Think Like a Teacher

The day after the State of the Union, in the midst of presidential primaries,  and at the height of school budget (cut) announcements for the coming school year, I find myself itching to mimic Judith Viorst’s classic poem. I even found a handy online form for students — and teachers(?) — to write their own versions modeled in the same format.  Here is my first crack at it. Try one yourself…and pass it on. Maybe even post yours on Facebook (!).

If I were in charge of the world
I’d make thinking something to brag about and write about.
Instead of “like” or “rate,”
The options would be to reason and respond.

If I were in charge of the world
There’d be art and poetry breaks in every office and warehouse,
live music playing in every Walmart,
and open ended questions during every newscast.

If I were in charge of the world
You wouldn’t call any class a “special” or an “elective.”
You wouldn’t make kids choose between chorus and sports.
You wouldn’t have budget cuts
so obviously done without thinking.

If I were in charge of the world.

When an Apple falls from the Cupertino tree, the world listens to the earthquake and reports each aftershock. In the ramp-up to an anticipated Apple “event,” the predicto-blogs and tech columnists crank out preshocks. Edtechers from every basket, including Apple core-owners, Apple picker-enviers, and rotten Apple sighters, all stop and pay attention. This week was no exception. Predictions of Apple’s Thursday  “event” at New York’s Guggenheim tallied over 4000 Google News results 20 hours before the event. By the time you read this, that number could easily exceed 10,000. Exciting but sad.

What if we and our students anticipated school as an “event” as widely discussed. What if the buzz about what we’d be learning were a topic for bloggers, consumers of learning, and every basket of self-proclaimed “expert”? Wouldn’t it be nice if just the kids in our classes generated as much excitement about what was going to happen Thursday at 10 am?

What if we asked our students: What will happen next Thursday at ten? What do you predict? What do you really wish it would be? Knowing what you know as a seasoned school-goer, what will you tell your audience to expect? Could you possibly shape the “event” simply through your predictions?

As teachers, how will we react to what they say, especially if they are brutally honest and predict something as unprecedented as peanut butter and jelly? Are we willing to allow some of their more unique or intriguing prophecies to come true? Are we willing to let our students make their own visions happen? Are we willing to act on their responses to, “What do YOU think?” It certainly is worth asking them to play the role of expert prognosticators. Try that as a writing/thinking prompt this week, if you dare.

Are you a teaching Twinkie?

Twinkies are comfort food. There is something about the greasy slip from the cellophane wrapper, the burst of “creamy” filling (likely absolutely nothing related to cream), and the rush of sugar from that first bite. Twinkie aficionados have many approaches: squirting the cream out with your tongue — then eating the spongy cake, freezing the Twinkie and eating it as it thaws, or deep frying it for more grease than a 1960 Dodge pickup after a lube job. Even the post-Twinkie sheen on your fingers says “yum.”

The media are bemoaning the possible impending loss of this junk food jewel.  Twinkies are a rare, secret weakness held in common by nostalgic adults of almost any age, politics, or philosophical persuasion. But does the common experience of Twinkies make them worthy of preservation?

School is familiar. All adults remember the pattern: lesson/lecture, practice, homework. We may have found our personally preferred ways of squirting out the homework first and eating the lesson last, but school is a Twinkie experience, especially if we –as teachers –are Twinkies.  We may be so familiar with our wrappers and slippery sugar that we never stop to question the nutritional value of Twinkies. Nostalgic adults assure us that our Twinkie lessons yield solid basics that everyone should know — and solid test scores. Taxpayers like familiar Twinkie teaching. Everyone knows and understands Twinkies. Twinkies are easy to count, stack, and understand. Besides, our grandparents ate them.

What would happen if Twinkie teaching disappeared from our schools? Greater nutritional value? Healthier minds? New recipes for learning?  There are certainly plenty of Twinkie replacements ready for our menu. Invite the demise of the teaching Twinkie.

“The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.”

-Pico Iyer, “The Joy of Quiet” in the New York Times, Dec. 29, 2011

 Amen.

I think a lot about what it means to be in touch, connected, and able to synthesize all that bombards my mind and  screen daily, nightly, weekly, constantly.  I love being able to see and read and listen to so many more voices and images than I could even a decade ago. But I  yearn for the disconnected days Iyer prescribes. As teachers and model learners, we have an extra responsibility to excavate the issue of finding clarity, digging deeply in front of our students (and our own children).

For a moment I indulge in public excavation:

Should being “in touch” occasionally mean something tactile?

Why do some blogs make me long for time to just look at and wonder about things?

How can I seam all the pieces together better?

Do our kids ever have a chance to seam things together or dig deeply to form clarity? Should we artificially require them to do so  or wait for them to feel an intrinsic drive to do so on their own?

School rarely offers the Joy of Quiet. Frenetic School — where most students live a double life, publicly doing what they should while secretly doing what they want below the desk — erases any time for the Joy of Quiet.

Sometimes the lyrics of a song validate my thoughts and provide the seams, stitching clarity. Sometimes it is the words of a character in a novel. More often today, it is a someone’s blog post that starts the sewing machine of my mind. But I know to look for and relish these moments as Joys amid the din. I know to walk away from the screen and take a walk with the sounds of the lake or perhaps an iPod.

Our schools need to facilitate the Joy of Quiet, too. And I don’t mean an old lady whispering “hush” in the library.