Simply Love

I woke up this morning, even before I remembered, thinking about love, about how teaching is about love, maybe only about love, and how seldom we talk about it.

Today is a fitting day for love. I have mourned my brother for sixteen years today. Sometimes it seems like yesterday that he was still here, as though it might yet be possible to pick up the phone and talk to him, and other times those missing years, the years of missing, are unimaginably vast. Forever. That inconsolable word. I sometimes consider the ease of forgetting, yet how important this remembering is. Remembrance not only breaks but opens hearts; remembrance brings weight and substance to pitiless statistics of death that toll far from my small circle and turns them into sorrow too deep for tears, into love.

Isn’t this what learning is? This stretching out of our small circles to love more widely?

Can we teach love? Teach with love? Teach to love?

It seems a small thing to think about, I suppose, in this time of a global pandemic, of deep divisiveness, of unthinkable inequities, of endless wars and mounting ecological ruin. We turn our minds to changing the world through education. Debates rage about what and how to teach to this not-yet-agreed-upon change and who we want our children to become through any changes or what they need to know to become agents of this change: we splinter, divide, tangled in our complex ruminations and expanding theories, expending our energies to defend our own causes and discount others.

Yet there have been dark days before this.

W. H. Auden, sitting “uncertain and afraid” in “one of the dives/ On Fifty-second Street” on September 1, 1939, reflects that “no one exists alone”: thus, “We must love one another or die.” This is echoed decades later by Martin Luther King, Jr. writing from Birmingham jail in 1963: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” We must, thus, he says, become extremists for love.

Perhaps it is this small, this simple: to teach with love, for love, to love, as love, so that with the remembrance of the weight of even one death, an inextinguishable gratitude for the preciousness of living, of life, for all life blossoms and grows.

Keeping Still

I am lying in a tent staring up at the roof. I can hear my granddaughter singing just outside it. We are in her bedroom. I am tucked in beside a giant tiger and a bunny. I know there is a basket of books beside me, but I can’t move.

I call out to Ava, “Don’t you want to read a book?”

“Not right now,” she says, “I’m playing.”

In the distance I hear my son. “Ava, you can’t leave Grandma in the tent! I’m going to come and get her to see the twins if you do.”

At this threat, Ava comes into the tent, crouching down so that I can see her and explains the game again. I am supposed to be sleeping and it’s not time to get up yet.

For Ava, this virtual play (I am on the phone in the FaceTime app) is ordinary. For me, it is surreal, a miracle, terrifying. We know so little about this world that children are growing up in. 

I can get up and empty the dishwasher or put on a load of wash, keeping my phone nearby to listen for any new instructions, but I lie on the carpet and imagine myself there. Present. It isn’t difficult, although perhaps it is the most difficult challenge of this new world. This slowness of presence when it’s possible to do something else.

I think about the hours and hours spent playing cards with my brother. Long slow days that wind thick connections that aren’t severed even by death.

I stay still. It’s not time to get up yet. I listen to Ava sing.

The harder the conflict

I woke up this morning questioning my commitments. I didn’t want to go to CrossFit at all. Ever. Why, I wondered, after years of doing nothing more vigorous than gentle walking, did I choose such high-intensity training? I’m tired. I questioned my commitment to continue with my doctorate. I’ve spent 12 hours a day for the past few days trying to meet a deadline for a draft of the first three chapters of my dissertation. I’m tired. I questioned writing this blogpost. Every year for the past eight, I’ve commemorated my brother here on this day. What would it matter, I wondered, if I missed this year?

It wouldn’t. Not really.

Except that each time I pause to remember Marc, I remember that I have this gift of time that is lost to him forever. I have more blessings than I can count, and a lot of work left to do to keep my promise to him to find ways to ensure there is a place in the schools of tomorrow for the brilliant children like my brother who struggle with learning in our schools today. And I remember, too, the Thomas Paine quote he sent me days before he died:

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

The conflicts I face are so small, my rewards won so cheaply; it’s back to work for me with a grateful heart.

Why do we listen to John Hattie?

Recently I received a memo to remind me of John Hattie’s research on collective teacher efficacy, the number one influence, according to his mega-analysis, on student achievement:

Collective teacher efficacy (d = 1.57). This is a factor that can be manipulated at a whole school level. It involves helping all teachers on the staff to understand that the way they go about their work has a significant impact on student results – for better or worse. Simultaneously, it involves stopping them from using other factors (e.g. home life, socio-economic status, motivation) as an excuse for poor progress. Yes, these factors hinder learning, but a great teacher will always try to make a difference despite this, and they often succeed.

There are so many questions no one seems to ask. First, how do we know this is true? So often we are handed this nugget of information as though it were fact. Hattie’s famous list of influences is a meta-analysis of 800 meta-analyses of more than 50,000 quantitative studies of variables affecting the achievement of students. But what does that mean? Despite the large numbers, it means that Hattie selected only those studies that focused on factors that he argues can be influenced in schools, so topics like class, poverty, health in families, and nutrition are excluded. Thus, although he says teachers should not use those factors as an “excuse,” he does not calculate their impact on learning. He includes only quantitative studies, that is, studies that measure what can be measured, test results, for example. Anything that documents the experiences of children and teachers, their joy, their anguish, their hopes and fears is excluded. He includes or excludes further studies based on his beliefs about the quality and motives of the research. These 50,000 chosen studies, then, conducted in the past, are stirred in the pot of statistical analysis, place, gender, culture, age, ability all blended, amalgamated, averaged and then summarized to give us the list of influences.

I keep wondering why we accept this list as though numbers so derived matter more than common sense. Children who are hungry, who don’t know where they are going to sleep at night, whose parents are suffering in the grip of generational poverty and trauma are not going to magically “improve” when we use concept mapping (effect size 0.64) in our classrooms. Although schools can’t “influence” poverty, our time and resources are used to heal, at least in small ways, the effects: we have food programs, extra clothing, washing machines and showers, counseling for children who are angry, hurt, grieving; we send home grocery cards, Christmas hampers, used laptops; we have after-school programs, organize funding for running shoes, and to pay costs so all the children can attend field trips or get extra music lessons. When we shush a child who is talking during the announcements, and he tells us to fuck off, pushes over his chair, and storms out of the room, we understand that it’s very possible he didn’t sleep last night, because he shares his room with two brothers and his aunt’s baby who often cries most of the night; we know he came late to school and so missed the breakfast program and likely hasn’t eaten since we fed him lunch yesterday; we understand that anger is a response to frustration, hurt, pain. We feed him; we love him. But it doesn’t help us teach him math. This is not an excuse. A teacher cannot be responsible for the success of a child. Even a great teacher.

But then, what is a greatness in a teacher? With the Olympics on right now, we know what great athletes are. Still, even a great snowboarder like Mark McMorris is excused when gusts of wind shift his balance. Even a great skater like Nathan Chen is excused when the complex, impossible to measure factors of heart, nerve and confidence destroy his poise.

Most of us are just ordinary. Still, I’ve never met a teacher who didn’t try. I see day-to-day miracles from ordinary teachers who try, try, try every day, without fan support, without a coach helping from the sidelines, without the resources they need, despite ludicrous lists that tell them to simply try harder, despite gusting winds and broken hearts.

I wonder why we continue to listen to the statistical machinations of an Australian academic rather than the teachers in our own community who say, please help.

Fishing Stories

I have been reading. A lot. The more I read, though, the less I seem to understand anything at all. I’m trying to find the answer to how to teach. I don’t mean the technical part. After twenty odd years, I’m confident I can plan a lesson, organize a classroom, adapt, modify, assess, intervene, revise. I’m always learning, of course, but I’m “on my way,” as a teacher might say. What I mean, though, is the rest of teaching, the part that no one seems to talk about.

I’m not even sure I can put it into words. It’s the day-to-day and moment-to-moment work of teaching. It’s how to be present even when you are tired or sad, how to stay calm and ready to hear the children even when you are frustrated or hot or hungry, how to keep trying to help a child who pushes you away at every opportunity, who hurts the other children, who sometimes weeps uncontrollably in the cloakroom. It’s the decisions day-to-day and moment-to-moment of teaching – what to teach these children before you (not the ones you planned for), how to teach them in this moment for this lesson (should I begin with a pretest? an anticipation guide? paired conversations? a video?), when to keep pushing forward even when the children seem lost or bored, when to stop and let them run or change directions entirely to begin again differently. It’s all the things that need to be created in the moment, moments that can’t be planned for or polished up.  It’s finding space to think about this part of teaching in a day filled with doing and assessing, planning, organizing, organizing, organizing to begin again the next day.

My brother used to send me pithy quotes like this one: whatever you focus on is what you get. I’m beginning to wonder if what I want to focus on can’t be found in books. Perhaps all this reading is only pointing me in the wrong direction. How, after all, can we capture in words what exists only in a moment, in this moment, when Janice looks at me with a question in her eyes and the light of hope shining behind. And the moment passes.

What’s funny, though, is that it is the moments, in the end, that last, that we remember, that inspire or discourage us, that stay with us, like the last conversation I had with my brother thirteen years ago. I was telling him fishing stories from my trip to Haida Gwaii. He was laughing. Save some for later, he said. Tell them to me when you get here.

Summer Slow

If you are a teacher, you know about the summer list. Not only are you going to lounge at the beach and read novels, hang out with friends and family, take trips to here or there, and binge-watch that series from Netflix everyone is raving about, but you are also going to clean the kitchen cupboards, organize the laundry room, sort through your drawers to get rid of all the clothes you no longer wear, plan an amazing unit for school start-up, collect math games, and redesign your classroom.  

Yet somehow, at least for me, summer time simply slips away. I’m not sure where it goes. A barbecue with friends. A weekend with family. An afternoon of shopping for a gift. My list is still long.

This morning the sky is tinted apricot; the ocean is bands of soft blue. I sit here and watch the colours change and I wonder if I’m missing something by always doing something.

I wonder, too, about our children. What do I do now, the students always ask me, when they have finished something early. Whatever you like, I say. But what, they ask. Do nothing, I say, and they stare at me, perplexed. I wonder if they even know anymore, in these days of always-on-now entertainment, about the rich possibilities of doing nothing. I wonder, too, if, in that slow creeping way of change that overtakes us unnoticed, I, too, will soon know nothing of doing nothing. Will I always, in those moments between doing something, pick up my phone and scroll through Facebook, text a friend, play word games on an app rather than sit and stare out a window? Will I miss something important?

New Year’s Resolution: Do Not Be a Curmudgeon

Lately I’ve begun to feel like one of those dreadful curmudgeons, crossed arms, curled lip, jaded eye, slouched in the back of required meetings. I’m trying to be positive. I love teaching. I love the students. I love the challenge that each day brings. I love puzzling at the end of the day over the children, thinking about how I can engage Janie in the story we are reading or support Andrew in fractions or work with Sandra and Linda to solve the burbling dispute between them. I love designing next step lessons, building on what captured students’ imaginations, adding more steps where they were confused, creating multiple pathways when needed to meet diverse needs and places where we’ll converge again as a community. It’s challenging. It’s stimulating. It’s joyful. It’s exhausting.

I can’t help wishing, though, that someone finally would say, good heavens, let us help teachers. They spend the whole day in one small room with thirty children! They try so hard to teach each of those children beautifully every day! How can we help? What do they need?

Instead, we are always bombarded by more that we need to do. This year, we have a new curriculum, modernized, we’re told, to respond to the new world of constant change. There are new core competencies – communication, thinking, and personal and social competencies – as well as new curricular competencies, big ideas and learning standards for each of the content areas. I am supposed to make sure that what I do matches these new ideas. Connected to this is an experimentation in new reporting procedures. “The ultimate goal,” the Minister of Education tells us, “is to develop a student reporting process that gives families a deeper understanding of their child’s progress at school through timely and comprehensive information.” In my district, this means that I need to share with parents “authentic evidence of learning” with “explicit reference to learning standards,” including “descriptive feedback” of how students are doing and “student voice” – their reflection or their description of “where they are in the learning process” – a minimum of 8 times this year as part of “ongoing communication.” In addition, I must write two report cards with comments and, rather than letter grades, include a sliding scale on levels of competency from “beginning” to “extending.”

None of these changes are bad, particularly. Somewhere out there people have worked very hard in meeting rooms around long tables with chart paper and coloured pens, coffee and muffins on the side table to sustain them and assorted sandwiches at lunch. They’ve consulted experts, reviewed the research, and created comprehensive documents complete with coloured charts and appendices.

Yet as I scramble to figure out these new changes, attend meetings, try new programs (we have, as well, a new attendance program, a new online portfolio program, an upcoming requirement to add coding lessons), my attention to the children is necessarily fractured. My time is not infinite. I try not to be angry. I try not to think about the millions of dollars spent on these changes.

Still, I can’t help but imagine, sometimes, what it would be like if even a fraction of that funding were spent on what teachers need, if instead of creating documents to tell us what they need us to do differently (whoever they are, these people who sit comfortably somewhere and have ideas), they came to us to find out what we need instead. Imagine, oh, imagine, a team coming to our school, setting up a space with coffee and muffins, offering us assorted sandwiches at lunch (oh, the luxury!) and time (time!) to sit and ponder with them about the challenges and progress, the obstacles and advantages, the small things that would make a big difference, the resources that would help us move forward. Imagine how it would feel to go back into the classroom (as much as I love teaching, it is hard, hard work and there are days when it all seems impossible). Imagine, then, the bounce in our step, the feeling that we are not alone, that we are appreciated (muffins!) and listened to as though our opinion counted, and supported as though our work mattered.

Instead, the changes roll on. From somewhere. I try to stay positive.