The Line

I was very lucky last year during the 2008 ASCD National Conference to make the acquaintance of Jim, a veteran special educator of 26 years in New Orleans. He has been a thought-provoking and insightful commenter on the blog since. A couple of weeks ago I asked him how the education system was faring three years out from Katrina. He writes:

As for the recovery, much of the area looks like it has come back and made a tremendous rebound….[but] I think I told you during our visit that while things looked much better on the surface, there is still a tremendous amount of inner suffering going on. That still continues. There is an area of New Orleans called Lakeview, where the main levee broke that allowed all the water to eventually travel into Downtown, where there are a tremendous amount of empty lots and even houses that are still abandoned and untouched since Katrina. Some still have the same bedding upstairs, as folks have not returned to these houses. Nevertheless, folks still move on, and I think it’s safe to say that most people have gotten on with their lives, although many still suffer scars that may never completely heal.

Jim also puts a very interesting spin on that most controversial of topics, charter schools:

Our educational landscape has changed significantly. I told you about the charter schools in New Orleans. Well, I am now a special education administrator in one of them-Algiers Charter Schools. The charters are run mostly by universities or private groups that run charters for a living. There are what’s called Charter School enterprises around the country whose job is to run independent charter schools and make a profit, although I’m not sure how they make the profit, to be honest. Charter schools have saved the educational landscape here in New Orleans, as parents now have a choice as to where to send their kids. Schools actually compete for business, so to speak. Of course, some charters are run by Tulane University or the University of New Orleans. Little by little, the test scores have been going up, but mostly, the quality of instruction has increased as measured by the methodology (cooperative learning) and the amount of student involvement. Katrina was a horrific experience, but perhaps these charter schools can be the phoenix that rises out of the ashes.

I also asked him how we in the educational community can continue to assist New Orleans students and schools.

…We need a continued infusion of youthful energy in our classrooms. Teach for America has helped, but if you know of college grads with a missionary zeal that would really like to make a difference in a place where innovations are happening, suggest visiting New Orleans. We can use all the talent we can get! If that sounds interesting, let me know, and I’ll send you some website links where they can apply.

As for what your students can do, how about corresponding with our students from the New Orleans area schools. Talking is good therapy, and there are still so many stories waiting to be told…what better motivation than to write to an actual person of about the same age in a part of the country far different from our own? It is a thought.

If it’s donations you are thinking of, our children always need supplies at the beginning of the year. If you really want to be bold and adventurous, you could come with a group of your older kids, stay for a week, and gut a house…they will be exposed to a culture far different from their own, and they will also be leaving a part of themselves with a community that loves to be connected to others.

…The most immediate thing we need are good thoughts, wishes, and prayers. We are getting on with our lives, but the hurt is still there. It is just hard to be minding your own business, and this thing called Katrina comes along and changes your life forever through no fault of your own. We’re getting there and will continue to do so.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches on the levees.

Meantime I’ll be thinking about curriculum on New Orleans, correspondence, supply drives, and who in the high school might want to go down and knock out a wall or two. And you?

One of my best buds David (amongst many others) just got his iPhone. As a computer geek and technical writer, it was only a matter of time for him; as it seems to be for, well, just about everyone on the planet, according to Apple. After my Palm Pilot blew over Spring Break, even I was eyeing it. Sleek as a seal, literally a jewel of a thing, no question; and with apps that can balance your checkbook and recognize snippets of music over the radio, what are we all waiting for?

I think I might be waiting for a spring breeze. And just what I mean by that, I am still figuring out.

For example, you can’t argue with me about the iPhone’s appeal to the naturalist, because I agree. Peterson’s Guide to North American Birds smaller than your hand? Identify constellations from the photo lens? I know. With so many places it could slip unobtrusively into my backcountry pack, it’s hard to contain the drool.

And yet, and yet. Isn’t there a time when even bringing a book along on a hike– much less a book on crack like the iPhone– actually draws your attention away from…simple…observing?  From simple, visceral experience? The cataloging, the identifying, the compartmentalizing, the defining; doesn’t the din of the mind move us away, at last, and maybe permanently, from the fundamental reality of our senses? When I rush to pin my virtual map up against the stars, doesn’t it, in the end, block them out?

Schooling comes into this in several ways. One (and again): an uncritical love affair with technology does nothing for our students. If we do not give them the tools to see that every gain we make with technology takes something else away– something we may need very badly– then we leave them mired in the worship of what Neil Postman called “the god of technology,” a Faustian bargain at best:

Ask anyone who knows something about computers to talk about them, and you will find that they will, unabashedly and relentlessly, extol the wonders of computers. You will also find that in most cases they will completely neglect to mention any of the liabilities of computers. This is a dangerous imbalance, since the greater the wonders of a technology, the greater will be its negative consequences…

Perhaps the best way I can express this idea is to say that the question, “What will a new technology do?” is no more important than the question, “What will a new technology undo?” Indeed, the latter question is more important, precisely because it is asked so infrequently.

Ask it, friends. As educators, we must ask it.

(This quote  from what should be required reading for every educator, Postman’s mind-blowing lecture “Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change.” )

Second, we must recognize that school, in its very essence, also moves us inexorably away from visceral experience. Simply by placing a premium on reading and writing, it does so. This is not my thesis– that honor belongs to David Abram– but it is my belief, confirmed in experience, and it bugs me more and more with each passing day. Yes, this is the English teacher talking.

Yet hopelessly and irrevocably in love with words, I actually wonder if this doesn’t put me in the correct place to criticize their overuse. For if our education becomes a serpent biting its own tail– reading and writing about, well, reading and writing– then what are we actually reading and writing about? What are we really learning?

The whole thing seems to crumble, like a coal self-consumed; one push with a stick, and the ash collapses and blows away.

This is a lot to pile on the poor little iPhone, and you’ll note that I’m not actually placing the fate of the world on its delicate silver shoulders; that, too, would be overestimating its importance.

But there’s that spring breeze, though, moving through the room, or my daughter’s laugh. Hip-deep in apps, I may easily miss them both.

And it just gets easier and easier, doesn’t it.

Here you go.

This also includes a link to my post on Chapter Two if you were interested, but I think the writing job I did on Chapter Three (and Four, coming in June) is much better. Stop by and leave a comment. Homework continues to freak me out and I am interested in all perspectives.

The comments on my last post, and some email I brazenly (desperately?) solicited, have been really helpful. Here’s a few quotes that I’ve been repeating to myself. (If you’re not mentioned, worry not: everyone’s words have made a deep impact, and I’m very grateful.)

Deborah Meier sent me a kind note.

We need to belong to some “community” – to be part of a shared effort – to find the classroom and the struggle to change our circumstances both–at least part of the time–a source of comfort, excitement, even pleasure!

Deborah understands the need for community on the lonely and draining walk of school reform. I’m lucky to have some of that. But she makes clear that I can’t subsist on crumbs forever. I need more. We need more.

Chris Lehman, teacher and principal of the stellar alternative Science Learning Academy in Philadephia, reminds me of this:

Trying to be Rafe Esquith or Debbie Meier is a good goal, but only if we don’t beat ourselves up when we fall short… teaching is a marathon, not a sprint. We desperately need wise, kind, thoughtful people who make this a career and a life.

And we need to forgive ourselves when we aren’t perfect or awesome or “A-game” every day. When the people who care leave because we cannot measure up to our ideal version of ourselves, in the end, that’s bad for our schools and our kids.

Chris walks his talk, and highlights my lifelong tendency towards a kind of moral impatience with myself: if I can’t make everything right right now, I must be failing. This is an illusory approach to education at best. Should I wonder that most of my heroes have spent decades doing what they do? If I mean to accomplish something useful as a teacher, I’ve got to be in it for the long haul.

Bill Cala, former superintendent of two local districts and well-known for his protest against military recruitment practices built into NCLB, his current efforts to begin a reformed school on the campus of Nazareth College (my alma mater), and his educational foundation in Kenya, says this to me.

The system is the rock of Sisyphus… If we do not fight, if we do not push to change the system, public education is dead. The more people who leave teaching and do not stay to fight the system, the sooner the demise of public education. Stay and fight!!

Yeah, he included those two exclamation points. Can’t beat a rallying cry from someone you trust implicitly.

And finally, my colleague Joseph, who is leaving school to pursue a Ph.D. in education reform, comments:

There may be a day when I regret this decision, but I don’t think so. I’d rather put my energy into developing other models of public education that work to really engage kids in their passions and don’t promote alienation from their environment and communities.

It has been a privilege to work with this gifted teacher. His words bring home to me that I also cannot be content unless I am involved– full time– in a solution to education’s ills: one that will someday allow people such as Joe to stay in the classroom and thrive there.

To sum it all up, I’ve finally realized that trying to reform schools, simultaneously with surviving those same broken schools, isn’t sustainable for me– morally, mentally, or physically.

So how do I put all this into practice?

I’ve come to a number of conclusions.

1) As many people have wisely suggested, I need to keep my eyes peeled for employment as a teacher in alternative education settings, ones that more closely align with what we know is effective pedagogy. Charter and public schools come first; superlative and accessible private schools a distant second. (And Dave, I deeply appreciate your kind words, but I will be a principal when hell freezes over. )

2) That being said, while I am looking, I also need to recognize the benefits of- and maximize– my current setting. The kids are diverse, the colleagues are smart and caring, the schedule supports teaming, my principal gets excited about thinking out of the box, and I have very high hopes for my new subject director. So I use this healthy stuff to the nth degree for the benefit of kids, and…

3)… make an utter pain in the ass of myself in matters that smack of anything else. This scares me. I am a natural introvert from way, way back. But I have no other choice.

4) Sooner rather than later, I need to get back to school for my own Ph.D. I’ve wanted to do this since third grade (no joke) but my focus has clarified in the past few days. My doctorate in education can’t be about investigating some esoteric realm of learning that only adds to the pile of knowledge that teachers don’t have the time or resources to implement. It has to be about change: what works in schools, and how to make it happen.

I don’t think I have to give up my first love, though. I have a kernel of an idea that true literacy can not actually exist without effective school systems. The more we demonstrate that a healthy school system is not tangential to, but indivisible from good learning, the better.

Charles Payne, author of So Much Reform, So Little Change, also shared these two burning questions of his with me.

How do we create trust in distrusting environments? How do we change negative teacher beliefs?

And that, I think, also may be at the heart of the matter. Not just an inevitable movement towards developing reformed schools from scratch– although this is certainly what ought to be done in some quarters. Instead consider this: what can we do to re-create trust and health in the wounded school systems that already exist?

Read this attempt at an answer. Try to ignore that it didn’t work for the moment, weird as that sounds. Its foundations are a solid indication, I think, of where we need to go in response to Dr. Payne.

So in the end? With some trepidation, I guess I’m still in the game.

In my worst moments, this is what I feel like I am doing when I teach. Planting seedlings tenderly, watering them carefully, giving them enough light, and food, and then watching them wither away to nothing as I realize the real problem: there’s no atmosphere.

Not because of the kids, or my subject matter– both of which I love with my whole heart. Not even because of my colleagues in the building, who are legion in their smarts and kindness. No; it’s the mountain of evidence that has accumulated for me, particularly in the past two or three years, that the overarching system of public schooling is not designed for real education to take place.

From the unremitting factory approach in our schedules and numbers, to the lack of resources tied to inequitable funding, to the constant de-professionalism and isolation of teachers, to the national love affair with mechanistic and ineffective standardized assessments, to the absence of a truly wholistic approach to a child’s health and education– the list goes on, and on, and on.

These are challenges which, I believe, can, have been, and will be overcome. Call it optimistic fatalism. Either we will figure this out; or we won’t, the system will fall apart, and we resourceful and clever human beings will start from scratch, better off in the end for its departure.

I’ve noticed, though, that only one thing is common amongst all current successful attempts at reform: Herculean effort. Line up my educational heroes in the classroom, from Nancie Atwell to Rafe Esquith to Lynn Gatto, to the nameless brilliance in every hidden corner of schools, and you will find people who have willingly led careers above and beyond the call of duty.

I trust both the impetus and the outcome of these choices. If these people have committed themselves to this degree, then I believe fully that they have done so with health; and that they will be successful.

I just wonder if I can do the same.

This is not self-degradation; I’m not hanging my head in shame here. It’s just pure fact. For multiple legitimate reasons, I do not have the time, energy, or other resources to be even remotely as single-minded.

So I’m faced with a syllogism, one that I fear cannot be explained away, circumvented, or half-assed.

Premise: The ubiquitous and unparalleled dysfunction of the American educational system is such that double duty (or more) is required of its educators in order to ensure success for its students. Anything else only has the net effect of perpetuating the dysfunction.

Premise: I can not contribute, or sustain, this level of effort in my practice.

Conclusion/Question: Should I continue to be a teacher?

It’s that simple. Isn’t it?

Yes we can.

Reformist and well-admired-by-me Deborah Meier hates the idea of a national exam, as well as national standards.  Sylvia points out astutely in the comments on the last post that the NAEP may be a successful measure of learning because it is based on random sampling, versus being administered to all students.

Me? As usual, I’m trying to blaze a middle trail in my head. Surely there must be a way to satisfy the very real need for agreement on a core, essential set of knowledge that all American students should strive to attain, while allowing for equally necessary local approaches, additions, and revisions. What might that look like?  Could high schools, for example, serve as the main repository for locally and individually-directed study, while elementary and middle schools set the basic foundations upon which all states would agree?

I’m starting to wonder something heretical, actually: if the outraged hullabaloo that followed former New York governor George Pataki’s statement that an 8th grade education level was sufficient was misplaced. Granted, the implication here was that the state releases all responsibility for education after 8th grade, versus merely shifting the educational focus of the higher grades. However, consider the benefits of getting everyone’s fingers out the curriculum pie past 8th grade except those to whom it matters most: the families, students, and local communities the schools serve.

Of course, arranging high schools with a high degree of internal choice has its distinct drawbacks, as Harry Brighouse points out:

…[such a Shopping Mall] school ensures that students will choose their way into college-prep, vocationally-oriented, or non-demanding classes depending on the attentiveness and aspirations of their parents, the peer group they are in, and their own perception of their own abilities. The texture of school life is beautifully placed on display in the book, and the way that “empowering” students to choose classes ends up sorting them more effectively even than tracking would is nicely…well, tracked. (One of the many things that has always puzzled me about so many American left-educators is that they oppose tracking and are utterly convinced that parental choice of schools will lead to inequality, but defend student choice of classes within schools to the hilt, whereas Shopping Mall High School shows that it has much the same effect as tracking, and is driven by exactly the same dynamic as choice of schools).

Mm.  Take that, Deborah?

Maybe they get this right in Norway.