Thoreau-ly Enjoying Vonnegut!

So already, since we're talking about stories -- okay, since I'm talking about stories -- just want to talk about a few other ones -- the fictional ones that grab our hearts and sit there like blessings and burdens, that make us want to run out to the street and tell everyone "You have to read this!" -- even though they probably read it years ago, in the case of Vonnegut, while we were busy vacuuming, or weeding our gardens, or paying our bills, or doing what I'll probably be doing after I finish posting this -- reading student essays.

Recently, one of my students, Solomon -- he and his mother both know that I'm mentioning him here -- designed a graduation project entitled "Literature, Writing, and Blogging" and asked me if I would be his advisor.  Both of us are trying to understand who and what blogs really are for, and we both trust literature to make lives -- ours and other people's -- better. It's good news for me that my blogging life and my work life are coming together in some way.  I hope that it's good news for Solomon, too.

While he continues to develop the reading list for his project, Solomon has agreed to read Howard's End at some point this semester. But in general, he's the one who's creating and updating our reading list, which we are treating as a work-in-progress that can and must be revised if reading way is to lead authentically to reading way.

Currently, Solomon has me reading selections from Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House, which I'm loving.  I have loved Slaughterhouse Five for years, and taught it for years, but this is my first foray into Vonnegut's short stories as a collection. Because I'm in full-throttle college-recommendation writing mode, I worried about when I would be able to read these stories, but when I opened the book on a rush-hour Red Line train last week and read the book's epigraph, from Thoreau -- "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes" -- I knew I owed it to myself as well as Solomon to make the time. (One other thing I've learned over the years: if you're going to start laughing all by yourself on a subway train, it's better to be holding a book, so people think you're laughing at something. It's also better if the book isn't the Bible.)

Solomon and I are planning to blog about Vonnegut -- maybe on my blog, maybe on his. So if you have the chance to read or reread "The Kid Nobody Could Handle," we hope you will join the conversation. I suspect it's a must-read for Cambridge Rindge and Latin School staff, since relationships with students is one of our front-burner concerns this year. The story was written in 1955, the year I was born, and arguably it reflects a different world from our present one in some ways -- and just the same world in others. Maybe there's something for teachers and parents to learn that won't involve the destruction of too many pricey musical instruments, given the fiscal realities and priorities of our schools these days.

Meg's Story

Below is Meg's story, which I wrote about in my September 17 blog entry entitled "The Challenge of Ordinary Time and Extraordinary Experience." It's italicized to remind you that you're reading her story, not mine.  Earlier today, Meg reconfirmed her willingness to have me share it here. You can respond directly to her here if you wish, and I hope you will. Thank you so much, Meg!
                                            ____________________________

"I was 13. What I remember about the 1963 March on Washington and the horrific events leading up to it is visceral, emotions filtered through my mother. Pictures and stories about what happened over that summer came afterward. TV was not a regular part of our lives and I suspect my parents sheltered us from the gruesome, tragic pictures on the news. So the measure of what was good and evil in the world developed from the dinner table discussions as much as from any media story. Viola Liuzzo was from Detroit near where we lived at the time, so I think my mother,who was the same age, was particularly struck by her courage.   She probably carried some guilt for not also being more active in the voting rights cause and the March as I did later with the March against the Vietnam War.   She was involved in local activities through our church, and I know she was a voice for the marginalized as a social worker in the high school, but I’m sure that never measured up in her mind.  The names of Medgar Evers, John Lewis, Martin Luther King and others have an electrical charge for me because I came to understand the horror and sadness, the hopes and the determination through the emotions of my mother.

"I would have my own experiences later, of course, as I grew up in a community where the John Birch Society was very active.  I had already experienced the class snobbery of that community.  We were solidly middle class surrounded by the wealthy.  My older brother worked hard to be included in that group – something I think he still does.  I saw him angry and spiteful at times to my parents because he didn’t have the vestiges of wealth – a car, clothes, etc. that were the badges of the very privileged.  I also saw this incredibly sensitive and talented artist crushed by the traditional mores of the community.   I carry with me a hard edge against the wealthy to this day for that reason.  In some ways the prejudice of the John Birch Society and wealth have merged in my mind, so I have to be very careful of my assumptions even with some of my own family members.

"Several events happened in my senior year in high school that influence my attitudes, commitments and beliefs to this day.  I was a senior when Martin Luther King came to speak at my high school in Grosse Pointe in February (I think) of 1968.  I have often wondered who decided this was a good place to speak where he must have known the John Birch Society was loud and nasty (in a very “proper” sort of way - no burning crosses).  Why not Detroit where he would have been met with passion and accord? 

"As a member of the student council, I was chosen as an usher for the speech.  We were to seat people, and we got to see Martin Luther King speak in person.   Before the event, all the high school ushers were prepped by someone – wish I could remember who – the police maybe.   This person explained that there would be organized hecklers and that they would most likely seat themselves around the auditorium in a diamond pattern which would make their numbers seem larger as they jeered. We were told that we were not responsible for keeping order – there were police there for that – but we were urged to help influence those who were reacting negatively, especially among our peers.  Very early before the speech, people began to filter in and sit in various places around the gym-auditorium.  I can’t say if it was suggestion or fact, but it did look as though there was a deliberateness to where they sat.   And from my final listening spot up in far left balcony, the jeers sounded very loud and shocking indeed.

"I was seated above Martin Luther King, but, as balcony seats go, I was pretty close.  I really don’t remember his words so much as how he responded to these hecklers.   They tried to interrupt his every sentence and distract him from his purpose.   At one point, he stopped what he was saying and invited one of the hecklers to come up and join him to talk about his points. The person didn’t respond.   What impressed me most was how gracious and patient he was with these hate-filled people.  He offered them space to speak rather than dishonoring them with anger. I’m sure his response came from many years of practice in other places, but most certainly it came from his belief in democracy and non-violence and his life as a teacher/preacher.  In that moment he became my mentor and hero.

"Shortly after his speech there was a town meeting about allowing Wayne State University to offer classes in the evening at the high school.   There was a good deal of opposition to this because it would bring college students of color to the community.  My mother and I went to the town meeting to listen and support the proposal to offer the classes.   I listened to the weak arguments against the proposal – no one was raising the race issue.  Finally, with Martin Luther King in my head,  and fierce whispers with my mother (who was afraid of me making a target of myself), I stood up and said that the opposition really was all about black students attending the classes.  I don’t even remember if the proposal was passed or not.  I do remember my mother whisking me out of the auditorium before I could be spoken to by one of the opposition.  For the few months before my high school graduation, we would get terrible phone calls, most of which my parents intercepted; but on one phone call that I took, the woman said she would make sure I couldn’t get into any college.  I found out years later that during those months people put threats in our mailbox vowing to burn down our house.

"And in April, Martin Luther King was assassinated.   I remember coming home from school and my mother met me at the door with, 'They’ve shot him.' I didn’t even have to clarify who.  We held each other and wept.

"I saw the movie 'Butler' last night.  I cried all the way through it and all the way home.  It covered the whole time-span of my life and brought back those visceral moments – so many of the things I felt terrible about then and still do. I try to keep John Lewis’ most recent words of hopeful acknowledgement and cautioning realism in my head – that we have come a long way, but we have a great distance to go."

The Challenge of Ordinary Time and Extraordinary Experience

So already, sacred time has given way to ordinary time, officially and unofficially. The Days of Awe are over, the Gates of Repentance have closed, and the journey of a new year has begun. My students are writing their first major essays of the term, which they'll submit on Thursday, and the first parent open house of the year was tonight. There's no denying it: school's in session, and the great express train of the school year is barreling down the tracks.

Maybe that's why I want to take a moment to say that the High Holy Days were extremely meaningful to me for the first time in many years. Even though in September I didn't manage to follow my Sixty Days reflection and writing routines as faithfully as I managed to do in August, I kept at them regularly enough to develop a better understanding of the holiday liturgy and the nature of repentance itself in the Jewish scheme of things than I ever had before. The holiday services, with their deliberately arranged and chosen prayers and portions, welcome and remind, demand and support, challenge and understand, unsettle and comfort, and ultimately deposit one -- lightened, mindful, and hopeful -- on the threshold of a new year. Right now, I'm feeling grateful for the whole notion of "covenant with God" and for the heightened opportunity that the High Holy Days provide annually for attempting to "get it right" with God. I am grateful to those of you whose responses to some of my earlier blog posts have inspired me to keep reading, thinking, and trying.

In general, your responses to my blog have been inspiring and encouraging. First of all, some of you have actually left comments, and that's made for a conversation and company, not just my lone voice. Meanwhile, others of you have let me know that you're "lurkers" who read my blog but will probably never post response comments.  A number of you non-bloggers have sent me thoughtful e-mails, facebook messages, and snail-mail notes in which you've shared your own relevant experiences, questions, and insights. Unfortunately, a few of you who are comfortable with the interactivity of blogging have actually tried to post -- only to have your comments evaporate into cyberspace for reasons that neither you nor I understand. But you wanted to post, and I appreciate that. If it's one thing I know, it's that ordinary time doesn't leave much time and space for blog-reading and blog-posting, let alone technologically thwarted blog-posting; so that you have made the time to read and (try to) respond, or even just to read, means so much to me.

Meanwhile, the existence of this blog has changed some of the conversations I'm having with people -- I suspect because I am making clear and they are recognizing how seriously I am taking myself as I attempt to prepare, in part by blogging, for the fast-approaching next phase of my life. If it's one thing I've been doing quite deliberately, it's been trying to recognize and capture those moments and experiences -- past and present -- that I think have the most potential to tell me about my authentic self, the self that I must be in real relationship with if I am to discover new, satisfying post-retirement paths. Simultaneously, and probably understandably, my interest in the moments and experiences that others feel have most defined  and guided them has also grown.

When the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington came along, accompanied by a slew of magazine and television news stories about people's recollections of the March itself and the weeks before and after it, I realized that I had no personal memories of a moment that was critically and personally important to so many people whom I know, as well as to the nation as a whole. In August 1963, I was a seven-year old who had strong television memories of JFK's inauguration and of rockets leaving launch pads, and I carefully examined any photos of Caroline and John-John that came across my path. But the March on Washington never registered. 

At a late August supper at the home of my friend Meg Anderson, who's just a few years older than I am, I asked if she remembered it.  Meg told me that she remembered it vividly. Then we somehow got off-topic and she didn't share what she remembered.

If Meg's name seems familiar to you it may be because she posted a comment in response to my last blog post. Meg and I  began to get to know each other when she became the Dean of Curriculum of one of CRLS' newly established small schools and my direct supervisor in 2000. Some years later, when she left CRLS to join the Center for Collaborative Education and lead its Principal Residency Program, in which my current principal participated, our already firmly established friendship continued.  We've spent much time over the past decade discussing the state of education in general, new educational ideas and programs that seem promising, poems and books we love, and our personal struggles to balance the worlds of work and "non-work" -- and to envision next career and life steps.

A few days after Meg didn't get to share her March on Washington memories with me, I received an e-mail from her that was also addressed to her two daughters, both of whom are a young mothers, wives, and professionals.  Meg had decided to share with all three of us her answer to my question.   Her daughters knew some of the stories, but they'd never experienced them collected into a written whole.

The first thing I did was to do a little bit of online research about Viola Liuzzo, whom Meg had mentioned in her first paragraph and whose name I had never heard before. Then I read Meg's narrative start to finish, beginning again with her first sentence. Among other things, Meg wrote about serving as an usher when Martin Luther King came to her high school in Grosse Pointe, Michigan and hearing him -- and watching him -- speak to an audience that included strategic, venomous hecklers. She also told about her experience of expressing an unpopular race-related opinion at a town meeting and dealing with the consequences of that in the moment and afterwards. Always present in the narrative was Meg's mother, sometimes shielding Meg, sometimes supporting Meg's participation in public life, but always, always talking and listening to Meg, while responding herself to the events of the day.

I've known Meg for thirteen years, but as I read these stories, I felt that I had a much better understanding of how she had come to be the Meg whose integrity and moral judgment are trusted completely by so many of us. At the same time, I also realized that I had come to hear these stories almost accidentally -- because, over a delicious late-summer supper, I had chanced to ask her whether she had March on Washington memories, and because she had remembered that I'd asked her and decided to answer.  

The serendipity of getting to hear stories about experiences that so powerfully shaped Meg made me wonder how often and why really important stories, stories in which narrative and reflection co-mingle explicitly or implicitly, don't get shared face-to-face or one-on-one. Folklife centers collect important stories, oral history projects proliferate, and radio shows such as "The Moth Radio Hour" thrive.  Are we more apt to share our most significant stories, crafted to communicate that we recollect them with no less feeling over time and even perhaps to suggest that they are actually becoming more significant to us over time, with people we don't know personally? 

So what is it that might make us hesitate to share our stories with friends and family? I understand that some of us are by nature quite private, but I am also wondering if there's something about the stories themselves and our relationships to them that holds us back from sharing. So here are some questions I'm wondering about:

• Do we simply love holding our important stories close, treasuring them as our own?
• Do our stories feel especially private to us because they're so personally important? 
• Do we fear that we can't do them justice in the telling? 
• Do we fear that our audiences won't understand why they matter so much to us -- and may not even try particularly hard to understand? 
• Do we hold them back because they're precious to us -- but also still a little too mysterious to us to be shared just yet? 
• Do we fear that others won't treat them as the precious things they are -- and might even jump in and assign them particular meanings that are more about who they are than who we are? 
• Or do we keep them inside because they don't fit into the social discourse of the day, which is often a combination of reporting "the personal latest" and dissecting the events of "the day" more intellectually than personally?

There's an interesting moment in Howard's End when E.M. Forster lets us know that he has a story about a personal experience that he's not going to tell us. Explaining the affectionate, durable relationship shared by sisters Helen Schlegel and Margaret Schlegel, Forster comments, "There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use," adding that "Such moments are still rare in the West." That eight-word declaration, with its authoritative tone, informs me, "There's an important story to be told -- but it's certainly not going to be told here and now." Then, I begin to wonder how many readers see that there just might be an invitation here, that there just might be a door to open. Then I begin to wonder who will care.


Recently, Meg told me that I could post her story on my blog.  Once she reconfirms, I will do so.  Stories told seem to have so many potential effects:  under the best of circumstances, they can deepen positive relationships, create nuanced understandings, illuminate our identities as members of groups and as the individuals we always are, even enlighten and inspire people who don't even know us.  So I hope you'll respond here with your theories and comments -- and your stories. We'll hope for the best of circumstances -- but I'll count on you to bring up other points and ideas if you think my optimism needs some leavening.

"Pride, Goeth Before the Fall!" -- So That It Will Be a Good Fall and Good New Year!

So already, though the regular (Roman) calendar asserts that summer has another month, the school calendar reminds teachers and students that summer is over, and the Jewish calendar announces that a new year is just around the corner. Tomorrow is the official faculty first day at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, though I returned last week for two days of helping to orient CRLS' new teachers.

Whenever I get to this time of year, I inevitably feel that I have squandered my summer vacation in some way: once again, I did not sufficiently achieve some relaxed but meaningful state of mind or state of being (are such "states" analogous?) that I claimed to have wanted to achieve as school ended and summer began.

That said, fall is about to begin, and even a new year from several perspectives, and that means that there's another opportunity to "get it right."  So this blog entry begins with a question to which I hope you'll respond:  

     How do you personally navigate these transitions that have so much familiarity 
     and regularity -- but that also carry with them the possibility of discovering a   
     new and better way of being and doing? How do you use them to make change?

This summer's "failure to achieve" is particularly significant to me -- because I am just five months away from retirement from active CRLS duty.  I don't expect retirement to be one long summer vacation.  And I haven't had a summer vacation during which I did no paid work since 1996. But I am hoping that the first part of my retirement, especially, will be a time when my obligations to do and produce are distinctly outnumbered by opportunities to kick back, relax, and experience freedom from responsibility. Even more importantly -- and this is the part that makes me anxious, given my history -- I hope when those numerous opportunities present themselves, I will embrace them.

The problem is I am far better at seizing opportunities to do and produce than to relax and enjoy. My summer vacation history offers proof of this.

For years, I have carried with me an ideal of summer as a more balanced time during which spurts of intense work -- participation in summer institutes as either a participant or faculty member, working on professional development and teaching plans for the fall, trying to learn something new on my own -- were supposed to be balanced by lazier, less productive times during which I felt creative and mentally free.  The problem is that I invariably created imbalance by choosing to work harder and more often than I probably needed to.

Perhaps the flaw is that my construction of this easy alternation was just too artificial: the will may want to choose to live fully in both the dutiful and unfettered worlds at the moments of one's choosing, but the mind just can't jump so easily through those scheduled and non-scheduled hoops.  Or maybe the mind -- my mind -- has been on to me for some time and detected years ago some inauthenticity or some self-deception in my own construction of what I wanted and why.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I went for my usual walk along Black's Creek and the salt marshes adjacent to Wollaston Beach.  I had gone there hoping that what I saw would be beautiful in the way it had been when I drove by the same place last Friday afternoon -- when it was windswept under a sky of metallic, autumnal blue. But that wasn't what I found. Instead, the day was completely, unabashedly, uncompromisingly summery. The slightest of refreshing breezes accompanied me as I walked along the completely placid creek at its lowest tidal point. It couldn't have been lovelier; I even had to stop to take a picture. So I had to wonder:  why had I gone there wanting it to look and feel a particular way?  I knew it was a beautiful day when I walked out of my door:  why hadn't I simply looked forward to whatever kind of Black's Creek beauty I would find when I got there?

Clearly, there is some problem of misalignment going on for me:  my unconscious self has known it for a while, even as my conscious self has been trying to manage me into some kind of working contentment that is both productive and restorative. Whatever partial breakthroughs I have had have come through a combination of writing this blog and talking to many of you about it -- some of you via e-mail, Facebook, and comments on this blog itself, others of you in phone and face-to-face conversations.  I am very grateful to you.

In late July, as a result of these discussions and interactions, which seemed to suggest links between education and spirituality time and time again, I determined that I would follow the course of reflection and journal-writing laid out in a book called 60 Days:  A Spiritual Guide to the High Holy Days by Simon Jacobson.  This book was recommended to me a couple of years ago by a Catholic ex-boyfriend who wanted to learn more about Judaism because his daughter was about to marry a Jewish man.

This book strives to help Jews of all sorts of connections and lost connections to Judaism get themselves into position to take full advantage of the opportunities for meaning and reconnection -- or deeper, renewed connection -- that the High Holy Days offer.  The way it does this is by offering opportunities for reflection in conjunction with Jewish wisdom and texts chosen and arranged to teach and to stimulate soul-searching. In fact, it moves all over the place in terms of referring to biblical, rabbinic, historical, and mystical Jewish sources (which are, of course, all connected -- though my knowledge is too limited to make a lot of sense of many of these connections).  

Some of the included texts have made more intellectual sense to me than others, some texts have resonated more personally with me than others, and some exercises have felt much more uncomfortable than others -- but I've pushed myself to keep going.  Slowly I've been understanding more. I don't believe this book is single-handedly going to solve my misalignment problem -- I live in a world that's secular as well as Jewish, and the authors know that I am like many of its readers in that respect -- but I am convinced that the new understandings I'm developing little by little will help.  I am also convinced that my problem is multi-faceted, and one of the facets is spiritual -- so that for me, some of the solutions will be Jewish. At the moment, I'm looking at its multiplicity of facets as opportunities. We'll see if I continue to feel that way.

One of the ideas that comforts me most is the very important Jewish notion of teshuvah. As the book explains,

    The Hebrew word for 'repentance' -- teshuvah -- actually implies the opposite.  
    When you repent, the implication is that you're leaving the wrong path, regretting 
    that you ever took that turn in your life. But teshuvah literally means 'return,' 
    which implies that you are not leaving something, you are coming back to something.

     This is not to suggest that there is anything inappropriate in repentance.  Before 
     you can embrace the right path, you must leave the wrong path, you must regret 
     having taken it, you must go away from it.

     But return is much more profound.  It's not just going away from bad behavior, 
     it is going back to your true self, your Divine soul.  It's . . . returning to the essence 
     that was always pure -- it is returning to G-d (48).

Where God is placed -- inside of me, outside of me, a combination -- is something I'm very much trying understand.  But the idea that I should be trying to head toward something true, authentic, and therefore good is something I can wrap my head around, even if I'm not sure how to get there and even if I'm not used to thinking of it as divine. It also feels natural to me that the true thing is already there needing for me to uncover it, get at it, get "myself" out of the way of it.  Finally, it both scares and  gratifies me to think of this possibility: I keep remembering how Glinda, the Good Witch of the East, explains to Dorothy that she always had the power to go home, but she wouldn't have believed it any earlier in her journey.  It's not the first time I've wondered if The Wizard of Oz ought to be considered a sacred text of some sort.

So back to this whole Wizard-of-Oz-related question of not being able to understand earlier. What is it that gets in the way -- at least for me?  The best way I can explain it is as conflict that involves three words that begin with the letter "p":  peace, productivity, and pride.  Peace and productivity -- both of which I cherish -- seem often to be in conflict in my life, and because pride in my own conscientiousness routinely tips that balance toward productivity, I fail to take adequate advantage of summer's unique opportunities for spontaneity, relaxation, and pleasure -- all of which contribute importantly to a sense of peace.

The bottom line is that I feel good about myself when I feel a sense of purpose, and when I'm being productive in conjunction with that purpose.  If that purpose has something to do with "being a good person and helping others," I cannot only justify my endless productivity, but feel very good about myself -- maybe too good about myself.  An addiction to productivity is bound to lead me to exhaustion -- and also to guilt when I fear that I am devoting "too much time" to more personal and pleasurable pursuits.  I need to get better at freely being lazy and purposeless when that would be most restorative.  I need to value my well-being at least as much as I value that of others.

The exercises in the 60 Days book have also taught me that while I tend to be good at being supportive of others, I often resist the support of others -- and I'm not sure what that's all about.  At work, especially given my senior status, my role is to provide support -- so it may be that some of these expectations and work habits bleed over into other areas of my life. But do I on some more profound level feel that I should be more self-sufficient than others -- which leads me to conceal that I also need support?  Or do I feel that everyone should be more self-sufficient -- the kind of Yankee ideal that one can't help but encounter in New England? Or does some part of me doubt the wisdom and sincerity of some people who are trying to support me? These questions do not make me feel good.  They all suggest that there's some kind of unexamined pride and doubt that may be contributing to my misalignment problem.  Drawing the line between feeling good about the "good work" that I do and feeling too good about it is going to take some real soul-searching -- I see that now.

There's no question in my mind that pride-- anybody's pride -- is potentially a very powerful obstacle in the path of teshuvah -- and that teshuvah is an especially good spiritual and psycho-social goal for a year of anticipated major change. So far the 60 Days book is doing right by me -- it even cycles back to particular reflection topics in different ways after we've been given other opportunities for learning and reflection: the authors know we need multiple chances to tackle some of these challenges, and the book reminds us continually that all of our most sincere efforts are greeted with compassion, love, and respect.* I already think that I may need to do the whole set of exercises again after the 60 days are over. My overwhelming sense is that the book is directing us at one thing -- God, I'm sure -- but it's giving us so many ways to get there -- like a whole bunch of trails that all lead to the summit of the same mountain.

Yesterday when I got just beyond Black's Creek into the part of Merrymount Park that is all salt marshes, I noticed that almost all of the marsh grass was matted and pointed, going in all different directions -- as if had been combed by the wind and then slicked into place to create and maintain a kind of punk, spiky look. The photo at the left shows a few examples, but the grass of the entire salt marsh was styled in this way. It was quite spectacular to see this strange, beautiful -- but also completely natural --science fiction landscape extending in all directions.

Like that green grass, I am still very much going in all different directions -- both natural and weird, I think -- but I feel for the first time that I am seeing the obstacles much more clearly, and a number of them are me -- which means I have a certain power to tackle them. Now that I realize that my overly developed sense of duty and responsibility to others, and my excessive pride in it, may be contributing to the problem, I'd love to believe that simply naming the problem would mean I could command it away, banish it before turning the August calendar page and encountering September's clean, bright possibilities.  Hence the silly title of this posting. 

My 60 Days book reminds me regularly that changing patterns and removing obstacles is never easy work and that I must tackle my work with real compassion for myself.  I feel I could use some more help and wisdom, or just flashes of insight, from others -- from you.

So back to the request to you that I bolded in pink in the early part of this posting. How do you personally go about changing the patterns and removing the obstacles that get in your way of being who you need to be and doing what you need to do?  I would love to hear your experiences and any advice you have. I would also love to hear your comments about what I wrote above. Thanks so much.

And L'Shanah Tovah, whether you're Jewish or not!

* I suspect a lot of good spiritual teachers practice the basics of Teaching for Understanding.

A Poem for August

So already, the two Project Zero summer institutes -- The Project Zero Classroom and The Future of Learning -- are over.  As wonderful as they were -- and they completely recharged my batteries -- it's time for some serious August kicking-back.  In that spirit, here's a poem I wrote about ten years ago during an August visit to our cabin in Berlin, New York, where time is on our side, especially when the goldenrod is in bloom.

Summer

Luxurious inefficiency
beneath tangled growth of time and wood.
Productivity weighed, delayed,
achieved -- perchance--
amidst whispering branches 
and fields brimming with heat.


Afternoon ripe
with lengthening time and will.
Projects abandoned randomly, then resumed,
contemplated, completed perhaps,
arranged in rings widening
around a dreamer.

Soft pull between being and doing.
Reprieves granted freely 
when the haze descends on the hill,
when the wind nudges the tall grass,
when the sun dips toward the trees,
when what matters most is Summer.

Streaming, Pooling, and Flowing: Sitting Beside the Digital Stream

Recently, I posted on my Facebook page the following passage from Chiminanda Adichie's latest book, Americanah.  New to the American education system, Ifemelu, Adichie's protagonist, is baffled by the American practice of rewarding students for "participation":

"School in America was easy, assignments sent in by e-mail, classrooms air-conditioned, professors willing to give make-up tests. But she was uncomfortable with what the professors called "participation," and did not see why it should be part of the final grade; it merely made students talk and talk, class time wasted on obvious words, hollow words, sometimes meaningless words. It had to be that Americans were taught, from elementary school, to always say something in class, no matter what. And so she sat stiff-tongued, surrounded by students who were all folded easily in their seats, all flush with knowledge, not of the subject of the classes, but of how to be in classes. They never said, 'I don't know.' They said, instead, 'I'm not sure,' which did not give any information, but still suggested the possibility of knowledge."

There were assorted responses to my Facebook posting -- some calling for more conversation (which I hope this blog will be a place for), some identifying the challenge of and need to cultivate real learning discourse in classrooms, some suggesting the effects of culture and previous schooling experience on students' understandings of how to learn and how to fulfill their teachers' expectations of them as students (often not the same thing as learning!), some expressing enthusiasm about other literary and cultural contributions of Chimimanda Adichie.

It's an interesting moment to be thinking about this this weekend.  On Friday, the Project Zero Classroom summer institute drew to a close; and tomorrow, the Project Zero Future of Learning summer institute begins.  

At last week's institute, my role was to co-lead a workshop about a set of ideas called Making Learning Visible -- in fact, a new book called Visible Learners:  Promoting Reggio-Inspired Approaches in All Schools just came out. The case study that I presented in the workshop was about my efforts to move my AP Literature and Composition students  beyond "participation," as Adichie's heroine would describe it, to the kind of speaking and listening on which I believed their collective and individual learning depended:  only when students engage authentically with one another's ideas is there the potential for re-examined and deepened content knowledge, re-examined and even transformed attitudes, and new insights that can lead to enlightened action. At the center of Making Learning Visible practice is capturing, representing, and sharing (via documentation) the potential moment of learning -- the snippet of conversation, the gesture or action that guides learning activity down a certain path, the student creations that accompany these moments -- so that it can be explored, examined, interpreted -- used to advance the learning of those inquiring into it.  

At next week's (tomorrow's!) institute, my role will be to co-lead a learning group that will grapple with some of the "big forces" that have ramifications for education:  globalization, the digital revolution, and new understandings of the mind and the brain. Perspectives will abound. Content will challenge our ideas about "what's possible" and "what we already know." Again, speaking and listening will be foregrounded, not just because institute participants will be coming from all over the world, will represent diverse perspectives, and will be part of so many different experiences and face-to-face discussions -- but because one of our topics is the digital world, which is always humming, churning, never sleeping, and endlessly spewing forth more words, more words, more words.   

I sit here blogging; Adichie's heroine is also a blogger. Lately I've been tweeting, too, trying to figure out what tweets are for, or can be for.  So here I am, contributing to and inquiring into that relentless digital streaming that sometimes irresistibly and sometimes irritatingly compels us to participate.  And at the same instant, here I am advocating for those Making Learning Visible learning approaches that insist on slowing things down, hitting the "pause" button, holding up learning experiences like crystals with multiple glittering facets that all deserve attention, advocating for taking the time to understand them deeply and with others.  

Hmmm . . . . could I tweet about the experience of capturing and exploring a moment? Could I convey in 140 characters the metaphorical experiences of managing to lift, with patience and a glass, some interesting creature from the rushing stream; of spending time observing it swimming around in the glass jar, trying to understand it and to learn from it; and of then returning it to its world and using what I learned from it in my own? Could one tweet do that? Could a bunch of tweets do that? Could a bunch of tweets from multiple people do that?

Recently, while I was contemplating the inherent contradictions in my Project-Zero-related learning life, I came across a photo that I took of my favorite reading spot along the stream right near our Berlin, New York cabin. I had taken the photo over the Fourth of July weekend because I wanted to remember that very hot afternoon when just keeping my feet in the water had kept me wonderfully cool while I was reading -- in fact, it was Americanah I was reading.  What caught my eye in the photo (don't know if I noticed this in the moment, but that's why Making Learning Visible encourages exploration of promising moments as they reveal themselves in photos and videotapes as well as words and other media) -- was the sky's bright blue reflection on a small, captured part of the stream that wasn't rushing by -- one of those many small pools that often establish themselves in some indentation in a stone or in some crevice between stones.  (I hope you can see it on the right side of the photograph  on the bottom half.)

Everyone who has ever had any association with Project Zero ideas knows that reflection is highly regarded as an essential learning activity.  The word "reflection" shows up in institute throughlines, and time and space is regularly dedicated to it.  So reflection is bright blue and sparkling in the Project Zero world, jewel-like and prized as it is here.

Streaming, pooling:  I can't resist wondering if this "learning tension" actually has me "flowing" -- experiencing "flow" as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi might define it.  But that would be too neat and too perfect. I still have this tendency to seek that kind of completeness of metaphor,* and I have to be careful of that:  too much truth gets lost when metaphors are over-applied. Even so, I bring it up because it's my blog and I can.  Maybe this whole paragraph is a perfect example of digitally shared words that didn't need to be shared.

But back to Adichie.  None of this solves the problem of participation that Ifemelu identifies. And I understand the well-intentioned sources of it:  the hope of compelling very quiet students to speak out at least once so that we, their teachers, have some idea of the degree to which they're understanding the lesson, and so that they can experience themselves as being respected by, listened to, and learned from by their classmates. But quantification of talk doesn't guarantee quality or respect; in worst case scenarios, it masks mere tolerance and even disdain.  And it also too often produces a simulation of "learning together," rather than authentic learning derived from thoughtful listening and interchange.  

Language does and will proliferate, but a real "pedagogy of listening," as Carlina Rinaldi and other Making Learning Visible practitioners would call it, takes practice, discipline, and commitment.  Years ago when I read Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled, I was struck by his concept of "bracketing" -- essentially, taking one's own viewpoint or perspective and setting it aside for a while so that one might fully entertain "new ideas" and the possibility of growth and understanding to which they might lead.  Peck quoted from Sam Keen's To a Dancing God, which spoke of the necessity of "silencing the familiar and welcoming the strange." That's what students -- and adults, also -- need to do if they are really going to try on the thinking of others to strengthen and deepen their own.

This brings to mind once again Howards End and Helen Schlegel's comment to her sister Margaret that I mentioned a few weeks back:  "Meg, shall we ever learn to talk less?" Maybe we don't need to talk less, as long as we are talking for the sake of understanding more and helping others to do the same, for the sake of expressing ourselves truly, or for the sake of building and sustaining communities that respect and care for the individuals within them. 

And maybe we don't need to talk less as long as we're giving others space and time to talk also.

But chances are that talking less is a good idea in a lot of cases.  So many people are talking. I hope just as many people are listening, especially to those who are striving to "only connect" by sharing something meaningful (with all of its possible interpretations) with those who are listening.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts -- and words -- about any of this!

* When I post about my great affection for Howards End's Margaret Schlegel by the end of August, I will mention this as a weakness that characterizes her in the first half of the book.

#hgsepzfol