On the Start of a School Year

I am someone who likes a degree of predictability and structure. I like to know the clear goals and objectives and my plan for reaching them. But at the same time, I know that being too clear and too focused can actually narrow my vision, make me see only what fits and not the possibility of what could be. I want my collaborative experiences to go beyond my vision, to become our vision, our imagination realized (in whatever way and form that might take). So, I have to confront my own fears and anxieties each time I plan, "We can do this... and then we will create this..." and then stop, take a breath, and say, "Let's see what happens." I have realized that teaching and collaborating is always really more of a "let's see what happens" experience, even though we may try to fit it in our box of what we know and think we want. So what I am hopeful for at the start of this school year is that I will be able to trust myself and each of you  enough to carry the "let's see" attitude with me as I embark on this experience. 

What is your living work?

In an attempt to stop making school about schooling and really about living, I began guiding students (and myself) through a process called Living Work. It is grounded in the work of Don Miguel Ruiz and Jon Kabat Zinn and entails bringing more mindfulness into our lives by:

-gaining awareness of the patterns in our lives we want to break
-setting intentions for how we can choose to live differently
-taking action and breaking patterns
-reflecting on how are lives are different (and hopefully filled with more happiness and meaning).

The following is a process you can use as a guide to take on some of your own Living Work. It is not linear or static. You may want to use a journal to record and reflect on your experiences.

-Awareness: What patterns do you recognize in your life?

-Setting Intentions: What areas of your life do you want to change?

-Taking Action: How are you going to begin to live differently? What is your plan?

-Reflection: How is the Living Work going? What are your experiences?

I have led middle school students through this process which resulted in wonderful experiences and much to be learned by all. Try it out and share your experience with me on this form. I would love to hear students' experiences as well.

Good luck and happy pattern breaking!

Calling Out for Engagement

I sat down in the middle school faculty room and began chatting with a teacher. She began,  "Kids these days don't have respect. They want to question, argue, and they always want to to know why they have to do something. Why can't they just listen and do as they are told?" I thought for a moment. While I learned to keep my mouth shut in most faculty room conversations, I decided this was a time I had to speak up.

I asked, “Do we want to teach a generation of kids to grow up not questioning? Is compliance what schools should be creating? What might happen if we raised people to simply listen and follow directions?”  While I empathize with that teacher-- it is difficult to be a middle school teacher and to listen to the “why do we have to do this?” all day long-- we need to keep the bigger picture in perspective. We do not want to raise a generation of submissive children because they will turn into submissive adults.
 
We need to re-examine the way success is labeled in schools for both teachers and students. Are teachers successful if they simply get their students to pass state tests and hand in their homework? Is compliance in the game of school success? Is a class of obedient students the sign of a successful classroom? If your answer is no, then how do we as educators find ways to vocalize this and support each other. It can be scary to be the teacher with the class full of active questioners and advocates. Maybe rather than complimenting one another on a clean and pretty classroom or a quiet hallway line we should be complimenting on another on creating an environment where students take risks and ask big, important, life-changing questions-- students who do not settle for the “because I told you so” answer.

We often confuse engagement and compliance. Students who passively sit in rows, take notes, raise their hands only when called on, and never question why they are doing all of this are compliant. This does not necessarily mean they are engaged. Engagement is an active process that cannot be created by another person, not even a teacher. No one can force engagement. Engagement is when the bell rings and you can't believe time flew by so fast, when you look up at the clock and realize you accidentaly skipped meals, when you struggle, debate, theorize, and do not settle for easy answers or pat responses. Engagement is a commitment. Commitment to a deep, personal sense of knowing that no one else can give you. You must experience it for yourself.


Students who make us explain why and who will not sit passively and consume our words are the ones we should listen to. They are messengers. Reminding us that we are not aiming for compliance.  So perhaps my lunchroom colleague (and all of us teachers) can stop and take a deep breath the next time we hear, "but why?" and smile. We can be grateful that our students are engaged in their own learning and will not settle for classroom environments that focus on compliance. They are demanding more. They are calling out for engagement.

The Gift of Problems

We are suffering from an epidemic of helpfulness. Kids are constantly being helped by some adult with everything from tying their shoes to figuring out the meaning of the Shakespearean sonnet. We are so afraid to let our students struggle that we have made it our job to make sure it rarely ever happens.

This need to constantly help our students comes from a well-intentioned place, but it is not what our students need. When we step in during a problem or struggle and save the day for our students we are not being helpful; we are actually robbing them of their evolutionary right to become problem-solvers.

David Rock, in his book Quiet Leadership, explains what happens in the brain when someone solves her own problem. When a person encounters a problem she needs to solve and goes on to struggle to figure out a solution, a synapse is being formed in the brain. That is basically a connection from one area to the next. The brain actually builds a new map and gets smarter. As this synapse is forming and the solution has arrived there is a "light bulb moment," a feeling of eureka. This eureka feeling is actually a release of chemicals that are being produced by the brain-- dopamine, adrenaline, and serotonin. These chemicals give you a high feeling as wonderful sensations arrive in your body. We have all experienced the learner’s high.

When we step in and help our students solve the problem we are actually stealing their high. We mean well. We think we are being helpful, but in fact we have robbed our students of two important evolutionary and learning experiences. We have not let them form the synapse in the brain that forms true learning and connections. Second, we have not let them have the high of problem-solving, which is designed to reinforce their motivation to problem-solve in the future.
Another way to see this is in my own life as a runner. If I did not get the runner’s high at the end of a long or intense workout I would not want to continue my running practice.

Being helpful often makes the helper feel better and not the one being helped because we stole their high. As teachers we may inadvertently be walking around high on the dopamine, adrenaline, and serotonin we get from solving our students’ problems.


We created dope learning to spread the word-- let your students get high on learning and receive the gifts of problems.