Showing posts with label duty to care. Show all posts
Showing posts with label duty to care. Show all posts

Sunday, April 25, 2010

We need schools where "everybody knows your name."


Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.
You wanna go where people know,
people are all the same,
You wanna go where everybody knows
your name. 
…Original and full length lyrics for “Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” the theme song from the 1980s television sitcom “Cheers,” was written by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo.

My colleague, Dan McDonald, master teacher and kid-magnet extraordinaire, came up with a darn good concept one day. He said we need "Norm schools..." the kind where "everybody knows your name," and not just during regular school hours. Dan is the kind of teacher who knows the value of making meaningful connections with students over time by first getting to know their personal learning stories. Some kids' stories read more happily than others, and he knew that without that connection, scholastic success was but a dream, especially for the kids from at-risk environments that he typically supported in his role as an alternative teacher.

Dan wondered out loud what our educational environment would look, sound and feel like if every person that worked in a school, metaphorically speaking, knew the name of every kid who attended that school... and of course he didn't mean that they should memorize the yearbook. He meant knowing their names in the sense that the characters from 'Cheers' knew Norm's name, and everyone else's in the bar... that 'Cheers' was like home for many of them, and the patrons like family. The names were associated with each character's deeper being; their identities and perspectives toward the daily challenges that formed the story-lines of the show. The bar was a place for them to feel accepted- a sense of belonging, and perhaps a place where they were comfortable being vulnerable as they shared their troubles and flaws with each other. He thought that schools should be this type of environment.

He wondered further how schools could become more welcoming and open to students who are vulnerable, flawed and dealing with problems... environments where they feel that sense of belonging allowing them to share their challenges with significant, supportive others knowing that they won't be judged or categorized. To nurture this sense of belonging, he pondered why schools shut their doors for all intent and purposes at 4:00 PM, and don't effectively open up again until 7:00 AM the next day. There are many reasons to leave school buildings open after regular school hours, but Dan was interested really in just one. He figured that one way to facilitate a deep, meaningful and positive connection to school would be to leave the doors open into the evenings each day. He had brilliant ideas about school partnerships with social service and helping agencies whereby programming and services for youth would be carried on right where school left off every day. He understood that for some, school is the only safe and nurturing environment kids know... why not allow them the privilege of being in that safe place as much as possible? Why not source agencies and people who would be willing to collaborate with educators to support kids in the evenings in this way? I think Dan was on to something with these questions.

Take some time to think about what kind of school you work at, or what kind of school your kids attend. Is it the kind where kids feel a sense of belonging, safety and care... like family, or is it some other kind of school? If it is some other kind of school, perhaps ask yourself what you can do to change that feeling.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Hybrid Thinking- Why We Shouldn't Care Where Good Ideas Come From

flickr CC image via M 93

Our human tendency to debate opposing ideologies without apology until one is accepted by a majority resulting in a "winning" idea or concept is counter-intuitive to progress. On the contrary, the integrative mind understands that within the current change climate we find ourselves immersed in, our viability as a global society will depend on a synthesis of ideas that should not be considered dichotomous, but rather complementary to one another. In the context of supporting effective child development, this form of hybrid thinking will ensure that we don't miss the boat on any developing idea's potential.

By taking two or more perspectives on effective and positive child development and combining their best elements into a synthesized hybrid of all of them, a new paradigm is born, and those who brought each perspective to the process no longer operate independently and in defense of their point of view, but rather interdependently in support of each other and the best possible course of action. Don't our sons and daughters deserve our absolute best objective thinking relative to the care we provide them?

 To that end I make two suggestions... read The Opposable Mind by Roger Martin,
 and next time you find yourself in a heated debate defensively stating your
 opinion, simply stop doing it and do something very different. Instead of
 defending your position and fighting to win the battle, take a breath, think deeply
 and objectively about the issue, and then take a serious critical perspective toward
 the opposing argument, looking for any shred of a good idea or element that you
 can live with, and that may even synergize with your position. You may even want
 to suggest to your opponent that he/she does the same with your 'side' so both of
 you can see the middle ground you were both previously blind to.

 You'll be amazed at the results this strategy produces; trust me, I've tried it. You
 can do this when involved in debate over any issue, but when it comes to doing
 our best thinking relative to providing every possible outside-the-box opportunity
 for our kids to learn and grow, we can't afford to do anything less.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

R.I.P. Phoebe Prince

The January 2010 suicide in Massachusetts of Phoebe Prince prompted investigators to accuse nine of her fellow students with the bullying that may have prompted her suicide. Phoebe Prince was the latest casualty in a war we are not winning; the war on bullying.
 flickr photo via trix0r

How many of these incidents will it take before we realize that our typical reactive response does nothing to prevent future tragic incidents from occurring? The odds stacked against our sons and daughters are overwhelming if they find themselves the subjects of bullying behavior, and we need to stop the cycle. I have written in this blog about the importance of learning bullies' stories, and for those kids on the bully-victim spectrum, I sincerely believe this needs to be done if we are to help ease whatever pain is causing their actions. This proactive approach is necessary to curb the influence of bullying, but it won't bring back Phoebe Prince or any of the others who have succumbed to one of the biggest social challenges educators are facing today... kids tendency to want to share their personal pain.

As a former counselor in middle school, and having worked with kids from at-risk environments for 16 years, I have heard stories that upset me to the point where I have had to take the long way home after a bad day at work in order to avoid displaying my grief to my family. I have been reduced to tears hearing kids stories about their home environments, what they deal with socially at school and how this affects their ability to function in even the most basic ways. Our kids are hurting. They are hurting more profoundly than they ever have before. New faceless tools to inflict pain toward others like text messaging and other social media outlets have produced a desensitized generation of perpetrators that has raised the threat of bullying to epidemic levels.

What are we to do? There are no doubt infinite opinions regarding how to deal retroactively with cases such as Phoebe Prince's, and the vast majority of them will default to an eye for an eye perspective. I honestly have nothing to say about that. What should happen to the individuals involved as perpetrators in cases like this will be decided by the courts, and that will be that. You know what though... I'll say it again; it won't bring back Phoebe Prince.

Our kids are lost... how can we make a statement other than this one while attempting to make any sense whatsoever of incidents like the Phoebe Prince bullycide? There was at least one case in my high school twenty-five years ago, and it's still happening.



We need to do what we do in schools differently if we are to curb this most devastating problem, and as I said before, we should start by knowing kids' stories. Teachers must make it their business to connect with kids on personal levels; to reclaim them. In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his foreword to the book, "Reclaiming Youth at Risk- Our Hope for the Future,"

The reclaiming environment is one that creates changes that meet the needs of both the young person and society. To reclaim is to recover and redeem, to restore value to something that has been devalued.

Teachers, and anyone else who works in schools, it's our most imperative moral and ethical responsibility to reclaim our lost children. We need to establish the most basic awareness that children are our gift to the future and that we are not packaging them very well as of late. We need to truly provide safe and nurturing environments in our schools for kids to thrive without fear and anxiety regarding their emotional, social and psychological well-being. As educators, we tend to underestimate the value of those regular day-to-day things we do in schools for kids who are in so much personal pain that they feel they can't live another day. In the words of Carl Jung,
An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Teachers, there are no emergencies in education; we get so worked up about trivial things on a daily basis that we forget, or perhaps some of us never realize that behind the faces of our students are vulnerable young souls dealing with what to them could be life or death problems that overshadow any test, assignment, lab, bit of unfinished homework or any other minor delay in the learning process. Our greatest challenge in contemporary education is to reclaim kids; all of them. Their problems are real, even if they are only real to them- they are real... make no mistake about that. Do not shirk your responsibility to acknowledge this fact, and take the appropriate action to be there when a student chooses you.

That student will choose you because in some way, on any given day, you have provided just a glimmer of hope in the dark and damaging world he/she endures.

Don't be the last person a student came to before doing something bad that cannot be reversed... be the first person a student came to and will never forget because you were willing to share the pain as you held hands without judgement taking those first steps through their grief toward healing.

In the brilliant words of Professor Herbert W. Vilakazi,
"The problems of children and of youth, giving rise to child and youth care programs, can only begin to be solved in that society of humankind’s dream; a more collective-oriented society than at present, when the father of the child shall be every man as old as the child’s father; when the mother of the child shall be every woman as old as the child’s mother; a society of responsibility of the entire community..."
Is there any more important responsibility than this?

Rest in peace Phoebe Prince.



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