Teaching with Humanity

I often get called out for being self-effacing.  Truthfully, this is a misperception on the part of the complimenter. It is not that I am not appreciative of kind words...I AM!  I love it when people notice that students transform (often quickly) when placed in my program.  As a professional, nothing touches my heart more deeply.

The side step I take, when offered compliments regarding my students, is really an invitation to talk about how these techniques can benefit students in any educational setting.  I would love to take credit, I really would.  The reality is that these techniques can be employed by anyone!  For this reason, I have decided to share my perspective and techniques in the classroom.

I will be using this blog, along with other avenues, as a way to reach out and hopefully help other professionals experience similar success and delight as they watch their students transform.

Step 1: Ditch "Cool".  What is "cool" anyway?  Cool is a moving target. It is a whimsical concept that is often times only attached to surface characteristics and personality. 

Step 2:  Be You.  It is what is underneath that matters. Allow students to know you.  Especially, allow your students to see you as human. Being human involves making errors and corrections. This applies to all aspects of life: relationships, learning, trying new adventures, large and small. It applies to starting a hobby, leaving something behind, committing yourself to someone or something larger than you. Quality of life improves as imperfections are both recognized and accepted.  Making mistakes and corrections is the essence of school and life.

Step 3: Find and Walk Your Ethics.  While being you and being imperfect, it is also supremely important that you define and walk your ethics in all aspects of your work and life. That is, recognizing your imperfections while keeping your focus upon your objectives.  This process teaches students, through modeling, that standards matter. That having standards/ethics provides the direction, and challenges each individual to continue to move toward a better version of themselves.

My students know me. They don't know everything about me. But, they know my essence and my ethics. They understand what I value. They also understand that I allow each of them to explore and hold fast to their own values.  If you haven't noticed already, being a teacher is much more than being a content expert. In fact, content expertise though important, is secondary to your practice of being human.

Bridging Our Differences

What happens inside the classroom can profoundly effect the lives of students outside of the classroom.  Like parents, teachers are models and exemplars.  The complexity of this role can feel daunting.

When students enter our classrooms, they bring with them different cultures, languages, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds. They possess a variety of learning styles, cognitive, and social-emotional skills.  Their families are comprised of parents, step-parents, adoptive parents, siblings, cousins, friends, and guardians.  Some students have been abused, neglected, over-indulged, entitled, criticized, adored, and violated.

As teachers, we have to consider the similarities among our students and honor their differences. In the face of the diversity of our student population, this task can seem overwhelming.

It doesn't have to be. Here are a few tips.

• Be Inquisitive.  Lead as a learner. Be willing to ask questions, when you don't know the answer. 
• Select Instructional Content that reflects Diversity.  Look for content that expresses the diversity that exists in the world.  Use the content as a springboard for meaningful discussion that raises awareness and understanding of our differences.
• Emphasize Similarities. We are all human.  Our humanity connects us.  Everyone loves a good laugh, a friendly gesture, and compassion.
• Be Human.  Remember none of us is perfect. It is ok to make mistakes.
• Set Your "Shoes" Aside.  It is easy to get entrenched in our own perspectives, backgrounds, and beliefs.  Remember to step outside yourself and practice humility.

Diversity is a beautiful thing. If we were all the same life would be uninteresting.  We would be clones. We would have no motivation to learn about or from one another.  Above all else, dare to be you and allow others to be themselves.  If you do your classroom will be an engaging place where connection between others will ignite learning.

A Letter To Parents

Growth is a jagged line. Nothing, in nature, grows in a precise manner all of the time.  Between birth and death a human being changes incessantly.  Images capture the visible changes.  Underneath the skin, change is even more rapid and complex.

As students enter our classrooms this year, we will observe their visible changes. Some students will have grown taller, or heavier.  Their skin and hair may be different.  Perhaps they are wearing new clothes or new shoes.  New binders, tablets, and phones may emerge from pockets or back packs.  

Concurrently, we will take in social and emotional impressions. We will identify which students are open and talkative.  We will look for eye contact and conversation between and among peers. We will notice the students who place their heads upon the desk, curling inward or away from their peers, school, or us.

These observations happen prior to the beginning of each class and continue every day.  We seek to connect with the person within, while trying to increase each student's skill level. Cognizant that students enter our room with varying aptitudes, different backgrounds, cultures, and socio-economic experiences. 

Sometimes we fail.  More often we provide students with sound opportunities to grow intellectually, socially, and emotionally.  We are your children's teachers. We are a team.  We have the same goal.  We want your children to succeed and most of all, to be happy.

What Lies Beyond the Village?

In 2010, we established new roots in the quaint Midwestern town of Carmel, IN. We selected our neighborhood because of the people, not the homes.  Our neighborhood is filled with families. There are scads of children and parents that are invested in the education and the lifestyle that this community provides.  When purchasing this home, we had already decided that our son would grow up here.

We wanted to recreate our childhood for Turner.  A childhood marked by stability and consistency.  A place where neighbors became friends and children grew.  We wanted a village of like-minded people. 

In the four years since we first settled in this community, Turner has encountered the loss of three families in close emotional and physical proximity to ours. These families contained a total of eight of Turner's good friends.  

Turner loves an entourage.  He is a classic example of an extrovert.  In his mind, "the more the merrier", is a way of life.  He is a peacekeeper, a scuffle settler and a communicator.  The losses that Turner has experienced has given the saying, "It takes a village..", new meaning in our lives.   

The truth?  The village is gone.  The neighborhood that Nicole and I knew as children, has been replaced by collections of families that mingle less and move more. Driven by money, career, bigger homes and opportunity, the village has become a relic of the past.

Ours is a strong and self-reliant family.  We know how to nurture one another and move through changes.  Turner has recovered quickly from his losses, but is mindful that loss is imminent.  At ten years of age he has experienced more loss than I did in twenty years.

I wonder about the impact of this shift on our world.  I wonder if our neighborhoods are less cohesive and if our bonds are more shallow.  I wonder if this makes our neighborhoods more like large cities where anonymity among neighbors is commonplace.

Turner's losses will not deter us from reaching across the street, but we will do so, knowing that all connections are temporal.  Sadly,  so will he.

The Practice of Love

I am passionate about love.  Not because I am an undiscovered Dali or MT (Mother Theresa), but because I am definitely NOT.

In my 40's I joined a meditation group.  At the beginning of each session, the leader asked the group to think of something that evoked the feeling of love. Something that made each of us FEEL love....a baby, an athletic team, a spouse or partner...anything.  I couldn't.  Nothing came. My heart felt nothing. My self-esteem took a plunge.

That was almost 16 years ago.  Today, feeling love is a central part of my day and my life.  Love is my compass.  Growing love is not unlike growing corn, tomatoes, or a student.  It takes time, commitment, and practice to get the outcome you want.

Many people are confused about the nature of love.  Love is not the same as desire or attraction. Scott Peck, does an outstanding job of explaining the difference between love and desire in his book, The Road Less Travelled. For a beginner, it is actually easier to discern what love IS NOT, than it is to discern what love IS.

On a pragmatic level, choices that are motivated by love tend to have better outcomes than choices driven solely by attraction or desire.  Attraction and desire are certainly a part of the mix...but their essence is not love.

As an educator, I often wonder why teaching love is primarily reserved for families and churches.  Love is a feeling and a practice. Love is a compass that can guide the most important life decisions.  My question is, does developing a student's practice of love conflict with a student's religious practice or, do these practices simply compliment one another? What do you think?

Flipping or Flipping Out?

What if we REALLY flipped it? What if our current workforce was infused with the ideas, gifts, and interests of today's students, instead of the other way around?

Currently,  unless a youngster is a gifted entrepreneur, it takes 40 to 50 years for the average person to have any sort of impact on the bureaucracy of business and government. For young people, this is a grueling and exhausting path that squashes motivation and desire.

The age of technology has shown that we are still a country of innovators and pioneers. Yet, we grind our children through a seemingly endless process of practice runs and assessments before we let them try out their own ideas. Honestly, our mistakes are really pretty glaring.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that we have a host of economic, political, and environmental problems.

We need to quit tinkering with education and find ways to engage students in solving the problems that face their generation, right now. We need to bring them to the table much earlier and reward them. 

Flipping, in this sense, requires a change in the way we overlap and infuse education and work. There needs to be multiple avenues into the real world that students can access at much younger ages.  We can't really afford to wait.  What we are doing now is simply wasting one of most valuable resources: the gifts, interests, and ideas of our young.