Tag Archives: Philosophy

Trust and Community

I first met Lindsea in February of 2008. The details of our meeting can be found here, but I am quit certain Lindsea’s name isn’t new to anybody well versed in the Edublogosphere. She has become one of the Web 2.0 poster children.

Since our first online, meeting Lindsea and I have kept tabs on each other’s comings and goings through Twitter, our blogs, and Skype. We have had Skype chats about music; we exchanged Tweets about film quotes and song lyrics and coming events. In short Lindsea and I have become good friends. I feel I have more in common with her than most of the teachers I deal with on and off the Internet. I am not sure what that says about my maturity level or Lindsea’s for that matter, but I am certain that the future of education relies on crossing our generational boundaries and speaking about our future with young people as often as we can. We need to speak to them, not about them!

One day in May, I think it was, we both realized that we would both be in San Francisco in July. I am not sure about Lindsea, but for me, there was no question that we should meet. I have never officially taught Lindsea in a classroom, but after all the contact we have had online I feel as if I know her as well if not better than any “real-body” students in my charge.

After a few Tweets and phone calls, we arranged to meet at a coffee shop on Chestnut Street on July 11th. A nagging paranoia and fear of what could happen when a grown man meets a teenage girl he has “met” on the internet face-to-face. I could see the headlines now, “Straight A student and star of the Web 2.0 world accuses radical teacher of…”you fill in the blanks. Teenage girls have done stranger things.

How did I know this girl wouldn’t just mess with me and ruin my already precarious career with some bogus allegations? The Internet fear-mongerers work full-time to keep us weary.

I was driving over the golden Gate Gate Bridge on a perfect Northern California day blasting Sun Kil Moon when it hit me- I believe in human beings! I trust them, and because I trust them, I believe in the relationships I build with them, whether in person or online. If I truly have faith in 21st century learning and the new web, then I must trust that these tools, when used responsibly, will help maintain valuable and trustworthy networks. Any mistrust of this philosophy will only diminish the integrity of everything we are doing here. A network becomes a community when you have faith in its members and trust that they have communal goals in mind. You cannot achieve this level of confidence without a creation level of faith.

I will not get into the play-by-play of what we did and how it all felt. I will leave that for a future post or maybe Lindsea can pick-up on that. Instead I will paint a very abstract sketch of how it all went down: the two of us met, drove around the city, watched a drum circle near Hippy Hill in Golden Gate park, went shoe shopping, went to an herb store in The Mission, took in the view at Twin Peaks. We blasted music by local Hawaiian bands and Modest Mouse in the car driving through The Castro. We talked about- Adolescence, sustainability, education, music, Hunter S. Thompson, responsibility, hypocrisy, politics, capitalism, apathy and revolutions. I thought about how- I wish my daughter would grow up to be as wise as the young woman by my side, who hours before was reading Kurt Vonnegut. I wondered whether or not I could ever meet her mother and thank her for raising such an amazing young woman. I relished the thought that I have a group of young people who I am cultivating worldwide to aid in the revolution and how that is all I have ever wanted from teaching. I wondered why I didn’t have teachers like me when I was Lindsea’s age. I probably would have avoided a lot of confusion, but then again maybe it is in that confusion that I learned the most important lessons.

It was a good day.

After our meeting, we promised to write blog posts detailing every facet of our meeting, but as it so often happens, we both let life steer us towards other priorities, other projects. That is until last week, when we re-connected and had a chat on Skype. We recorded the hour-long talk and below you will find my first Podcast. Lindsea is also on a Monday deadline to post her Podcast. I am very curious to see what she found important to highlight and how she will view our talk.

This is my first Podcast, but I am sure it will not be my last. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire process. I hope that after listening to it, when people ask you to explain what you mean when you say 21st century learning, or web 2.0, you can guide them to this post. Tell them that Web 2.0 is about trust and community and collaboration and understanding the spaces between people and finding ways to close those spaces. The jargon may change, Web 2.0 just the latest buzzword, it is nothing more than a tool that help us learn to become more human and organic.

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Connector of Worlds

EduPunk is so yesterday

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It is depressing how even “new” ideas labeled as punk, as in EduPunk, can quickly become mundane water cooler banter in this incestuous and quickly homogenizing edublog echo chamber. Like starving piranha we all latch on to the latest term, tool, or idea and beat it to death, till there is nothing left of it but a shell of the idea it once was or could have been. Then we champion the innovative century. Something is askew in my network, and I think it may need a little kick in the ass, that only anything labeled punk can give it.

I sit armed with a play list swarming with Fugazi, a chip on my shoulder, and a need to vent. Like many of you, I saw the term EduPunk for the first time on Twitter yesterday and took the bait. I followed a few links, googled some names, and by the end of the night I had added about ten new people to my network that seem to be more on my level than anyone in my pre-Edupunk network.

I am not here to out punk anyone or defend terms I had no hand in creating. I am also not here to cheerlead a group of people who could articulate their ideas much better than myself. This post is already one of many, probably too many, posts trying to attach meaning to a label. The creators of the term are probably sitting back and laughing at the direction their idea has taken. Some students are already angry that adults without their input are once again hijacking their movement.

But what I hope students like Lindsea will understand is that teaching is a political act. Whether you like it or not, every time you speak with, engage, instruct, interact with young people in an effort to promote their learning you are either consciously or subconsciously steering them toward the status quo or away from it. As our society becomes more and more global, at least for those of us lucky enough to be living on the comfortable side of the digital divide known as the first world, citizens are either becoming aware of their role as consumers in a resources depleting, imperialistic, war-mongering, poor exploiting, global economy or they are waking up to the idea that there are alternatives.

As educators we have a duty to either promote this brave new world, ignore it and stick to our curriculum, or to awaken young people to alternatives to the way things “just” are. With the birth of colonial expansion in Europe, then the industrial revolution, and ending with the rise of global capitalism “defeating” communism, we are constantly being told that since capitalism won the cold war, it is the best and only option. Never mind the constant state of war necessary to maintain it, or the depletion of unrenewable resources, or the unsustainably built into a system that exploits a large percentage of the global population for the benefit and profits of a tiny sub-group of ultra rich. We are constantly told that this state of globalization is the only game in town.

Teaching is a political act. So if we truly want change we must use any means necessary to break free of the chains being imposed on education. Enter EduPunk? Sure why not. Enter anything you can think of that will help us. The terms and labels are secondary to our primary concern, which is rethinking our educational institutions to reflect our revolutionary spirit, for both students and teachers.

Wikipedia tells us that punks sometimes participate in direct action such as protests and boycotts. These acts are committed in an effort to create social change when it is felt that the normal channels for change have been proven ineffective.

Let me repeat that: These acts are committed in an effort to create social change when it is felt that the normal channels for change have been proven ineffective. I am here to say that normal channels for change have been proven ineffective.

I leave you with a few questions:

What actions are you taking to help foster change in your classroom?
Are the normal channels proving difficult to overcome?
What new (call them whatever you want) techniques do you use?
Are you willing to not lead but listen and follow your students into the unknown

Listen and follow your students into the unknown? That is where you may find the meaning of Edupunk!

We Carry Ourselves

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At its most fundamental level the Internet is nothing more than a way to spread and share information. Sometimes this information is produced by the person sharing it, but more often than not the Internet is simply the passing of acquired information. We share information in hopes that it will help us better connect with each other. We cut and paste information, passing it from one node of our network to the next hoping that it will stick where it needs to stick. I have cut and pasted the following post into all the blogs I operate on the web, in hopes that all the people who follow me will get a chance to experience the following words. I found his address by Marget Edson on Doug Noon’s great blog Borderland, and he found it from Susan Ohanian’s blog, and now I send it to you all:

Salutations, memorials, bromides: let us commence.

I want to talk about love — not romance, not love l-u-v.
I want to talk about a particular kind of love, this love: classroom teaching.

I have my posse of gaily clad classroom teachers behind me.

They like to be called college professors.
And we can’t all work for the government.

We gather together because of classroom teaching.
We have shown you our love in our work in the classroom.

Classroom teaching is a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event.
It is not built on equipment or the past.
It is not concerned about the future.
It is in existence to go out of existence.
It happens and then it vanishes.
Classroom teaching is our gift.
It’s us; it’s this.

We bring nothing into the classroom — perhaps a text or a specimen. We carry ourselves, and whatever we have to offer you is stored within our bodies. You bring nothing into the classroom — some gum, maybe a piece of paper and a pencil: nothing but yourselves, your breath, your bodies.

Classroom teaching produces nothing. At the end of a class, we all get up and walk out. It’s as if we were never there. There’s nothing to point to, no monument, no document of our existence together.

Classroom teaching expects nothing. There is no pecuniary relationship between teachers and students. Money changes hands, and people work very hard to keep it in circulation, but we have all agreed that it should not happen in the classroom. And there is no financial incentive structure built into classroom teaching because we get paid the same whether you learn anything or not.

Classroom teaching withholds nothing. I say to my young students every year, “I know how to add two numbers, but I’m not going to tell you.” And they laugh and shout, “No!” That’s so absurd, so unthinkable. What do I have that I would not give to you?

Bringing nothing, producing nothing, expecting nothing, withholding nothing –
what does that remind you of?
Is this a bizarre occurrence that will go into The Journal of Irreproducible Results?
Or is it something that happens every day, all the time, all over the world,
and is based not on gain and fame, but on love.

There are those who say that classroom teaching is doomed and that by the time one of you addresses the class of 2033, there will be a museum of classroom teaching.

Ever since the invention of wedge-shaped writing on a clay tablet, classroom teaching has been obsolete. It’s been comical. Why don’t we just write the assignments and algorithms on a clay tablet, hang it up on the wall, and let the students come who will to teach themselves from our documents?

Why, since the creation of writing with a pen on a piece of paper, do we still bother to have schools?

Why, since the invention of movable metal type, don’t we all just go to the library?

Why do we have to have class? Why do we need teachers?

Why, since the advent of the microchip, don’t we all stay home in our pajamas and hit send?

Technology is nipping at the heels of classroom teaching, but I perceive no threat.
How could something false replace something true?
How could a substitute, a proxy, step in for something real and alive?
How could the virtual nudge out the actual?

The other great threat to classroom teaching is the rush to data — data-driven education.
We must measure everything — percentages, charts, tables.

I’m not entirely opposed to this.
If data-driven education were a pie graph, I would have a piece.

But I was not educated and did not become a teacher to produce data.

I love the classroom.
I loved it as a student, and I love it as a teacher.
I can name every teacher I ever had:
Mrs. Mulshanok, Miss Williams, Mrs. Clark, Miss Bogan, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Muys, Mrs. Parker, Mr. Eldridge, Miss Bush — and that’s just through sixth grade.
I could go on, I promise.

I loved coming to class: the chairs, the windows, unzipping my book bag.
And I loved my teachers.
There was content, I suppose, but that’s not what I remember.
I remember my teachers.
I remember being in the room,
and no data and no bar graph will be assembled to replace that, or even to capture it.

This week my students worked on dividing a pizza between two people, and they realized that if you make the line down the center of the pizza the two sides will be equal. After much trial and error, they came to this conclusion on their own, and I welcome you to try it. I think it’s really going to take off, and let this be where it begins.

When they take a standardized test, they will be able to fill in the bubble next to the pizza that is cut exactly in half. Do they know that will be the correct answer? Yes. But I don’t care that much. What I care about is how they got there, how they figured it out for themselves.

This skinny little high school senior got herself into Smith College by writing an essay about Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s theme, “The journey, not the arrival, matters.” It worked for me.

Standardized tests measure the arrival, but they have nothing to say about the journey, about having wonderful ideas. Do you know it/do you not know it is second, and how do you know it, and who are you, is first.

The only way this knowledge grows inside a student is with a teacher, a classroom teacher. Of course, my students will insist they did it themselves, and I don’t try to disabuse them of that.

But the work you graduates have done was in the classroom with your teachers.
That’s the miracle of today.
Why don’t we talk about it?
Because it doesn’t show up.
There’s not a bar graph for classroom teaching. There’s no data for classroom teaching, and yet it persists this year and the next year and the year after that.

Telling tens of thousands of people what to do is not teaching, it’s shouting, and there’s a lot of that going around.

Showing somebody how to do something exactly the way you’ve always done it is not teaching, it’s training. And there’s plenty of that, too.

But the reality that is neither shouting nor training is classroom teaching.
Nobody can touch it because nobody can point to it.
You have it forever.
When it grows inside you, it’s doing its work.

We can disappear.
We’ll never see you again, probably.
The chairs will be folded.
It will be as if we were never here.
There will be nothing we can count after today.
But not everything that counts can be counted.
Not everything that matters can be put into a pie chart.

The Board of Trustees has set a very great challenge for itself:
to educate us all for lives of distinction.
You are never going to be able to make a bar graph out of that.
That is immeasurable, and that’s what makes it so real.
I admonish you — because that’s my job — to think about the things that float away:
your love for your friends,
the smell of the lilacs,
the feeling your families have on this day.
You will have nothing to take with you.
The diploma you receive will be someone else’s.

Everything meaningful about this moment, and these four years,
will be meaningful inside you, not outside you.

I’ve been a classroom teacher for sixteen years–as long as you have been in the classroom. We started the same year. And I hope to go on for fourteen more years.
That will make thirty, and I’ll be done.

At the end of that time, someone will bring me a box, and I will put in it a ceramic apple somebody gave me thinking it would be symbolic somehow. I will have nothing, and that will be proof of the meaning of my work.

If you can point to something, you might lose it, or you might break it, or someone might take it from you. As long as you store it inside yourself, it’s not going anywhere — or it’s going everywhere with you.

This day is a day of love.
It’s a day of your family’s love for you,
your love for each other and your teachers,
and your teachers’ love for you.

In time, the bar graphs may tumble,
the clay tablets may crumble.
They’re only made of clay.
But our love
is here to stay.

Thank you.

Please pass it on to wherever it needs to go.

Teachers Are Fighting

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I recently read an article about a teacher’s union in New Zealand fighting new rules that could have teachers fired for online behavior.

Teachers are fighting to exclude their private lives – such as personal postings on Internet sites Bebo and Facebook – from falling foul of new serious misconduct rules. The Teachers Council wants to change criteria by which officials decide whether to refer complaints against the country’s 90,000 teachers to its disciplinary tribunal. The tribunal can censure or deregister teachers for serious misbehaviour. The council says the new clause – covering “any conduct
that brings, or is likely to bring, discredit to the profession” – would plug gaps in current rules. But teacher unions fear the “all encompassing” clause would put teachers’ personal lives under unfair scrutiny, even when it had no bearing on their ability to be good teachers.

As readers of this blog are aware, I have had my own troubles dealing with this issue of being asked to resign for my online behavior. For the last few weeks, I have often found myself saying, “This is a very grey area. Incidents like mine will occur more and more often as teachers and society at large start spending more time online.”

This problem is more than just a case of inappropriate applications on Facebook, the issue at hand is that as we enter a more open and global society with more and more people allowed to express themselves publicly on the internet, professionals especially those who work with children must decide how to best express themselves in a multi-cultural world.

Teachers already have to prove they are of fit character.

What does that mean? What is fit character is probably very different in New Zealand, or New York City, or the Middle East.

Post Primary Teachers Association president Robin Duff said current misconduct criteria were “perfectly adequate”. The new rule was too vague. “What’s creditable and discreditable these days? That sort of judgment is often based on your own social background.”

To what rubric are teachers being judged on appropriate online behavior. I think we can all agree that…

allegations of physical, sexual or psychological abuse of children; inappropriate pupil relationships; viewing pornography at school; using, making or supplying drugs; neglect or illtreatment of a child or animal in their care; or crimes punishable by at least three months’ jail.

…are unacceptable anywhere, but what about teachers who promote the theory of evolution over intelligent design, or teachers who have strong feelings about the war in Iraq? Suddenly, a teacher who is pro-active in politics can be deemed unfit by a school board, a principal, or a particular group of parents.Teachers are held to a higher standard for social behavior in nearly all cases. Which is fine to an extent. I understand the level of trust that is put in my hands on a daily basis. I will expect nothing less when my daughter goes to school, but as the 21st century really gets underway, we must move forward cautiously and not allow fear of unknown technologies dictate the level of freedoms we allow the men and women teaching our children.

The reality is that teachers are not robots. We function in the same social and intellectual spheres that govern the rest of the world. It is difficult enough to be everything to everyone else: the polite and professional coworker, the qualified and hardworking employee, the fair and kind role model for students, and the polished and respectful saint for parents.

I cannot think of another job, where a person is expected to always be on their “best” behavior. We are expected to remain blank slates that will somehow shape and build the future, without offering our own ideas so as not to improperly influence young minds, lest their parents’ opinions, or that of the school board or administration should differ from our own.

We live in an age where opinions and strong beliefs can be threatening to people in power. We are told from a young age not to discuss politics or religion in public. It is unprofessional we are led to believe. But as a language arts and social studies teacher how can I not? How are we meant to teach children that they can change the existing power structures and work towards a better world, if we are no allowed to discuss the flaws in the system?

Teachers are not meant to criticize a certain president or his policies, or question the global consumer culture, or suggest that perhaps capitalism is not the best system around. Some say this type of political criticism makes a teacher of unfit character. Don’t get me wrong. I whole-heartedly agree that this type of bias has no place in a classroom, especially at the middle school level. Teachers should not be sermonizing their religious or political beliefs in the classroom, but they shouldn’t be punished for expressing them on the Internet.

If we allow schools to start firing teachers for vague indications of inappropriateness, we are opening the door to weakened teacher’s unions and a generation of teachers afraid to take risks and be themselves.

There seems to be no place left for us teacher/activists to express our ideas. It doesn’t seem fair that we cannot feel comfortable expressing ourselves on the internet, the very space we are painstakingly teaching our students to use.

It feels very hypocritical to teach students to use the tools that we ourselves are afraid to use. I believe in education more than anything else in the world. I believe that objective presentation of facts, logical thought, honesty, love, and communication are the keys to a more peaceful world. A peaceful world is my only goal. If this attitude makes me of unfit character than I suppose I have to search the earth until I find a school that agrees with my ideals. Which is what I am doing now. I have no hidden agendas. No matter what political or religious obstacles we may face, I want nothing more than to find a path toward peace. This is why I teach. This is why I write. This is why I exist. My blogs are nothing more than maps of my journey. There may have been times I have taken wrong turns, said things I shouldn’t have said, but they are meant to be read as a whole. I do not believe in sermonizing or preaching in the classroom. While my opinions may appear to take a one-sided stand at times, I work very hard to create and maintain an objective environment to teach kids to ask questions and search out the truth. That is all.

So remember that not only are…

there’s lots of other things that happen in people’s lives that have no direct bearing on people’s ability to be good teachers. Certainly not the private life of a teacher unless it impacted on the profession itself.

Personal factors in a teacher’s life often enhance their ability to better relate to and teach students. We cannot allow these freedoms to be taken away.