There’s nothing quite like watching someone’s passion and dream being fulfilled. Last month I got to see it in front of my eyes. ears.
During my time at Unplugd, I got to meet and know Stephen Hurley. Stephen is an arts consultant in Ontario and all around interesting, good guy. Stephen and I were in the same grouping as we did our collaborative writing. Stephen began by sharing this story.
The part of the story about his love of radio wasn’t even the core of his writing or story but it wasn’t hard to tell that Stephen had a passion for airwaves. Everything about it fueled his passion. What struck me was his determination despite the roadblocks and discouragments. Stephen’s story was heard a few times by others including Bryan Jackson and Giulia Forsythe, The two of them have become quite involved in the DS 106 Radio community, which in a nutshell is a off shoot of a course taught by Jim Groom in Virginia, and a collaborative idea with Grant Potter in Vancouver who started an internet radio station that basically is open to anyone to broadcast. (Read that sentence again and you realize what a world we live in). Guilia and Bryan introduced Stephen to DS106. These people, along with the rest of the community, would open a big fat door for Stephen.
The event ends on Sunday, and on Monday I find myself in Michigan City, Indiana on route to Minneapolis to spend time with family. While killing time at a outlet mall as my wife shows it who’s boss, I fire up twitter and see that Stephen is about to take the wheel and host his very first radio show live. Although my wireless connection was wonky, I was able to listen in a bit and hear Stephen. You would swear you were listening to a radio veteran of 30 years. This guy was made to speak into a microphone. As I sat on that bench in the image, I had this goofy grin on my face and kept whispering “awesome” as shoppers passed by.
Talking to Stephen about it now you can sense the new found joy he has for what he’s doing and how blessed he feels to have been given this gift, which in a round about way is the best story or example for the essay I wrote. For me, watching this unfold was joy as well.
If you want to listen to Stephen, you can follow him on twitter and wait for some late evening when he finds another bottle of Glenfiddich and takes to the air. it’s gold.
Over the past several years, I’ve attended many conferences and workshops where speakers have talked about how all kids can learn and the importance of that belief. They also talk about how, if that’s true, it’s our obligation and duty as teachers to make sure all students learn and have success.
Okay, I get that. We all love kids and want them to succeed. If fact we want to design systems where no child is “left behind” and no child fails. Full proof schools where everyone is a winner. They unintentionally paint pictures of kids “not getting away with not doing their work”. These are not places of joy but places where come hell or high water, kids will succeed and if they fail, it’s the teacher’s or the school’s fault. What if it is the kid’s fault? Can they ever choose not to be successful? Should a 5-year-old even be considered a failure? Should a 17-year-old be allowed to fail? How do we create a gradual release of control or do we ever relinquish that control? The other huge misconception that is rarely explored under this philosophy is that all children, while they are capable of learning, aren’t all capable of learning the same thing at the same time in the same way.
I’ve heard lots of talk about reducing the dropout rate. What I continue to see is a focus on changing the supports for these students and little in the way of making school, in general, a place that doesn’t suck. But really my question continues to be if we believe (maybe you don’t) that the kids should own the learning, shouldn’t they own the failure too? I’m not suggesting we simply create a smorgasbord of learning and then watch them sink or swim but I’ve witnessed educators spending countless hours hand holding and walking students through painful exercises designed to help them ‘get through” the curriculum. It reminds me of parents who do their child’s homework. To that end, it also reminds me of a quote from one of my favourite books:
“Information will be learned slowly and doomed to rapid forgetting unless they are quickly attached to a framework of knowledge that we already possess.”
The Book of Learning and Forgetting, Frank Smith
In some ways, this returns me to a previous post about personalization and standardization. I don’t have many answers and am really inviting some conversations, help me see what I may be missing but I’m frustrated with both the “no kid can fail” attitudes and the “kids own the learning but not the failure” thinking too.
The only thing I can think of that helps me work through these ideas is my own parenting. I obviously want my kids to succeed and yet they’ve all experienced some failure. My kids have all started into sports and music programs they decided they didn’t like and quit. Sometimes we made them persevere and on occasion, they discovered they liked it. As parents, we felt all our kids needed a basic proficiency in swimming and music. They didn’t have a choice. Some of them choose to go beyond the basics, others met the basics, then quit. As they got older they chose their own paths. Altogether my kids have quit/failed at many things. Big deal. None of these endeavours, like school, are on the same level as Apollo 13. It’s not life and death. I’m not suggesting it doesn’t matter but whether or not a student passes algebra shouldn’t carry the weight if often does. I’m sure others will disagree. Feel free.
Alright, I’ve been all over the map here, not my best writing but I hope I’ve started a few ideas we might talk about together. Should kids be allowed to fail? Under what circumstances? Go.
My son, for whatever reason, has chosen to let his hair grow while at college in Toronto. His mother and sisters and I have been trying to get him to get it cut for months. On Friday he did.
He Skyped me to tell me the good news and relayed how it was a rather lovely experience. The barber, who was recommended by a friend, was a little ways from where he lives in Toronto. So he took the subway and made a day of it. Not only was he describing the best burger he ever had but also the haircutting experience itself. Apparently the guy who cut his hair totally ignored my son's suggestion and proceeded to do his own thing. I guess he knew what he was doing and my son was quite pleased with the result. After he finished, he asked that Sam stay and play a game of chess with him. The barber schooled him. My son left feeling quite pleased with the whole day. It was indeed much more than a haircut. It was an experience and a time well spent with a stranger. From the tone of that conversation, he'll be back.
During this call I was on hold with Alec as we were planning an upcoming event. I briefly shared this story and he told me of a friend of his who decided after taking his share of university classes to open up a barber shop in his home town and cut hair for a living. Alec told me how his friend loved to cut hair and visit with people and painted a picture of one of those places "where everyone knows your name."
The idea of devoting your life to a job like cutting hair somehow doesn't seem like it fits in with all our conversations about global connections and shifted learning. Nor does it fit in with standardized testing and rigorous curriculum. (by the way, I hate the word rigor to describe anything about school)
Which lead me to consider a couple of questions:
1. What could be better than finding a vocation that you enjoy and that allows you to spend time with people connecting and sharing life while providing a useful service?
2. Do our schools help our students seek such a life or do we see a hairstylist as somehow a lesser profession?
3. How did their schooling contribute to the life they lead now? Did it help them become the person they are or did they become that in spite of school?
4. What if we began to measure our schools, not simply at the end of a term or year but for the quality of individuals it serves? Do we want to or need to measure happiness or quality of life?
A Saturday twitter conversation with Will, Bud and Brian got me thinking about the what we need to be paying attention to. Will is currently looking to the edge. I like the edge too. I spend much of my time trying to reach it and see what new opportunities and accordances might be useful to help us learn better and learn more and learn differently. The edge is an important place to explore but these barbers would hardly be considered living on the edge. But in many ways, it's hard to argue they aren't living well. Really, really well. It seems like a nice way to spend a life.
Full disclosure: This post is written at 3 AM as I wake up with crazy ideas and wonder and then feel compelled to write about it. Forgive any in cohernce, stop reading at any point and move on with your life.
After spending considerable hours investing into Alec’s little gift, I’m still feeling quite energized not only with the response of others but the experience of shared joy a project like that elicits. The fact that 75 of us were able to unite and create something of value and as one commenter put it, “ridiculosly awesome” makes me feel similar to being part of a championship team. Overstated? Maybe. Maybe not.
My own family is quite aware of the time I invest in all kinds of silly little projects but as I’ve mentioned before about my photo of the day year end videos, they too appreciate, in many ways share the joy of these efforts with me.
So as is the case many evenings, I spend a good deal of time kibitizing around with my network on twitter. Last night I referred to this video which reminded someone of this video. (side note: I can’t tell you how many times kibitizing and fooling around on twitter leads to learning and in this case awakening me at 3AM to write. I will continue to kibitz. )
I immediately showed my wife and daughters this and said to my wife who teaches middle years students, “you should do this with your kids”. She agreed. My daughters both said, they wanted to try this with their friends as well. Quickly the conversation moved into informal planning and questioning as to how they might do this and how they could do more than simply replicate this performance.
And as the conversation flowed a little voice in the back of my head asked two questions:
1. What is it about this video and others like it that make people want to participate?
2. “But what does that have to do with improving student learning?“
The first question may be easier to answer. I think it’s partly our desire to perform. Music is such a powerful medium and the format of these videos is such that it’s pretty safe for us to simply express ourselves in whatever way we want. We’re not judged as individuals but as a group. It’s also the desire to participate in team and social events. Anyone who’s played a team sport, been in a band or dance ensemble knows what’s it’s like to excel as a unit. It’s exhilarting. Finally the fact that it’s shared is critical. We’re seeing an explosion of these lip dub videos and flash mobs and people showing off their attempts at buying Rolex with Bitcoin 2023 because of youtube. Experiences like this whether pre-planned or spontaneous are heightened because of the potential and power of sharing. Reliving and sharing these moments is something that makes the time investment pay off.
The second question is the really hard one.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week I was working as part of a 40 person design team made of up central office staff, adminstrators, teachers, support staff and parents who’s task it will be to develop a Comprehensive Learning Framework for the entire school division. This Learning Framework, that centers on student learning, will become the driving force of everything we do in our division. Without going into detail, we as a school division recognized that while many great things are happening, we lack the focus, vision and fidelity to insure a consistent, intentional and unyielding focus on helping all students achieve. During this initial two day meeting many good questions were raised about insuring we maintain autonomy, differientation and balance but ultimately wanted to narrow our focus and tie all the great work of our division in better harmony and direction. It’s good and necessary work that I believe will make us better in the long run. There’s a great deal more that I could add here but hopefully you get the idea.
As part of that conversation and many others that I’ve had during my time as part of our curriculum team, we often talk about how teachers might offer a great activity for their students but never consider if it relates directly to curriculum or any student learning outcome. Teachers might argue they do this because “it’s fun” or “students like it”. I know when I was in the classroom, I was guilty of that from time to time. As part of the two day sessions we also talked about having a rigorous curriculum. I immediately balked at the word rigoruous. If you look up the definition, I don’t think you’ll find one part of that word that is appropriate for learning. We did however, agree that perhaps robust might be a better term. In any event, the idea behind rigor or robust is that a curriculum ought to be centered around challeging content and skills, high standards if you will. Okay, I can agree with that aim but let’s go back to the silly video above. Why do I still think that things like that ought to be part of learning? Is it robust? I’m not sure. Does it match curricular outcomes? Maybe. Could it be part of the backwards by design process our division advocates? Do joyful learning experiences always have to relate to student learning outcomes?
When I did my own analysis of the video I created I was considering the implications of it for bigger and better things. But what about the experience of shared joy for its own merits? More from Alfie Khon:
I fear that I’m appearing to accept an odious premise—namely, that joy must be justified as a means to the end of better academic performance. Not so: It’s an end in itself. Not the only end, perhaps, but a damned important one. Thus, anyone who has spent time in classrooms that vibrate with enthusiasm needs to keep such memories alive in all their specificity to serve as so many yardsticks against which to measure what we’ve lost: 6-year-olds listening to a story, rapt and breathless; teenagers so immersed in an activity that they forget to worry about appearing cool; those little explosions of delight attendant on figuring something out.
I am convinced that historians will look back at our era of ever-higher standards and increasingly standardized instruction as a dark period in American education. What were we thinking, they will ask, shaking their heads, when we begrudged children the right to spend their days in a place that provides deep satisfactions and occasional giggles? How did we allow this to happen?
So please complete my mulitple choice question in the comments and add any insights you have because I need your help in understanding what to do with joy in schools.
With regards to creating a video like the one above do you:
Do it because it’s not only fun but likely does address some cirriculuar outcomes but you might have to look them up later. Fingers crossed.
Do it and to heck with the outcomes, doing joyful things with students is important.
Do it but perhaps as an extra-curricular activity because you’re not sure where it fits with a robust curriculum but still think it’s important.
Not do it at all.
I’m going back to bed now but look forward to your thoughts.
Cross Posted on the Huffington Post. The PISA results were released this month and my overwhelming response was: Who cares? Many of my fellow Canadians were quite happy to be ranked sixth in the world. What does that even mean? Is that cause for celebration? Should we be upset? What would we do if we were first? (Hint: I’ve talked to many educators from schools with high test scores. They are the most resistant to try new things and be innovative for fear it will lower their test scores). Once again, these tests perpetuate the idea that:
Schools should measure math, reading and science only.
Tests taken on a single day are a good and accurate measurement of student learning and achievement.
Rankings against other countries/districts/schools/classrooms/students is important because education should be competitive.
There are no questions on the test that measure creativity (if that can even or should be measured), collaboration, or media literacy, never mind their ability to learn or their understanding of their body. The other thing it doesn’t measure is whether or not students like school. I’d like to know where Canada ranks on that scale. As a parent, I value that. I’ve been around schools enough to know that there’s lots of learning that happens, even in our so-called “worse” schools and classrooms. Sure, there are some teachers and schools better than others, but I also believe that students that are happy and enjoy school actually learn more. But of course, we don’t consider that important data. I’ll bet some people would consider it fluff. Instead we get the usual discourse from non-educators about how education sucks and the curriculum has to be revamped. Diane Ratvich recently debated a high ranking U.S. official about the obsession with testing and he challenged her with the the oft heard claim:
“You measure what you treasure.” To which Ravitch replied, “No, you cannot measure what you treasure.” How do you measure, friendship, love, courage, honor, civility, love of learning?
And because those things are hard to measure, many think they aren’t all that important. That’s really sad. Some openly dismiss those values as pie in the sky or “nice but not necessary” for learning. Few dare to openly state that, but I found one who wasn’t. I wrote about Michelle Rhee over 2 years ago when she made the following statement to Time Magazine:
People say, ‘Well, you know, test scores don’t take into account creativity and the love of learning,'” she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. “I’m like, ‘You know what? I don’t give a crap.’ Don’t get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don’t know how to read, I don’t care how creative you are. You’re not doing your job.”
This presumes you can’t do both. I think we can. I would argue that as educators we’re obligated to do both. But until we begin to design assessments that actually give credence to the love for learning, creativity and other so-called 21st century skills, I’m not going to “give a crap” about any of these tests.
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