Tag: school

Categories
education life

What I’m Teaching Now

One of the cool parts of being a generalist (a job which isn’t available in most school systems) is being able to teach a wide variety of subjects. This quarter, I’m teaching in five.

Advisory

First, and with the direct support of two of my colleagues, I participate in an Advisory of seven students. For those  who haven’t paid attention to the changes in pedagogical theory these past twenty years, “Advisory” is kind of like a mix between home room, study hall, and a workshop focused on the development of both personal character and intrapersonal skills.

Sometimes it looks like a bunch of people just hanging around a conference table. Sometimes it looks like a lecture by a teacher or an exhibition by a student. Sometimes it looks like a staff-supported homework club. Regardless of how it looks, it attempts to be an experiential practicum in community building: this is how you maintain a relationship in a healthy community.

Human Rights

The second class I teach focuses on human rights. I want the students to produce a video or audio-recording that connects at least one of the rights listed in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the biography of an individual or group of individuals who fought to declare or protect that right — but I’m still working on the best way to help them do that.

My ultimate goal is to teach them how to research the progression of a topic through time by analyzing the actions of real-life individuals who were crucial to the topic’s current status. I also want them to understand the ways in which the actions of individuals can influence the actions of an empire, which will hopefully strengthen their conception of what’s possible in their own lives.

I just need to figure out how to get them from point A to point Z.

I also have to teach this subject to two different sections, one of which meets for 90 minutes a week, the other of which meets for 45. Obviously, the latter section will need to go from point A to point Z while skipping over points such as E, F, and G.

Dungeons & Dragons

My third class is, once again, Dungeons & Dragons. This quarter, I am the Dungeon Master for a party of six students, five of whom have significant experience playing the game.

I’ve written previously about using Dungeons & Dragons in the classroom, so I’ll just say the difference this time is that I’m trying to create a campaign that requires the students to investigate, analyze, and report back on a series of diverse cultures. The students won’t be “adventurers” as much they’ll be “scouts.” There will be fights with monsters and magic and perhaps, if I get particularly inspired, the tracking down of a conspiracy, but the goal — the academic goal — is give them the experience of thinking critically and in an anthropological way about the concept of “culture.”

Basketball

The fourth class is Basketball. A colleague and I are trying to develop close to a dozen rebellious and poorly coordinated teenagers who don’t understand the rules of the game into a servicable (and fun-having) basketball team capable of playing in some kind of official capacity on behalf of our school.

We run two 90-minute practices per week; so far, we’ve had one. I have my work cut out for me, but I love basketball, and while I doubt my coaching skills, I don’t doubt my knowledge and passion for the game.

I’m hoping to get a whistle.

Military Tactics

The last class I have to teach (also with a colleague) is Military Tactics. The name wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to call it “Jedi Training,” but my colleagues convinced me otherwise, since “Jedi Training” would make the students think it was a Star Wars thing, and it most definitely is not.

Instead, it’s a The Men Who Stare At Goats thing.

If you haven’t seen the movie, The Men Who Stare At Goats is a fictional representation of a nonfictional account of true-to-life programs sponsored by various agencies in the United States military-industrial complex. It explores the nation’s real-life effort to create a team of super soldiers trained in the art of extra-sensory perception and capable of “remote viewing” and even “remote assasination.”

I haven’t read the nonfiction book that the movie is based on, so I don’t know which parts originate in reality and which parts are wholly fiction. With that being said, the movie presents one of the initiatives as the brainchild of a soldier played by Jeff Bridges, aka, “the Dude,” and based on a real-life lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who, among other things, was part of the team that came up with the slogan, “Be All You Can Be.”

In the movie, the lieutenant colonel was given a mission in the early 1970s to explore the ways in which the wisdoms of the counterculture might inform the military’s ability to successfully complete a strategic and tactical mission. Eight years later (in the movie), the soldier returned with an operations manual and the intention to produce — with military funds — a battalion of warrior monks to be armed with countercultural principles, paranormal abilities, and the ability to generate peace when possible and deadly violence when necessary.

There’s a lot to be doubted about some of the claims of the First Earth Battalion, but its existence is not one of them.

My colleague and I have both reviewed real-life documents produced for the First Earth Battalion, and I’ve done several hours of research into its history. My colleague and I also possess many years of knowledge and experience informed by the principles of the counterculture, most extensively in terms of the music of the Grateful Dead but also in more academically inclined ways.

Our general goal is to produce in our six or seven students not only a fascination with what our government is willing to pay for when it comes to achieving a military victory, but also a rudimentary experience of going through the training, an experience that will be one part intellectual, two parts physical, and three parts spiritual.

I am least prepared for this last class, but one becoming a Jedi warrior requires you to sometimes close your eyes and trust in the Force.

The Other Classes

I have more than those five classes on my schedule. Most of the others are one-on-one, where I’m either serving the student in a project-manager capacity or the student is serving me in an internship capacity (with tasks related to the school’s marketing needs and benefits related to the student’s communication skills).

Finally, for the last block of the week, I have a class where I join four musicians in the school’s music studio for a forty-five minute exploration of the realm of improvisational sound. It’s ideally suited to cleanse the soul after a hard week of school.

Looking over my classes for the quarter, I thank whatever experiences and people led me to become a generalist. It really does make teaching a hell of a lot more fun.

Categories
life

The Real New Year

New Year’s is overrated. It may have astronomical import, but the planet’s most distant location in space (relative to the Sun) provides more of an intellectual oddity than a physical one.

Things don’t “feel” different around New Year’s.

Things “feel” different when it’s time to go back to school. Things “feel” different in Autumn.

Here in New England, all of life seems to take stock at the approach of autumn, at the approach of school. Life seems to reflect on its growth over the past year, and regardless of what it finds, it primes itself for the work yet to come.

Think of New England’s arboreal flames, the last explosions of the forest’s sugars; the trees of life burning brightly and boldy before retreating into the warm, moist depths of the soon to be solid ground.

As the new school year approaches, I — a lifelong student and teacher — feel myself priming up, getting excited, getting eager.

Yes, winter is coming. Yes, the days will grow cold and dark; the wind will turn hard. Yes, students will frustrate, challenge, and even disappoint. And yes, a moment will come that feels as if everyone is as distant as they can be (relative to me). But that is in the future.

Right now, I feel myself priming up, getting excited, getting eager.

The air is perfect — not too hot; not too cold. The wind is just right. Rain clouds, when they appear, are welcomed with light blankets and half-read books. The laughter of summer is not yet gone: afternoons and evenings out on the stoop, children playing in the street until the last touch of dusk; a neighbor strums a ukelele and it’s not unpleasant.

The workday idealizes the ultimate school, the ultimate subject, the ultimate project, the ultimate class. Daily stresses keep one’s feet on the ground, but the freedom of the departing summer’s clouds remind one of what wonders may come.

The start of a new school year, the arrival of a New England autumn — these are magisterial and magical times — and in them, in their paradox of beautiful exhaustion, I feel renewed.

Categories
education

A Serious Mistake

I had a moment with a student this week. It was early in the morning, and this student was not feeling up to it. I entered the classroom and already I could tell that something was wrong.

But for some reason, I didn’t do anything to help him. I was in my own head, feeling self-important as I entered the room and focused on my own agenda for how the next sixty minutes would go. While I saw him and knew something was wrong, I did not let that deter me from accomplishing what I wanted to accomplish.

In my school, teachers share classrooms. While we are a one-to-one school, very few of our blocks are truly one-to-one. Even if we have one staff member assigned to one student, we often group students and staff together in the same space, even when they’re not working on the same subject. This allows the students and the staff to play off of each other in fruitful and often serendipitous ways.

So that morning, as I entered the classroom, I saw this student having a real problem, but he wasn’t my student for the next sixty minutes, so I passed him by and moved on to what I imagined my responsibilities were for that block, a combination of administrative obligations and student supervision (not teaching, per se, but supervision; my assigned student works independently that block). There were two other teachers in this shared space, so I assumed he was one of theirs, and hence, his problem was their problem.

About twenty minutes later, I noticed that the student was still sitting there, without any adult’s undivided attention, so I asked him, “Hey, who are you supposed to be with this block?” He looked up at me and said, “You.”

And then it hit me: he was absolutely right. It’s just that, until this day, he had worked side by side with the student who was working independently, and so I forgot he was assigned to me. And then, on this day, when it really mattered, I wasn’t there for him.

As soon as I realized my mistake, I immediately left behind every obligation I imagined I had and sat down with this student, made direct and clear eye contact with him, and asked him what was going on. Within moments, he had tears in his eyes, and for the next 30 minutes, we just talked. We didn’t talk about the problem directly (he doesn’t yet trust me enough for that), but we did talk about something else that was bothering him, and by helping him process that more minor problem, I believe I helped him talk about the real problem later on in the day with our school counselor (not to take anything away from the incredible skills of our school counselor, who is perhaps one of the most analytical and yet most present listeners I’ve ever met).

But that’s not the point. It’s not about the twenty minutes he and I spent together, having what I felt to be a meaningful conversation; it’s about the 35 minutes before that, when I told him with every fiber of my being that he didn’t matter (not enough for me to stop focusing on my goals anyway).

Unfortunately, at my school, there’s really only one thing our boss completely expects from us (most staff members have other obligations, but this is the big one), and that’s to be present with the kids we are assigned to. When a staff member is having an issue connecting with one of our kids, they can blame whoever does the schedule, but I’m the guy who does the schedule, so there’s no one left to blame but myself. In my capacity as the scheduler, I chose this student for this block; I knowingly committed myself to him; and that day, I forgot he was mine.

As I said, I didn’t solve my student’s underlying problem that day. And the truth is, I’ll never be able to. It’s a systemic problem that originates in the home, is diffused and exacerbated by society, and spilled onto the floor for everyone else to deal with. It’s the problem of being (or at least feeling like) an unwanted child.

Most of the students in my school have come to us as the last stop. There really isn’t anything after us except a bed in a state-run institution, and there’s not always enough beds. They’ve been told by almost every single adult they’ve ever interacted with that they’re not wanted. Many of them are in some kind of foster care, or living with non-parental relatives, or shuttled off into quasi- or state-paid-for apartments. They’ve been kicked out of every school they’ve ever attended, and sometimes they’ve even been kicked out of other schools like ours.

We are the last stop, and when they don’t make it with us, the next stop might not just be a state-run institution; it might actually be death.

I’m not trained to handle that kind of responsibility. But honestly, who is?

You might think, “Um….psychiatrists? psychologists?…you know…doctors?”

Okay, fine. But do you know how much doctors get paid? How much are you willing to pay in your taxes for some other kid’s education? Would it be enough to pay for a school full of doctors? And just one school or two? What about seven? What about 250? What about 98,271?

Until society decides to pay teachers like doctors (or pay doctors to be teachers), who are we willing to pay to be present with those kids whose next step might include a noose, or even worse, holding a loaded machine gun?

Me. That’s who.

You’re willing to pay me.

An adult who sometimes forgets what kid he’s assigned to. But also an adult who is willing, every single day, to sit down with any troubled young person and ask, with all my heart, “What’s going on?”