The "Looking Glass" Classroom

 

"Alice through the Looking Glass - Guild" (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by stuartcreasey

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

The Looking Glass, as it were, is a curious metaphor to explain a young child's perception of the realities of school. Traditionally, the school has been a tool of social engineering, a place to stratify kids according to ability and how well they fit the construct of school, an institution that varied little from one to another. The school was a place that attempted to homogenize its subjects according to a rigid set of educational and social norms that suited many, but not all. Have schools changed much in this regard? One would surely hope, but I'm saddened to say that I do still occasionally observe the opposite.

Ableism... What Teachers Say and Think Matter

Ableism - NCCJ. (n.d.). Www.nccj.org. https://www.nccj.org/ableism

a·ble·ism

/ˈābəˌlizəm/

noun

1. discrimination in favor of able-bodied people.

There are few, if any, topics in education that impact our ability to serve students in optimized, effective, and appropriate ways than that of ableism. Ableism is the intentional or unintentional discrimination or oppression of individuals with disabilities. (Ableism - NCCJ, n.d.) 

Reading the definition of ableism above elicits thoughts of "why would anyone involved teaching discriminate or oppress already marginalized students?" It's a harsh definition describing an illogical occurrence, but nonetheless, one that happens quite routinely if we're being honest with ourselves. 

(whatisableism)

Cultural Tails (Tales) - The Story Everyone Tells

de·us ex ma·chi·na

/ˌdāəs ˌeks ˈmäkənə,ˌdāəs ˌeks ˈmäakənə/

noun

1. an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel.

Our lives are a series of stories that evolve in quantum ways every second as we are affected by the realities in our environments and the decisions we make surrounding them. Much of what goes on around us is beyond our control. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Psychology, it's phenomenological in the sense that,

the discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.

How capably we are able to engineer our own stories depends on our ability to accept that the phenomena that surround us is essentially beyond our control. Sometimes, as in literature or theatre, a deus ex machina is helpful in resolving the seemingly hopeless life situations that are ultimately beyond our control, but not beyond our personal influence and ability to internalize and accept. Partly as a response to what I wrote recently about how the path of teaching chose me, and also just because it's front of mind, this resolve is what I want to talk about today. 

Essential to the stories of our lives, recognizing deus ex manchina that have unexpected power to resolve a sense of hopelessness, or what Victor Frankl would characterize as a lack of purpose, is critical to our resilience and happiness. Viktor Frankl's (1946) Man's Search for Meaning chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live. According to Frankl, the book intends to answer the question "how was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" He observed that prisoners who found something to do every day appeared less vulnerable to the guards, and subsequently were judged as useful in one way or another; not as expendable. I simply cannot even imagine the horror of that reality, but nonetheless, it was documented by Frankl, (perhaps that was his purpose in attempting to make any sense of the horror,) and it makes sense to me.

I took away from this book the notion that without purpose, there is nothing. I think I already knew this on some level, but not to the point where I was considering the concept as part of my minute-by-minute navigation of daily challenges. I have come to realize implicitly that purpose needs to be at the core of everything I do. Purpose is a deus ex machina that resolves nearly all hopeless situations in life. It's a very critical one and we may need help finding it sometimes, but we have to have it. Hope is an action word.

A Real Emergency in Education- Crisis As Opportunity...

Let's face it, to some people everything is an emergency.

A Chinese symbol for crisis is made up of two parts:

danger and opportunity…

                                    _

Crisis as Opportunity (wéi ji) 

Danger – originally pictured as a man on the edge of a precipice

Opportunity – a reminder of the seemingly small but important opportunity that can come out of danger

There is controversy surrounding the symbol above and its interpreted meaning, but that's for other people to worry about. For the sake of the point I'm making, I believe as interpreted, the idea behind the meaning of the symbol above is very important. How it's further interpreted in practice is exponentially more important.

One particular tale revolving around the symbol and its message goes like this...

A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. "I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived."

Emergencies are often what we make of them. 

I can't tell you how many times I've had to address the emergent situation that someone dared to park in someone else's regular parking spot in our staff parking lot. 

e·mer·gen·cy

/əˈmərjənsē/

Learn to pronounce

noun

1. a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.

I Seem To Be A Verb...

"travel" (CC BY 2.0) by  fdecomite 

I have recently become more familiar with the life and times of Buckminster Fuller. When I think deeply about the spirit of inquiry, I find it useful to learn about those who personify it, and Buckminster, or "Bucky" as he was oft referred to, had to be a premium example.

In his 1970 book I Seem To Be a Verb, he wrote,

I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing—a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe. Buckminster Fuller

This quote reminded me of  Robert Sylwester, another individual that beyond a shadow of a doubt for me, personifies the spirit of inquiry, I think mostly because of the Buckminster Fuller reference to "being a verb." Verbs connote actions, or movement. In another post here I explained that we (human beings) are in constant motion; traveling in simultaneous physical, psychological, emotional, and cognitive realms. Robert Sylwester characterizes this need to be in motion ...

The planning, regulation, and prediction of movements are the principal reasons for a brain. Plants are as biologically successful as animals, but they don’t have a brain. An organism that’s not going anywhere of its own volition doesn’t need a brain. It doesn’t even need to know where it is. What’s the point? Being an immobile plant does have its advantages however. Plants don’t have to get up every day and go to work because they’re already there. 

On the other hand, if an organism has legs, wings, or fins, it needs a sensory system that will inform it about here and there, a make-up-its-mind system to determine whether here is better than there or there is better than here, and a motor system to get it to there if that’s the better choice – as it is, alas, when we have to go to work.

I think that learning can be described as movement; multiple journeys over a lifetime in the simultaneous physical, psychological, emotional and cognitive realms. I believe the process of inquiry provides us with opportunities to travel the most engaging pathways on these journeys, perhaps, fortunately, the ones less traveled by.

Buckminster Fuller and Robert Sylwester both present learning as a process that does not stand still. Young children certainly understand that learning doesn't stand still. They have a hard time standing still for any reason. Moving and evolving (aka learning) is a natural state for kids. In another post here I addressed the natural learning tendencies of preschool kids. Kids have massive learning potential in the first five years of life before educators even meet them in kindergarten. Kids are curious, inquisitive and unafraid for the most part to make learning mistakes. Play is learning for them in these formative years. Virtually everything they do at this stage of life teaches them something. It seems like Buckminster and Robert are on to something.

One size fits all?

 flickr image via cameronparkins

My school (formerly a sixth to eighth grade middle school,) is now an inquiry-focused, sciences and technology kindergarten to eighth grade school... elements that when put together can also be called my dream job. The school is in its third year of this paradigm shift toward a custom-built K-8 inquiry, sciences and technology context. We believe that our new school context creates an optimal environment to perpetuate the learning goals of our District.

The inquiry part of what we're doing at our school is what I want to focus on here. What is inquiry, and how are we building an inquiry-based school? This is the inquiry question we've been working on answering. To me, the process of answering this question is what's so exciting about being part of Glendale school's transformation. Our group of teachers are all at different places in their understanding of inquiry, technology and sciences, and that is not only OK, it is expected in an inquiry-based learning environment. We all have personal learning tendencies. Some like to go fast, take risks and make mistakes... others are more cautious and calculated, but everyone needs to be supported if we are to effectively balance the professional development needs of all staff. I believe it is very important to remember that an inquiry-based school doesn't work very well as a one-size-fits-all environment to address this diversity.

It is very important that we, (meaning all members of the school family: students, staff, parents and significant community members as partners,) have a collective vision and mission that guide our practice, but it's also very important that each individual member of our school understands that the collective vision and mission does not dictate that there is only one correct way to do something, and that we don't all have to be at the same place, and on the same timeline as we learn forward. If we were to believe so as teachers, we would not be modeling an authentic inquiry teaching and learning context, as surely we understand that our students don't learn in the same way, and at the same pace. The inquiry learning process is in part driven by the students themselves making it impossible to line everyone up in order of learning space and learning time. From Alberta Education on inquiry learning,

Effective inquiry is more than just asking questions. Inquiry-based learning is a complex process where students formulate questions, investigate to find answers, build new understandings, meanings and knowledge, and then communicate their learning's to others.  In classrooms where teachers emphasize inquiry-based learning, students are actively involved in solving authentic (real-life) problems within the context of the curriculum and/or community.  These powerful learning experiences engage students deeply.

 As we move forward we are asking ourselves over and over again, "how do we create authentic inquiry learning within our classrooms and school," we are confronted by the reality that, (like any good inquiry question,) there is more than one answer. There has to be, owing to the fact that every member of our school family possesses different knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA) relevant to inquiry learning, and even within each KSA, we all possess different levels of function. This is real life, and it's awesome. The diversity we have among our school family members is not a bug; it's a feature... as long as we frame it that way and are able to let go of our anxieties about changing the way we are teaching and learning. There is no one size fits all solution to our guiding inquiry question... we need everybody's answers.

As we ubiquitously create the school we want to serve kids best in an inquiry-based, science and technology focused context, it is critically important that we understand the answers are in here... we are the answer to every question we ask regarding the directions we go, the services we provide and the ways that we care for each other, our students and the rest of the Glendale school family. In the authentic spirit of professionalism and collaboration, we must look first to ourselves for the answers to our own questions... that's what creativity is all about.

Returning to our District Education Plan, we couldn't ask for a better frame to guide our inquiry. We are representing the District-wide goals of inclusion, literacy and high school completion. We see the process as constructive. We start by inquiring about inclusion. We ask ourselves the inquiry question, "how do we create a sense of belonging for every single member of our school family?" and then we work off this foundation building toward other inquiry questions that guide our effort to promote literacy across the curriculum, and eventual successful high school completion.

When we work in a many sizes to fit many inquiry teaching and learning environment, we recognize the value of perspective. We all have one, our students included, and making the effort to know each others is inherently engaging and inclusive. We are focusing on each others strengths, and the strengths of our students to point us in the direction of likely engagement. We all come to school wanting to do well, and focusing on what we can do instead of what we can't leads us down paths that we want to travel. We fully understand that our strengths are differential, and we consider this a bonus... we promote the sharing of strengths openly so we can learn from each other and leverage our ability to maximize positive effect without the pressure of feeling that we're alone on our journey. This is the inclusive path at Glendale School.

Literacy to us is not just a reading and writing issue. We promote literacy in a wide range of developmental knowledge, skill and attitude domains. We understand that kids need to grow literacy comprehensively... physical, emotional, social, environmental, numerical, artistic, musical etc... if they are to be well-rounded learners who recognize how different levels of competence in different domains complement each other, we need to support inquiry into all these domains. We're framing them as the Sciences, and to us, they are also inclusive,

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.

– Isaac Asimov
“Prometheus,” The Roving Mind (1983)

We believe there needs to be a zen-like balance between the arts and sciences... what for many are dichotomous domains. Staff members are involved in teaching the sciences as related to their relative knowledge, skills and attitudes within particular areas. We play to people's strengths. Everyone contributes based on what they have to offer. This is our balance, and we have great capacity to represent good inquiry teaching across the spectrum.

As we strive to provide inclusive environments targeting the development of literacy across domains, we believe we are promoting high school completion. One of our projects in the context of inclusion is called Empathy ReBoot. We believe that feelings come first, thoughts second and then tools... in other words, we believe we need to be empathic to the feelings of others before we can help them think with purpose. When we become attuned to the feelings of others, even if we don't fully understand them, we can at least have insight into their perspective. This insight allows us to help them form purpose; to write their learning stories during the time they are with us; to explore and develop literacy in multiple domains.

Caring for our students in this way shows them we are interested and want to walk with them down their learning paths; to think forward. Once we enter this forward-thinking mindset, it becomes much easier to develop tools together making the journey more purposeful, efficient and enjoyable... the kind students don't want to end, even past high school.

A motto I like to use, and it's permanently fixed on my classroom wall...

If you're having fun and not learning, that's bad.
If you're learning and not having fun, that's worse.
If you're learning and having fun, that's our classroom.

 If either of the first two situations arises in my classroom, it really just means we haven't asked enough of the right questions.

Living in the world of possibilities- becoming powerful beyond measure.

I've been looking for inspiration as a new school year begins.  Every year my school district holds its annual kick-off event, and this year along with about a thousand other people, I had the tremendous fortune of listening to the story of Ben McConnell.

Ben spoke about the power every teacher possesses to positively affect the lives of their students, and he knows of what he speaks. Ben has dealt with a litany of health issues that have made his life so much more challenging than most, but he hasn't complained. The journey he has taken, and the attitude he possesses are nothing short of remarkable. Ben provides a humbling example of resilience and strength; primary elements that inclusive teaching and learning environments should be designed to nurture. Ben described teachers who found ways to access his unique motivation to be involved in school beyond measure.

The EduKare Platform...

 flickr photo via aeu044117

A great question arrived in the #edukare stream a while back from Chad Sansing (@chadsansing)... "So I wanna know, what are some of the ways edukare can restore balance?" I've been thinking about the answer.

Turns out it's pretty simple. As Gregory Hill (@mrsenorhill) says, it's all about the platform. At The Disruption Department he describes that,

platforms, in the computing and electronic fields, are common architectures or frameworks that allow developers to create applications or behaviors that can be executed on something stable, and then shared.

As it goes in the Twittersphere, the same weekend Gregory blogged the 'platform' post, someone sent me this:



What a brilliant visual representation of the platform concept, I think. No matter how much the original version of Windows was modified to fit an improved context, the original integrity of the program (the platform) remained viable and foundational.

I feel like a first year teacher again!

Like me, my wife is a teacher. Tonight she said something that really made me think. She took a transfer to a new school this fall; a school with very exciting things happening. Her new school is a freshly re-tooled science and technology focused school, and on top of that, changed from a middle school to a newly minted kindergarten - eighth grade school. Suffice to say there is a very positive buzz surrounding these changes, and the staff are working very hard to build a new culture and put the pieces together.

Amidst all the change in her new school environment, and as she was preparing for her day tomorrow, my wife said "I feel like a first year teacher again!" ...what an awesome statement! If you are an experienced teacher and you feel like this, good on you because it means you are taking risks, trying new things and moving your practice into anxiety inducing realms, but in a good way. Not to state the obvious, but learning doesn't stand still, and neither should we as teachers. If you feel a little uneasy about what you're doing this year, I'm proud of you because you're not standing still; you're moving your teaching and learning practice forward and your students will be the benefactors of the effort.

Congratulations.

Effective Leadership- Got Humility?

Effective leadership is about people- always. Without the faith of your followers, a leader you are not.

If you fail to honor your people,

They will fail to honor you;

It is said of a good leader that

When the work is done, the aim fulfilled,

The people will say, "We did this ourselves.

Lao Tzu, , 604-531 B. C., Founder of Taoism, Tao Te Ching

I can't think of a simpler concept in leadership, or one that would be considered more practical and authentic. In the measured contexts of our everyday lives as leaders, all teachers, whether they like it or not, are called upon to serve; primarily our students, but also each other, our student's parents and the learning community we are an integral part of. In humbly putting the needs of others ahead of our own as leaders, we honor them. The appreciation we receive as a result pays dividends as our followers are empowered to feel strong and supported in their important work. I strive as a leader to let good people do their work with my full endorsement, intervening only when they seek my assistance.

A former superintendent in my district said once that as a leader, you stand in front when things need defending and in back when they need celebrating... servant leadership in a nutshell. Servant leadership requires a good dose of humility to be effective, and the humility of great leaders resonates with people and inspires them to also be humble and supportive in their own leadership; to do whatever it takes to push others upward and hold them in high regard... to choose to see what's right with people.

Ben and Rosamund-Beth Zander refer to it as "giving people an A" in their book, "The Art of Possibility;" a game changer for me professionally and personally. The authors emphasize that, "giving an A is a fundamental, paradigmatic shift toward the realization that all is invented." Alas, all is invented. The lens we look through is ours alone, and it affects the way we see every other person, and every interaction we have with them. We don't even have to know what others perspectives are to initiate an open and collaborative exchange with them; we just have to know that they all have one, and most importantly, be willing to listen to it.

The humble leader thinks deeply about perspective and how it affects the equilibrium of interdependency critical to success within any functional relationship. We have to truly listen to our followers; to put aside our bias and personal perspectives to consider that there may be other ways, perhaps better ways to move our organizations forward productively and positively. The Zander's understand that when we give people an A we can be open to a perspective different from our own, For after all, it is only to a person to whom you have granted an A that you will truly listen, and it is in that rare instance when you have ears for another person that you can truly appreciate a fresh point of view.

Even the most cynical among us are susceptible to this approach. Ben Zander explains a paradoxical element to giving people an A when he says that "a cynic, after all, is a passionate person who does not want to be disappointed again." So let's not disappoint our people; let's give them all an A and strive, as the Zander's suggest, to speak to their passion, not their cynicism.

To a person, everyone of us has been shaped and formed by the variables of time and experience, and as a result we have our own personal reality tunnels; those perspectives that guide our judgments, our actions and our relationships. Humble leaders understand this, and even more importantly they understand that the private logic within all of us will affect the dynamics of every interpersonal relationship we are challenged by.