Experimenting with Twitter, Wandering Among Books, and Seeing the Windows for the Trees

So already, the last couple of weeks have been technology- and nature-intense for me. At the same time, I've been doing a kind of approach-avoidance dance with three books I've been "reading":  Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, a historical novel; Lubavitcher Rabbi's Memoirs by Rabbi Yosef Y. Schneersohn (translated by Nissan Mindel), a narrative of the history and evolution of the Chasidic movement; and Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor, a "field guide to the dark," according to the Sharon Salzberg's comment on the book jacket.  Newly arrived from Amazon is the book I'm supposed to finish reading by the last weekend of May:  The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way by Amanda Ripley. 

On the tech front, I've been trying to figure out how and why to use Twitter.  Whenever I get "mentioned," "favorited," or"retweeted," I feel that maybe I'm getting the hang of of it; but then I wonder what that electronic recognition signifies. Twitter does seem like a better place to be "serious" than Facebook is. But how many different "areas" can I be serious about on Twitter? How many places can I be an online presence without feeling that my world is more virtual than actual? And do I really need one more reason to be tied to my computer?   It's a soft, balmy, grayish spring day outside of my window, and I'm peering at the multiple windows open on my computer screen rather than out of the open window nearby. Is this really the right moment to be gathering my thoughts in this online template? The clouds (not the iCloud!) are just beginning to thicken a bit, the birds are chirping at soothing intervals, and the air is sweet with scent of still exuberant blossoms.

So now for a few details of my Twitter experi- mentation. A few weeks ago, my wonderful cousin Eli, an observant and committed Jew, and the person who gave me the Lubavitcher Rabbi's Memoirs because of my interest in many of his postings on his Facebook page, posted something that resonated strongly with my teacher soul:  you can read what he posted in the tweet above. Though I was relatively sure Eli was thinking of students and teachers whose learning intentions were religious, spiritual, and deeply Jewish when he posted the above, I kept thinking how easily his words (actually, since they were in quotation marks, I wasn't sure who had actually said them**) might have been uttered by any of the educators whose work with their students is intentionally, deliberately shaped by Reggio Emilia and Making Learning Visible values, sensibilities, and best practices. 

My own major concern as an educator during the last decade has been that our very narrow views of achievement and assessment, best expressed by our preoccupation with aggregate student data, have deceived us into thinking that we teach curriculum, not students. The Reggio Emilia/Making Learning Visible (MLV)* view is that through our individual and collaborative exploration of documentation that "makes visible" students in the act of learning (or not learning--and we're not just talking about the products they create as a result of their classroom learning experiences), we can learn a great deal about our students--not just what they know and don't know, but how they learn, what interests them, what roles they can play in their own and others' learning. 

Once we've been "the students of our students," as Eli would put it, we invariably have more and better ideas about how to design the curriculum, instruction (lessons and activities), and performances/assignments that are most likely to inspire and foster the learning of the particular students in front of us. We have better ideas about what we can say to each of them and have them be able to hear. We have ideas about how best to encourage, cajole, or demand. Yes, we need to be that aware of the individuality of our students, and even of the distinct personality of the group they are together as a class. It can't be about how we think students ought to be able to learn, or how other students have learned in the past:  our educator moves must take into account who is standing before us right now and needing to learn in our classrooms today.

So I tweeted, as you can see above.  And I got retweeted and favorited.  A few days later, I tweeted the same quotation, this time in response to a prompt from another tweet that asked people to share their favorite education-related quotations; the New Teacher Center favorited my tweet. Wiser Ones' Quotes began following me.

The whole time I was getting retweeted and favorited, I kept enjoying that my "education contribution" was derived from the active, committed very Jewish spiritual strivings of my cousin. I kept enjoying that one of my most dearly held educational beliefs was aligning, at least briefly, with my continued, serious, but also generally haphazard and often tangential exploration of Judaism in general, and my own Judaism in particular. I've been wondering how to lead a life that feels authentically Jewish and authentically mine, so I relish moments when my public secular self (which I recognize is shaped by ethics and considerations that are very Jewish, but which is active in a primarily non-Jewish world in which spirituality and belief are often hidden and spoken about indirectly if at all) and my much more private Jewish self connect. Twitter aided the connecting.

Whatever internal negotiations I've engaged myself in around "to tweet or not to tweet"; "to go online or to go outside"; and, when small education-related employment opportunities have arisen, "to work or not to work," there's been one aspect of my post-CRLS life that has been without conflict:  I have loved every minute that I've been out walking this spring, and I've never once questioned whether being outside in springtime was a good use of my time.

The other morning, I took a bunch of photos while walking in East Milton . When I looked at one and realized that there were upstairs windows in the background, I said to myself, "I would love having a window that looked into a flowering tree." At that point, I realized most of my photos captured obscured windows and full-out flowering trees.

All my life, I've loved looking into other people's windows (I've especially loved this at night in Cambridge where many people didn't draw their blinds or close their curtains, and many homes were set very close to the street) and looking out of my own. And so I began thinking of the potential relationship between the outdoor world of nature and the interior worlds that those windows also looked into, particularly about the lives beyond those windows that could privately, easily, and annually survey this astonishing explosion of delicate blossoms. Was this a particularly special time for the residents? Did they anticipate it each year, revel in for as long as it lasted, and give thanks for it?

I came home to two more internal negotiations: (1) should I bring my iPad with me to Cambridge to use in the time I would have between commitments, or should I plan simply to read, just sit there and read, delivered from the entreaties of e-mails, tweets, or messages; and (2) what should I bring to read, given my reading malaise.  I went onto Facebook to check something, and there I was reminded that Eli's Facebook current profile picture is a window! You can see it here at the right. One of Eli's Facebook friends identifies it as the "Yud Shvat" window. A window into a place of prayer and study. 

That clinched it; no iPad; just the Lubavitcher Rabbi's Memoirs. About these, and some of what Eli has explained to me since then, I hope to blog in the future. There's much here that's feels remote from my daily life and interior life experiences, but much that feels strangely but significantly relevant to them. My preliminary thinking about the teachings and lives that others have been studying for years will need to viewed as just that:  there's too much that needs study and talking about to be spoken of with any kind of confident understanding. In fact, I need time to think, wonder, synthesize just to know my preliminary thinking, let alone convey it.

Later in the day, as I sat down in the lobby of the Sheraton Commander Hotel, where I spent most of the time I had between engagements, I remembered that the early part of the book presented a very spiritual man named Baruch as experiencing God in nature.  I reread the following passages--"So the winter passed and spring came. As Baruch lived on the outskirts of town, he felt very near to G-d's Creation, which he loved so dearly.  He now began taking long walks in the country" (56-7), and "Here [in the country post-Shavuot] was a world where all Creation was singing a song of praise to the Creator" (57)--then picked up my reading from a later point in the text. I didn't miss my iPad at all.

My springtime walks are a good thing.  And I'm exceedingly grateful to my cousin Eli for the books he sent me; his patience, generosity of spirit, and really understandable answers to my questions; and his enthusiastic interest in "the progress" of my post-CRLS life.  Even though Judaism and "my work" are bound to be inextricably intertwined, they each deserve their share of my undivided attention at this point in my process. I want to make time for reading, thinking about, learning more about Judaism, mystical Judaism in particular. It needs that, and I need that. The connections and purposes will come later.




*The Making Learning Visible Project came out of a collaboration between the Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Reggio Emilia preschools and infant/toddler centers.
** When I asked Eli who had written the quotation, I learned the words were his.  His explanation for them made me think even more about Reggio-Emilia teaching and learning ideals: "That quote was something that occurred to me as I was considering some observations . . . of how the transmission and ownership of knowledge is handled. There is the statement from the Mishna, Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from all people, as it is said: 'From all those who taught me I gained understanding' (Psalms 119:99).  So I can’t say that wasn't an influence but I was thinking along the lines that teaching knowledge or the tools to acquire knowledge, and especially knowledge which connects one to a higher state like Torah , is about opening a door that is, without exaggeration, unlimited and certainly opens a potentially unique road of discovery for each individual. So if we really believe in what we are teaching and in our students, then logically each student must be able to become our teacher  – and it struck me that to become a pupil to your pupil is in fact the surest sign of success in teaching.  If we don’t believe that , then I don’t think we are truly teaching i.e. we are not opening the door, at least consciously, to the real deal – to what is unlimited and unique for the student – i.e. the real essence of the subject matter!" Love his line about believing in what we are teaching and believing in our students.