Sometimes one needs to take the path less traveled to truly access insight, learning and personal growth. In my case, I decided teaching Middle School Social Studies, in addition to running the advocacy business, would be the adventure I was to follow for school year 2014-2015. Now, with a few days of rest behind me following the end of the school year, I am able to say teaching provided a treasure chest of insights which I will forever be grateful for. However, it also came with great cost. Honestly, I believe I underestimated the profound amount of energy and focus required of teaching. As a result, I am exhausted. Without a doubt, teaching today is a whole different experience than it was ten, twenty, and definitely, thirty years ago. Most notably, I will be much more understanding of the classroom experience for teachers and students as a result of this year. Some of the greatest lessons came in the form of the following themes:
- Relationship
- Resilience
- Relevance
Most importantly, I discovered the following: our hearts guide the primary meaning of the learning process. The power of relationship, establishing a heart-felt connection with the students, is the key to successful teaching bar none. This becomes most evident within the Middle School setting when the students are riding a social-emotional roller coaster on nuclear fuel. Diane sure understands this intuitively and I am appreciative of her guidance when we spoke many times. Sure, there are a few students who would walk the plank for their teachers due to a deep appreciation for adults and role models. I am also grateful for the students who demonstrated extraordinary levels of cooperation and compassion as lessons or student behaviors spun out of control. Also, there are a handful of students who are uniquely connected with the curriculum or content and would think Atilla the Hun or Hannibal Lector were masterful teachers due to their love of the coursework. Nevertheless, an alarming number of students are disengaged emotionally on many levels due to a variety of factors including (but not limited to): lack of parental guidance and care, early stages of trauma at young age, high levels of stress and anxiety, as well as a vast number of students, especially boys, who have faced academic failure and frustration within school due to the inappropriate nature of our curriculum pacing and instructional styles. So once again, I want to apologize to the students who I did not develop a relationship with; there were moments when I was way too focused on learning and instruction rather than the deeper meaning discovered within relationship. In fact, I feel really bad about the few students I watched fall through the cracks for I felt I was unable to reach them for their challenges were beyond the scope of my work or schedule. Sure, this was rare, and I could easily justify it, however, within my heart, it just doesn’t feel right. For example, there was a student who literally showed up only once a week. Yes, I made basic efforts to contact her parents and counselors, but I never had a heart to heart conversation with her myself and ask her pointedly about what’s keeping her away from school. I truly apologize for my lack of reaching out. Honestly, there was a part of me that was put-off by her lack of attendance. Somewhere within my thoughts, I said something like, “What can I do when it seems like she doesn’t nor does anyone else really care?” As I look at this last sentence, I know this is harsh and it carries a lot of personal responsibility at a very deep level, however, I believe it needs to be shared for it’s authentic, and there is a lesson within this truth: Relationship should never take a back seat to instruction, or being too busy, no matter what, for there are many influences that cause students to fall through the cracks and we cannot afford to turn our backs on them.
For example, a few weeks ago, prior to the end of the school year, I asked my classes to anonymously write on 3×5 cards a personal response to the following prompt: “What would you like your teachers to know about you and your life which is important for us to know?” And the replies were extraordinary:
“Sometimes, I feel left out”. I’m not smart. Sometimes, I feel really sad”.
“I would like my teachers to know that I feel like I am always making mistakes, and I’m never good enough. And I think there are people who feel they are superior …”
“I don’t do my homework because I am in my room crying about my mom and dad … and I might be tired because I have to take care of my little brother.”
“At home, all my siblings have won many awards, and they got letters so they can meet the President but I never got one … I think teachers should never push kids to do stuff they cannot do.”
“I suffer from a bit of ADHD and depression. I don’t get along with many people because I have been bullied my whole life. The only escape for me is talking to my friends who are mainly guys … I have a hard time talking to most adults because no one takes the time to listen to me.”
In looking at these statements and a whole stack of others which are quite similar, one gets a clear understanding: life is more stressful for kids today than ever before and as a result, children face greater challenges than previous generations. As a result, stress, anxiety, fatigue, and frustration present itself for so many of our students. Just look at the numbers of kids within your classrooms who demonstrate ADHD like behaviors associated with Executive Functioning, or Autism like behaviors with social skill development, and the numbers of students who are emotional basket cases due to anxiety; I saw this in my classroom every day. I know you do as well! However, I believe we can do something about it. This is where resilience comes in: students today need skills to successfully deal with the pace and lifestyle of modern times. Sure, we are focused on preparing our students to either enter college or careers beyond their secondary education but from what I have seen this year, way too many kids are needing to develop a resilience tool kit in addition to these academic core skills, else we will lose way too many kids along the way. It saddens me to say this but I don’t have faith that parents alone can handle this challenge; we need to develop a stronger resilience skill set as our kids work their way through the K-12 system.
Back in the day, when I was in junior high, we learned a variety of life skills in addition to the basic curriculum. Drivers’ education, bachelor/family science, and an extensive set of vocational programs featuring agriculture and wood shop, were featured. Also, there was a class called “Wellness” where the teachers focused on the mind, body, and spirit connection; keep in mind, this was the late 60’s and early 70’s! Years later, these type of classes get placed within the “basket weaving” category and there seems to be little time for personal growth programs like these. Today, we are driven by a Common Core curriculum with “career” frameworks and “competing in the global economy” as our guiding light. In fact, we have pushed the pace up to a whole new level for Kindergartners of today are experiencing what was featured in First Grade and Second grade years ago. And the escalated curriculum continues from Kindergarten, all the way through Twelfth grade. At the same time, as the speed of the curriculum scope and sequence has ramped up, I believe we are losing more students along way. So I recommend, a K-12 course of study addressing Resilience where we go back to the notion of mind, body, and spirit including: Emotional Intelligence, social skill development, Executive Functioning skill acquisition, and nutrition education. In addition, I believe we would best serve our students through higher levels of engagement via a more intensive approach to interest based learning. Most notably, I believe it’s time for our Elementary Teachers, the foundation for future learning, to slow the pace down and establish resilience skill sets yourself so you can teach these life essentials to your students. I understand, there is pressure to “stay the course” and present a standards-based lesson at all times. However, you do have the freedom to create your classroom environment as you see fit. And from what I learned this year, for numbers of our elementary students, especially boys, when they reach Middle School, they are not equipped to succeed. However, we can reverse this trend!
As a result, the importance of content relevance is the next learning I took away from my year in the classroom. I believe many students appeared to be checked out when they arrived in the Fall; again, more so than I ever imagined. Within the first few days of the new school year, I heard comments like, “Do we have to read?”, “I don’t like to write”, or “Why do we have to do this?” across so many classes. Then, as the lessons and units developed, especially within a project-based approach, more and more students began to shift from their “school sucks” perspective to a willingness to give the activities a try. However, there continued to be a push-pull dance throughout the year for many students and it seemed to be guided by the notion that the 7th grade Social Studies content was just not that compelling especially for students who have video games and online programming 24/7 at home. In addition, the number of kids with impulsivity and executive function skill gaps was most apparent.
So I needed to take a step back and reflect more on this. Here’s how I see it now: Basically, the current curriculum is founded upon the notion that students are empty vessels needing to be filled up with Common Core standards leading toward successful lives. Whereas, there is something so fundamentally wrong with this notion, in fact, my work in Special Education highlights the following principle: We get the best out of ourselves and our students when we build upon each student’s strengths and interests; a relevance based model. And this applies toward all kids. Unfortunately, the only students who seem to access this frame of reference, learning based upon the promise and the potential within, are the Highly Capable students. This is misguided on so many levels. I cannot continue to support an exclusive system where the haves and the have-nots are separated out due to cookie-cutter instructional methods across all grade levels.
From my experience, every child presents a set of gifts, talents, strengths, and attributes which need to be honored within our instructional system. However, from the empty vessel format, highlighting an over-emphasis of each student’s weaknesses alone, except those within the Highly Capable program, we just may not be able to see the kind of success we hope for. Fundamentally, the whole system is based upon a fail-safe model, where our expectations are guided by the minimum standards.
I believe we need to make a number of fundamental changes from our current model to a more relevant program including:
- Begin to look at every child from a “gifted” lens; see where the interests lie, the talents emerge, and the strengths surface; build from there. Create opportunities throughout the instructional year which play to these strengths. Our current system provides additional supports for kids who are lagging below standard and for many of these kids, the intervention models are more of the same instructional strategies that did not make a connection in the first place. From my point of view, if you can’t help Johnnie to learn how to read within a 90 minute instructional period, or help Jane learn math skills within a 60 minute session, then, you may want to look at the instructional strategy rather than forcing them to attend before-school, after-school, and during school intervention models alone. In fact, one of the most powerful research-based intervention models presents 2-4 week one to one intervention, during the regular reading schedule, with most kids moving back into the General Education setting after the first dose of intervention.
- Establish the most Common of the Core (narrow the skill set as much as possible) then push this focus off to the side every 6-8 weeks by presenting an alternative “project based” format of learning or “interest based” set of activities. Everyone needs a refresher every 6-8 weeks else the system gets old. I understand that there are good reasons for establishing skill-level classes across the curriculum, however, it’s imperative to shake it up and encourage and develop an inclusive community of learners as well. For life-long learning to emerge, instruction needs to be fun!
- Co-create with colleagues interest based units of study for ALL students and open the entrance criteria to include all students; have fun. When staff members, parents, and students share their passions, the enthusiasm for learning becomes infectious. By opening up the activities across all student skill levels, by featuring interests, we create a more organic sense of community.
- Finally, conscientiously explore ways to engage the most disengaged students including boys, special needs, ELL, and children of poverty through differentiated lesson design as a total staff. We are losing an extraordinary number of students right before eyes and for those with attention related issues, medications will NOT be the answer. Within the response to intervention models, we need to expand our tool kit to include strategies that ALREADY WORK for many of our students. For example, there are fantastic voice to text software tools available which would assist our non-writers opportunity to get their thoughts on paper. Also, there are hundreds of online learning modules which capture students’ interest with minimal required supports or costs. Most notably, we need to build instructional activities based upon the students’ interest and work from there. A gifted education model, based upon interest and relevance, works for ALL students, not just the fortunate few.
So I encourage teachers to consider the following questions:
- Would YOU want to do this activity yourself if you were in your class? How can you make this more enjoyable?
- Have you EVER used this skill / learning outside the scope of teaching? Any way to make it more relevant?
- Would you be more inclined to connect with the unit of study yourself if you were able to utilize your own interests and talents? Which talents or interests might make a better connection to the concepts for the kids?
- How can we allow the gifts within, the natural talents, surface within the instructional process every day? How can you present the unit of study within a wider scope of activities? For more information on schoolwide gifted education for all frameworks, check out http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/sem/pdf/Field_iJETarticle.pdf
- And most importantly, how do I see the gift within every student emerge within my instructional day? How can I honor and respect these emerging talents more?
As we move into summer, I wish you all the best. Like never before, my heart reaches out to all my colleagues who are on the brink of a summer vacation. This break comes at such an important time for us all to recharge and experience renewal so we can be the best we can be later on down the road for teaching changes lives: the most influential teachers project love and faith rather than fear and worry as our students emerge through their own path toward their promise and potential. Till then, they need us to be our best every day through our own resilience; and that’s where summer serves as the opportunity to rejuvenate.
Blessings to you all.
Larry