though, I’ll give you the five suggestions he hands off to medical students when they ask for advice on becoming “positive deviants” within their monolithic system.

1) Ask an unscripted question.

” If you ask a question, the machine begins to feel less like a machine. Keep the conversation going.”

2) Don’t complain.

“Resist it. It’s boring, it doesn’t solve anything, and it will get you down. You don’t have to be sunny about everything. Just be prepared with something else to discuss.”

3) Count something.

“One should be a scientist in this world. The only requirement is that what you count should be interesting to you…if you count something you find interesting, you will learn something interesting.”

4) Write something.

“What you write need not achieve perfection. It need only add some small observation about your world. By soliciting modest contributions from the many, we have produced a store of collective know-how with far greater power than any individual would have achieved.”

5) Change.

“It often seems safest to do what everyone else is doing. But a doctor must not let that happen– nor anyone else who takes on risk and responsibility in society.”

Repeating these five to myself– and I do– gives me a jolt of hope. (And, ironically, is the best down and dirty accountability check I’ve run across in a long time.)

Check out the seminal and fascinating article on positive deviance here. (This is not just my geekspeak– it really does rock.) It’s in the Harvard Business Review, but don’t let that frighten you– you’ll feel like they’re talking right to us.

Now, if I can just get to the superintendent…

1: Let’s play a game.

This is good for a cheap and immediate shock of interest, like a Red Bull shot. The heads come up, the eyes glint for a nanosecond. But if you’ve ever had Red Bull you know the truth: “It gives you wings” translates into “It gives you mild nausea and makes your teeth feel soft.”

Equally wide is the gap between whatever index-card Jeopardy knockoff you have planned and your students’ concept of a real game. The fundamental thing to remember is this: a game, by adolescent definition, is something antithetical to school.

So if you’re going to call it a game, be sure it takes students so far out of their seats, so completely busts the clock-watching with its engagement, that students have no way of contradicting the term. Otherwise, do their preternatural sensitivity to hypocrisy some credit.

Honest substitutes: activity, exercise

2. We’re going to have a party.

There are occasions when the word “party” is acceptable in middle school, usually in a compound noun phrase such as “pizza party,” where the implied desirability of the initial noun (”pizza”) overrides the lame adult misuse of the secondary noun (”party”). These occasions are extremely rare, however. In general, honor again the principle of Fundamental Antithesis.

Honest substitutes: celebration, free time, acknowledgement

3. This will be fun.

Never mind that whatever you’ve got planned is actually going to BE fun. To your students, SAYING it’s going to be fun is tantamount to your vice-principal’s comb-over, both morally and aesthetically.

Honest substitutes:

I think you’ll really like this.

You might find this interesting.

Or the phrase I hope you pull out, because despite all of our frustration at the linguistic goose-stepping our students require, we still love our subject, our classroom, and the light of understanding in our kids:

I think this rocks. Maybe you will too.