The Interview

 

Sasha Lilley, producer and interviewer of Pacifica Radio’s Against The Grain, interviewed me a few weeks ago. The interview was about alternative education or student centered learning, the attacks on public schools, how to teach to meet the needs of a diverse population, and how to teach critical thinking using mindfulness. It was aired on the radio last week. Here is a link to it.

 

Mon 6.16.14 | The Radical Philosophy of Alternative Public Education | Against the Grain: A Program about Politics, Society and Ideas

 

In the interview, I talked about using questions to engage students and develop their critical intellect. As an illustration, I used the historical question: Why was Socrates executed by his city-state, Athens? In the interview, I did not give adequate background to the question.

 

Socrates, who was one of the most influential philosophers in history, certainly Western history, was probably both a hero and a pain in the butt. His methods clearly irritated many of his contemporaries. He was charged with impiety and with corrupting minors, by encouraging his students to question their assumptions and beliefs. He was the teacher of several notable people, including Plato, who taught Aristotle, who taught Alexander The Great. He was executed in 399 BCE, just five years after Athens had lost the Peloponnesian Wars, had lost their once glorious empire and seen their democracy destroyed and rebuilt. The wars had spanned over 30 years. When given the opportunity to escape a death sentence but be exiled from his home, he declined. So, why was Socrates executed?

 

I was also unclear in explaining why test scores are poor vehicles for diagnosing what students have learned. When tests compare student achievement, as by using a curve or by ranking how the student stood in relation to other students, they do not say what a student actually knows. If everyone in a group does poorly, scoring 90% does not mean you did well. If everyone in the group is a high achieving student, scoring only 10% might be vey good.

 

And there are so many other reasons not to use standardized tests to assess student, teacher, or school achievement. So, why are the tests still pushed?

 

Also, this week LACS received good news. The radio interviewer asked me if an alternative school, which de-emphasized tests, grades and competition, could prepare students for the tests and other challenges of the world. I said yes. To support my assertion, the SAT scores for the year were announced this week. LACS outscored all the other schools in upstate New York. (Despite this, I still argue that standardized tests infringe on learning more than they assess it.)

 

I hope you enjoy the interview. Any questions or comments?

 

 

*The mural is by LACS students. The blue ox is the Blue ACS, symbol of the school.

Endings

What are helpful ways to bring the school year, or anything, to an end? How do you pull everything together so the year concludes on a high note and you don’t try to cram in too much and stress yourself and everyone else? One complaint I hear from students (about other classes, of course, not my own) is that by the second week of May they suddenly have too much to do and they claim no one prepared them for this.

 

And teachers, when preparing students for the standardized tests at the end of the year, can wonder if they did enough. They can be angry at the state for imposing new requirements; angry at the principal, a student or themselves when they feel they didn’t teach well or an issue remained unresolved. Stress arises whenever something lingers and you feel you can’t control or handle it.

 

While it might seem difficult, a teacher should begin the year by planning the end. Ask yourself, what do you want students to be able to do at the end of the year? What skills, knowledge, deep understandings do you think they should have? What standards must they meet? This is the backwards design process. Once you know where you’re going, you can develop a process for getting there—and let students know the plan. I encourage you to take a further step and have students help in the course design. Find out, once you have answered the above questions for yourself, what students want to know and think they need to know. By incorporating students into the course design, they will be better prepared. And engaged. Maybe part of the crisis mentality at the end of the year comes from students having distanced themselves from the class at the beginning.

 

In a good year, the end energizes me. I wake up to the fact that I have so little time left with the students. I want to give them whatever I can. Even if I am tired of all the effort teaching takes, I don’t mind so much. I pay closer attention. I feel the value of each moment. During the year, I sometimes resist the work; now I can’t.

 

Not being prepared for the ending can occur not only in school, but anywhere–when a relationship breaks up, or there’s a death, or you’re preparing for an event. It can seem a total surprise. It can feel like something was going on of which you were totally unaware. You feel that you weren’t paying attention. So one strategy is to pay attention, moment by moment. You don’t want to mourn for your own life.

 

Why don’t we pay attention? There are all sorts of reasons. Certainly, frequent use of multitasking with social and other media doesn’t help. Another reason might be that we never learned how to do it well. Attention training is not usually part of education. ‘Attention’ comes from the root ‘attendere’ which literally means to reach or stretch towards and can also mean mental focus, interest, and caring. Attention is not automatic; it requires energy. It is an active reaching out. We show we care with our attention. Students might not pay attention because they don’t care or they consciously or unconsciously resist the experience. And then, at the end, they might realize what they have lost and they panic. Or they get so used to panic and stress that they think they need it to get anything done.

 

So, it’s helpful to teach students about attention. Mindfulness can do this. With mindful focus, there is more clarity about what needs to be done and less stress about the year ending.

 

Also, people might stop paying attention to the end because it reminds them of the very fluid nature of the world. Change can be upsetting. Change means endings but is so much more than that. Taking a breath means change. Talking means moving lips, breath, thought. To know and learn is change. Fear arises when you cling to an end as if it continues and does not change. But even endings end. Change is just another way to say living, feeling, understanding. So, trust in the ability to know and feel the living world.

 

Take a moment. Let your eyes close, your body relax and your mind turn inwards. Have you ever just sat by a stream and watched the water pass by? Picture that stream, the water, the scene around it. Maybe there were trees nearby. Maybe there were rocks in the streambed around which the water streamed. Eddies were formed by these rocks. Some were small, some very large. Yet, the water continued on, adjusting. Maybe you could see the sunlight reflecting off the water, sparkling, like a jewel. Maybe you could feel a sense of comfort in looking at the stream as a whole and the scene around it. Just feel it. Isn’t there a sense of beauty in the whole? Notice that you can focus either on the constantly changing water, or the whole– the trees, the rocks, the streambed, the sky. The two perceptions, of the flowing water and the whole, support each other and you could go from one to the other fluidly. Now, just take in the scene and rest in it. If any thought comes, or feeling, let it be carried away in the stream and then return your mind to noticing the whole scene.

 

So, ending the year isn’t the problem. It is how we think about it. We all draw conclusions, about others, about the state of the world and, of course, about how our day, month, moment, or year went. We need to realize the nature of thought. Why do we have thoughts? What are they? When we think about how the year went, are we trying not only  to sum up a year but create an image of who we are? “The year went well; I am a good teacher. The year sucked. Do I suck?” We try to create a secure image of the past that can be projected into a secured future. But is any thought or abstraction of an event as encompassing as the event itself? Can we enjoy our memories without distorting them with judgments? Can we teach the importance of critical thinking and intellectual understanding, yet recognize that the world always exceeds our ideas about it? We need to hold our ideas more lightly and the world more intimately.

 

The value of reflection at the end is not only about what lessons have been learned, but about coming back to now. It is to view being in a classroom from a larger perspective. You are a human being living a life of which this school is just a part. The purpose of an ending is to bring you back to where you began: vulnerable, not knowing what will happen, but open to what occurs. In a class, that means that at the end of the year, reflect not only on what has been learned in school, but what being in this situation feels like right now. What do you feel about this new, unknown, ending, or beginning, and about going on with your life without the structure of this class? Always return to the reality of being a human being, in relation with others, now.

 

There Are Alternatives

I realized recently that there is a great irony in my blogs. For most of my adult life, I opposed what I thought was happening in public schools. Now, I am defending them.

 

In the early 1970s, after teaching for a year in a “normal” or traditional public school context, I taught in a private “free school” until it closed, largely because there wasn’t enough money to keep it going. In 1985, I started working in an alternative public school, which was then called the Alternative Community School. (The name was changed to The Lehman Alternative Community School or LACS after the original principal and founder, Dr. Dave Lehman, retired.) What is meant by a “free” or an alternative school is not always agreed upon or clear. Today, ‘alternative’ is often used to refer to schools for high needs or “underachieving” students. However, it has an older definition, influenced by the progressive movement of the late 19th, early 20th century, as providing something meaningfully different from the predominant model of a public school. I can think of five characteristics of this difference which many of these schools share.

 

First, alternative schools are small. The free school I worked in had 20-30 students. LACS had 185 students when I started teaching there; by the time I retired, it had grown to 310 students, largely due to school district pressures. Traditional public schools are larger, at their worst factory-like institutions where students face great pressure to conform and can easily feel lost. The high school I attended, although at the time was considered a fairly good school (especially for the white middle-class students), had over 6000 students. The alternative is a community of learning, where everyone in the school knows, by face and hopefully by name, everyone else. Teachers and students get to know each other comparatively well, which fosters empathy and support.

 

Secondly, following A. S. Neill, Alfie Kohn, John Holt and others, alternative schools focus more on intrinsic and not extrinsic motivation. People have a natural drive to learn, as learning is necessary for survival. So, alternative schools aim to develop in students this personal and natural motivation. Traditional schools often track students and use grades to rank student learning. By ranking and comparing students they create competition which motivates through fear and hope of reward while undermining or hiding away intrinsic motivation. LACS and other alternative schools do not track students and some replace grades with detailed, narrative evaluations which give students deeper and more personal feedback on their learning. They motivate by documenting growth—and demonstrating that what students do is seen and heard by teachers.

 

Intrinsic motivation is developed by incorporating student interests, concerns, identity, and ways of learning in both the content and methodology of instruction. So, thirdly, the curriculum is tied more to real life concerns and the student’s own authentic and personal questions. I think the label “free schools” was inspired by the “freedom schools” of the 1960s.  As far as I understand it, freedom schools arose as part of the civil rights and voting rights movements. For example, in Mississippi, during the summer of 1964, schools for citizenship were created. In order to change the socio-political system and awaken “the conscience of the nation,” students needed to learn how to think and communicate well. Alternative schools, inspired by this struggle, aim to create a curriculum that has real meaning for students, that teaches critical thinking and talks about issues like justice, rights and power.

 

Fourthly, alternative schools are democratic. Decision making is not limited to administrators but shared with the entire school community. In this way students learn how to speak their minds. They learn that what they do day by day, even outside the formal classroom, is part of the curriculum.

 

There’s a fifth characteristic that is not always stated. Education is not just about preparing for the future and getting and holding a job. It is about learning how to live and learn right now. It is about empathy, compassion and relating not only to others but to our world. There are depths to the human heart and mind that can neither be measured nor ignored and education must be about those depths.

 

So, why have I changed my attitude toward public schools?

 

To begin with, I was upset when I discovered that what I was hearing in the news about the state of public education was often inaccurate or lacking context. Public schools, instead of failing their students, are mostly doing the best job possible considering the economic and other realities they are facing.

 

Also, a democracy requires an educated citizenry. Privately owned schools, because of agendas other than the simple education of their students, cannot do this. Only a public system has a chance at creating a situation where all children have even a relatively equal chance to learn and succeed. It’s very debatable right now that we have either a functioning democracy or an educated citizenry—but without public schools, the situation would only get worse.

 

My last school was and is a public school. And it is only one of many. There are schools and coalitions such as the Coalition For Essential Schools spread through several areas of the nation providing an alternative.  They should be supported against “reforms” that could destroy them. Contrary to what “reformers” are saying about the state of education in the U. S., these schools are doing for children what schools should do for children. Despite frequent cuts in staffing over the years, these schools continue to show the enormous possibilities inherent in a public school. They are giving students what they need to grow up, develop their minds and hearts, and discover their gifts. As one LACS student put it: “The school took me in. I went from a situation where I was led by the hand– or tied by a rope to other students—to one where I could decide where to go and what to do.” By needing to make meaningful choices, he learned the responsibilities of choice. Stimulating classes gave him “enough to think about for the rest of my life.” He learned how to learn (and think and communicate) because the school became the context for his life, not something removed from his life. Learning was not just academics. It was about the reality of living.

 

It is schools such as these that not only should be defended but modeled.

 

*The mural of Rosa Parks was painted by LACS students.

Do We Want Corporations To Decide Who Should Teach Our Children?

 

The latest attack on America’s public schools is, like other attempts, hidden as a new “reform” idea. A few other well known examples of this reform movement include replacing:

*public schools with privately managed, publicly funded charter schools,

*teacher generated lesson plans with standardized teaching modules,

*localized methods for holding teachers accountable with statewide systems utilizing standardized test scores.

In general, creating the atmosphere of a crisis in public education and then selling the solution. The target this time are college education programs. The proposal: create a new licensing procedure for teachers. And, although the states would officially grant the license, who would actually determine who gets that license?  Pearson, originally an educational publishing company and now “the world’s largest education company,” which owns several publishing companies, digital learning products, assessment services, etc.. The federal government is also pushing for new standards for education programs.

 

Pearson worked with Stanford University to create a performance assessment, along with a calibrated scoring system, of a student teacher’s work in a classroom. Stanford is officially “the exclusive owner” of the assessment. This exam is being advertised as a national assessment, to standardize teacher certification. They would score two ten minute videotaped classes taught by a student teacher. This would be combined with a 40 page take home exam which includes lesson plans and other teaching strategies. (40 pages? Really?) I generally favor performance assessments over multiple-choice and other forms of standardized testing. So, what is my objection?

 

I object to the expense and the very idea of using a private company to assess learning instead of the classroom teachers. The assessment of two or three short segments cannot replace a series of observations over a few months by a professor of education. This new teacher assessment implies that university professors are not competent or trustworthy enough to evaluate their own students. It also tells the student teacher that they, too, will not be trusted. Power and responsibility is to be transferred up a hierarchy, and to whom? A corporation, with profit as its agenda.

 

Instead of thinking about more standardized assessments, we need to ask: What produces good teachers? Good teachers produce good teachers. We learn best from those who can inspire us and model what we need to learn. Great knowledge can be inspirational but is not enough. A love of teaching is needed, combined with compassion, empathy, and emotional awareness. Students need to feel valued and heard.  A good teacher learns about the home and community of their students and creates lessons informed by that empathy and understanding. And teachers need to learn how to apply that same care to their own mental and emotional well-being. Indeed, without such caring and understanding, it is difficult to give it to others. If we develop compassion in teachers, they will find a way to best meet the educational and other needs of students and will feel uplifted by it. If we just teach teachers how to meet the standards, they will struggle to just meet the standards.

 

My personal suggestions also include creating education schools (as well as public schools) which:

  1. Value teachers and their judgment.
  2. Give teachers creative freedom. What is most exciting about teaching, besides learning from and helping young people, is the creativity required to do the job well. A good lesson can be a piece of art. Following a script from a corporate produced teaching module does not promote creativity.
  3. Make decisions democratically. Give student teachers a voice in their education program so they can later know how to give students a voice– and take part themselves in making decisions in their school placements.
  4. Support the collegiality of teachers. They should be learning communities. Teachers are primarily learners and need to be provided time to plan with and give support to colleagues.
  5. Provide teachers with the opportunity to teach what they love so they love what they teach. In the same manner, teachers should be taught methods to discover and bring into the curriculum the deep questions, relevant to the subject matter of the course, which interest or occupy student’s minds.  In this way, the relevance of education to “real life” is made clear.
  6. Teach methods of self-reflection, based on mindfulness, and applied to thinking critically, acting responsibly, and learning in general.
  7. Teach  communication skills.
  8. Of course, teach a variety of methods of teaching, for a diversity of learners, content and levels of skill.

 

What would you recommend that schools of education teach?

A Story of Regret

Regret can be devastating. It can feel like an explosion, yet it is often set off by a seemingly tiny trigger. This happened to me just a few days ago. I gave an impromptu, short presentation to fill in for someone else and I felt that I didn’t do the best job. Suddenly, I had an explosion of unpleasant sensations, thoughts and images. I did a “good” thing, helping out a colleague, and then I felt “bad” about it.

 

So what do you do with regret?

 

I think the first step is analyzing what goes into the emotion—or any emotion. Sit with the question. Let your eyes relax, even close. Calmly breathe in, then out. Then ask: Why feel regret? How does the emotion help me? Emotions have real uses. If you experience an emotion, you say yes to it for a reason. There is something there for you. Regret is unpleasant. Regret makes you reconsider and re-evaluate something you did or thought. Or you can regret what you didn’t do or left undone. Generally, people turn away from what they regret. Or you can get angry about it, angry at yourself or at other people. Regret can thus serve an ethical purpose, so you learn from and do not repeat an action.

 

How is regret different from other emotions, like guilt, remorse, sorrow? Is regret as sharp as guilt or as deep as remorse? There is sorrow with regret. The Encarta dictionary defines regret as feeling sorrow or sadness “about something previously done that now appears wrong, mistaken or hurtful to others.” The root, regreter, from the Old French means “to weep much.”

 

What comes up for you when you think of emotion, in general? I think first of the power emotions can have. They can be overwhelming. We say things like “I was bowled over” or “floored” by some emotion. Emotions can seem solid, heavy. But they are not solid at all. I first realized this when studying the Buddhist teaching of the skandhas, which is a Sanskrit word meaning an “aggregate” of things or elements which make up how things appear. When you mindfully attend to the elements out of which emotions are constructed, the emotion loses its solidity and sense of continuity; it dissipates.

 

Imagine a time that you felt regret. What does the emotion feel like? When I go into regret, I first discover this sense of me isolated from others. I notice a group of sensations, sensations of a particular type and intensity, in a specific place. When I feel sadness, for example, my head and shoulders feel heavy and drop. They turn inwards, as if forming a shell. My mouth and eyes also drop and tense. My stomach feels heavy. With regret, there are sensations like sadness or sorrow but less demonstrative. There is also a touch of anger: a jumpy quality, a tension in my hands, a churning in my stomach. There is the sense of inward pressure.

 

Secondly, there’s a quality to the feelings. They feel pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. When you feel something as pleasant, what comes next? Desire. You want it to continue. You want more. But if it’s unpleasant, you want it to end. If it’s neutral, you might want to forget it. Regret feels unpleasant. When I feel it, I don’t want to be seen, or to see myself.

 

Thirdly, images and thoughts stream through my mind. I replay the scene over and over and try out different interpretations of what happened. This is the part I remember the most, because memories and labels get added to the feelings. In my case, I interpret what happened at school. I come up with a story to explain what occurred. I become a character in my own movie with a particular but somewhat new identity, an identity I wanted to avoid ever being. The sorrow of regret is like mourning; it is mourning the loss of an image I held of myself. I previously felt insightful, ready for anything. Now, I feel exposed as I picture people saying, “He’s not as aware as I thought he was.” I feel afraid of my image being diminished or attacked by others. I am no longer a hero in my story.

 

Fourthly, a mental state is constructed out of all these elements producing a way of thinking and perceiving the world. And I plan actions to end the regret. However, since all that I perceive is shaped by my emotion, how do I stop the planning? I wish I could hire a spin doctor.

 

The fifth skandha is consciousness, awareness, the ability to know. It is a two-edged sword. It can lead to suffering. But because I feel the pain of regret, I can do something about it. The initial pain is enough; my response to the pain is something else. Awareness allows a gap between feeling the initial elements of the emotion and doing something because of it. Mindfulness and other practices allow me to expand that gap. The gap allows a recognition that it is my own mental state and my storyline of a distinct, continuing self that is regretted; it is that story that I want to end. The regret brings my attention not only to elements of the remembered situation. It brings my attention to the image I held up in the situation as myself and the shadow cast by that me, the shadow I feared being. The regret is the recognition of that shadow. I feel exposed only when I imagine I am being seen as something I don’t like. Only because I am invested in not being seen a certain way do I care about it.

 

So, when the regret lives on beyond its usefulness, intervene. Go to the gym or do breathing exercises. Get a massage. Or end the storytelling directly. Enter and sit in your own theatre of mind. Watch the play without pretending to be a critic. Recognize that the actor on that stage who bears a resemblance to you is just an actor in a play. Enjoy the show as much as possible. Thank the Shakespeare inside you. And this is really important, although not easy: appreciate even what you think you don’t like in you, even the shadows. Only then will you be able to perceive clearly enough to learn from whatever happens and let it go. So notice what is there for you. And then let it go. Or: breathe in, notice what it feels like to breathe in, notice whatever arises as you inhale. Then breathe out, let go, and return your attention to the breath.

 

Note: I made a correction in an earlier blog after it was published but did not point this out. Sorry. The mistake was in describing the location of the insula or insular cortex of the brain.

The Magical Construction of No. And Yes.

No. Just say it. It sounds so powerful. No. Some people have trouble saying no, whether it be to a desire or to pressure from others or even to something that might hurt them. Others say it almost all the time. Think of children in their terrible twos saying it like a mantra. No is necessary for you to exist and taken too far it can kill you. It can feel good or horrible. And it can disappear like a passing cloud. So, every once and awhile, analyze the sense of no so you don’t hold on to it too tightly. Here is one analysis.

 

For the two year old, no is a necessary element of the maturation of a sense of independence, a sense that you can influence the awesome power of your caregivers. It does this by distinguishing “me-here” from “you-there.” The philosopher Ken Wilber said that any identity is a circle drawn so that what is inside is me and outside is all others, or not-me. No makes a me who stands up in the world and demands recognition. “You must listen, to me.” It creates the impression that the power to act independently is dependent on a sense of a distinct, acknowledged self.

 

The power of no is enhanced by how, and how much, you are cared for and can receive the care. Love can confer power, value, on an identity. If parents/caregivers tie love to acting or being a certain way, a further boundary can develop and the child’s sense of self gets smaller. The parts not accepted by the parents are not accepted by the child and pushed outside the circle to hide them away. Carl Jung called what was hidden the shadow.

 

When parental love isn’t clear, the child can be confused. He can go around putting a no in places just to demand a love to arise. Or she can fear no as if it were the magic or curse that drives love away. So, who you are and how powerful you feel is sculpted by love.

 

And then there’s yes. Every boundary line is both no and yes. No is the shadow of yes. The self is a me you say yes to bounded by a no. Do you say yes to your eyes? Hands? But who says yes to their nose hairs? Between no and yes there is and must be some pushing and shoving going on. In yes you give back and enjoy. In no, you push away and deny. The two are dynamically one.

 

Could you touch others if you didn’t have a boundary? Without your skin, there wouldn’t be any touching. If the bottom of your feet didn’t push against the earth, how could you walk? Ken Wilber also pointed out that a border is a place of contact. So, to think of the skin as only a boundary is to mistake its very nature. To think of the self as only “me, in here” is to mistake its nature. How you think of your boundaries has a lot to do with how you relate to the rest of the world.

 

These yeses and nos are not just ideas. You can mistake them for reality. You can feel them strongly. As a student you might say yes to listening to music and no to studying math or social studies. You can forget that what you think of as your self, your likes and dislikes, is a response to a particular situation. It changes. When you bring yes and no to awareness, you have the possibility of letting them go. Practice the following with yourself, and then, if you’re a teacher, with your students.

 

Close your eyes for a second and let your attention go to your inner world. Just take a breath in, and out. Notice if there is any tension as you breathe in or out. Where is it? Go there. What is the quality or feeling of the tension? Is it painful, stiff, scrunched up—a ‘no’ of some sort? Or a ‘yes’? Or neither? Notice how tension arises– or how it is just there. Then notice any gaps or lessening of tension. Notice how it changes and dissipates. The no dissolves into something else.

 

With clear attention, the gaps in any sensation are noticed and extended. Letting go is easier. It is helpful, especially when you are relatively new to mindfulness, to move attention around to different areas of the body.

 

With your next inhalation, go to somewhere else in your body. Notice the pressure as you inhale. As you exhale, notice how you let go.

 

As I meditate, I notice a tension, a pain across my chest. It pulls strongly on my body. When I attend to it, the pain at first seems clear, sharp. The no—and yes—can feel like absolutes. As I breathe in, I feel the history of where yes becomes no, of how I was first loved and cared for. The shape of my boundary, my sense of myself, is the shape that my felt capacity for yes, for love, creates. Yet, I rewrite this with each breath. The pain dissipates. How big can you allow your yes to be? Can you say yes even to no?

 

As I stay with the pain, accept it by attending to it without saying no, or saying anything, it softens. It feels almost aerated, bubbly, and then it’s gone. There is no sense of boundaries, of me and you. Only awareness.

 

 

Of course, its not just love that shapes us, nor is simply wanting enough to reshape us. Insight and self-awareness practice is needed. A person needs not just love—or genetics. Just think how your neighborhood, economic class, gender, or wars, a tornado, polluted water, a falling comet, the sound of birds affect you. It takes a universe to raise a person.

 

 

 

Teaching With Love: A Meditation

I was sitting in a chair in the living room watching a television program I had no initial interest in. My wife, who was sitting near to me, wanted to see it. It was a television program featuring songs and songwriters. At one point, I looked over to her. She was running her fingers through her hair, absorbed in the music. And then my whole sense of the program changed.

 

When we allow ourselves to feel that this other person is, right then, feeling, just like we do. When we do something as simple as that– no thoughts, just feeling. Just sitting there, looking at him or her, letting them in. I think we let in so little. We let in labels. We let in little pieces. Not the reality that this person is breathing with you.

 

Love is like that. To let someone or something in, you must be at least a little vulnerable. You must tremble a little, let go of your normal defenses and ways of filling time. You must let another person write who they are directly on your heart. Or it can be a pet. My cats write frequently on my heart. They also step on it, drop dirt and ticks on it. I am constantly floored by the way that “my” two cats, brother and sister, choose to sleep on top of each other. Who said that cats are just walking bellies? Walking pillows for each other, maybe.

 

With this openness and vulnerability you allow yourself to feel the terrible possibility of loss, yet you do it anyway. When you love, fear of loss is always there. Love and loss go together. To value someone means not only that you experience their beauty, inner or otherwise, but that you don’t want to lose them. The possibility of loss energizes the bond. To value in this way, you tremble with life and joy. You feel the breath of another as your breath. So breathe in.

 

All emotions incorporate contrasting emotions. Think of anger. Who do you get most angry at? Why get angry if you don’t care? Or joy. What is it that you overcome in joy? Isn’t there an overcoming or a letting go of fear involved, a relaxing of the impulse to hold too tightly?

 

It is so important for students to get a chance to discuss love in an honest way, yet it is a difficult subject.  There is so much hype, distortion and expectation that teens can easily get confused and even cynical about the possibility of a loving relationship. To introduce the discussion, try the following experiential exercise on the role attitude plays in perception. This is more easily done if you have already introduced mindfulness in the class. Start by walking through the room with a basket filled with simple objects like stones, leaves, and pinecones. Let students choose one from the basket and put it on the table in front of them.  Then say, with a calm voice:

 

Now, close your eyes partly or fully, or just soften your focus so you allow your eyes to relax and be at ease. Gently, allow your attention to go to your breath. Just breathe in, allowing yourself to feel the inhalation; and breathe out, letting yourself settle down. With each inhalation, bring your focus to the breath. Notice whatever arises for you. Maybe a thought will come up, maybe a sensation, maybe a sense of quiet. Then, with each exhalation, allow your body to settle down. Feel the natural tendency to settle into the exhalation and let go of any thoughts or feelings. Return your attention, gently, yet with clarity, to your breath.

 

Now, can you imagine maybe a pet, a kitten, a puppy? Something small. Something you could care for and want to protect. Just watch it—watch it play, run around, or sit in your lap. Just take in this image. Notice how your expression, your facial muscles soften, shoulders relax.

 

What do you feel when you see this young being? Just feel the image and notice your response.

 

The purpose here is to bring up a caring, open feeling or mental attitude. An emotion is not just in the heart but the eyes—and nose, ears, etc.. Once a person has this caring mental state, they will more likely perceive the world more gently.

 

Now open your eyes and simply look at the object that you chose earlier. If you can, look at the object as you looked at that kitten or other animal or baby. Instead of staring, just breathe it in with a gentle or soft focus. Then place the object in the palm of one hand. Move it closer and further away. With a soft focus, take in the colors, shape. Are there patterns to the object? 

 

Feel it. Feel the weight, the texture of the object–is it smooth or rough? Soft or hard? Feel whether its warm or cold. Now turn it around and look at it from different perspectives. 

 

Study a small detail of the object keeping that gentle focus. Study its texture, shades of color. How does the small detail fit in the whole? Study another detail.

 

Then close your eyes. Visualize the object in your mind. Visualize the shape, colors, size, texture. Look at it from different angles.

 

Open your eyes. And look again. Feel the life of the object. What did you not remember or not feel in your memory that you feel now?

 

Now put the object down. Close your eyes. How do you feel when you look at something with a gentle or soft focus? Just sit with that gentle, open feeling for a moment.

 

This isn’t quite teaching love. But it’s a step.

 

Now, breathe out. 

 

 

 

Creating A Compassionate Community

Mindfulness and compassion practices are extremely important to teach to students, but what’s even more important is embedding compassion in the structure of the school. Schools must make it a priority that students and staff, instead of feeling distant from others or powerless, care for others and feel that others care for them. They feel responsible for what happens at the school and even what it looks like. They have a sense of justice and power to make changes.

 

Schools could consider institutionalizing empathy into graduation or promotion requirements. In my old school, the Lehman Alternative Community School, for example, there is a sixty hour community service requirement. It was originally 30 hours but students voted to expand it. Service in this case means taking action with the intent to directly learn from and thus be able to help others. It must be mutual; they not only help but are helped in the process. Students work in kindergarten and elementary schools, senior centers, animal rescue shelters, and juvenile detention centers. The emphasis is on long term commitments so trust and empathy can develop over time. For example, the school has worked with the Akwesasne Freedom School for around twenty years. The teacher who administers the program, Jon Raimon, leads by example, caring for the welfare of his students so they, in turn, will care for others. He spends half of his day arranging, supervising, problem-solving. Combine that with teaching three different courses and he’s always busy.

 

Community service is often cited by students as one of the most meaningful parts of their education. One student made a video about the importance of service and the lasting impact it had in his life. He spoke about a week long trip he took with other students to work in the 7th Ward in New Orleans. They repaired houses of people neglected by different government agencies after Katrina. He spoke about service turning him into a self-motivated learner, excited about his own education and committed to standing up in the face of a wrong.

 

Another unusual graduation requirement is analyzing and taking action to end some form of bias. The student can choose the bias. It can be racism or sexism or anti-semitism. It can be countering an obvious bias, such as about gender, or more intellectual, such as scientific materialism (the view that only what we can touch, feel and measure can cause things to happen in the world).

 

The school is relatively small (about 310 students) and democratic. There are three major aspects to this democracy: The All School Meeting, a committee system, and family group. Once a week, the whole school, students and staff, meet to discuss and vote on proposals introduced by anyone in the school community. Instead of simply taking an academic course on democracy, students get to actually practice it. Students get to help figure out and vote on meaningful issues, like graduation requirements, school trips, how to spend fundraised monies. This develops a sense of commitment and responsibility– and some patience with the fact that a community is made of many individuals with diverse ways of perceiving and thinking. Of course, there are days students couldn’t care less about the meeting and spend their time whispering to friends or secretly texting. However, I remember meetings where sixth graders stood up to defend a position even in the face of twelfth grader opposition. I remember a meeting where a student with autism took a period and a half to describe how his condition influenced his life and perceptions. Everyone was attentive, sometimes laughing with him, sometimes crying. At the end, the entire school gave him a standing ovation. Such learning experiences are priceless and no single teacher can create them. It takes a community. These meetings are a powerful lesson on the transformative power of giving students a voice.

 

Students meet twice a week to serve on one of twenty committees which help run and maintain the school. There are committees to welcome and mentor new students, to help clean the school, plan all school meetings, learn about and plan environmental actions, and a student court. The court is not only about getting a student perspective on how other student’s actions affect them and the community; it is about restorative justice replacing automatic punishment. If an action disturbs or harms the community, the court tries to figure out what could be done to restore the sense of safety and trust.

 

What’s crucial in developing empathy and compassion is the relationship between staff and students. To develop a caring relationship, it is helpful that students and staff learn about each other in contexts other than classes, so teachers are not only “teachers” and students are not only “students.” One way to facilitate this is to give each student an in-school family group led by one or two staff members. The family group acts as a support group and an intermediary between home and school. If a problem occurs, it is the family group leader who often contacts the parents or caregivers. The group helps plan a student’s schedule, do check-ins and discuss school issues. They go on trips, fundraise and, on occasion, eat meals together.

 

The aim is to create a true community, a community of learners where people know and care about each other. The school is not always successful. No school is perfect for everyone. But this one tries. It is a second home to most. This sense of a second home extends way beyond graduation. Students often stay in touch with friends—and staff. Because the school acts as a compassionate second home for students, they take that home out into the rest of the world with them. They work to make the world a safer and more compassionate place.

 

 

A great video that I recommend is called My Teacher Is My Hero, by Devin Bokaer. Many teachers all through the world are heroes of compassion. Here are suggestions on how to do it.

 

Thanks to LACS staff and students, Sarah Jane Bokaer, Sam Frumkin, Hayya Mintz, Tommy Murphy, Jon Raimon, and Chris Sperry for giving suggestions for this blog.

Teaching Drama, Identity, and Interdependence

When I was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, I once got the chance to witness spirit beings emerge from the jungle to dance a story about the origin of creativity. The spirits were also people wearing carved wood masks and raffia from their neck down to their feet. After the dance, the spirits walked amongst us and then returned to the jungle. I didn’t realize then that I was seeing an early form of theatre.

 

In Ancient Greece, the legendary poet Thespis was supposedly the first to have an actor step on a stage and turn choral recitation into drama. The first dramas told mythical stories. In fact, they were enacted myths, so drama emerged from a religious ceremony. Actors, just like the spirit dancers, were those who could take in and express the power of a myth or spiritual story. In fact, Thespis also introduced masks so actors could play different roles and genders. This was not just putting on a costume. It was putting on an identity, often an identity much bigger than one’s own.

 

When students today take on a role they are partaking in a very old tradition. They are taking on someone else’s character and history. To do the job well, the actor must let go of their own ego border enough so they can feel the feelings of the role, of the other person. The student standing in the shining lights of a theatre illuminates the question of identity which all of us, certainly teenagers, face. Who is it standing in those lights? And who are you when the show is over?

 

The actor makes himself vulnerable, open to the community’s judgment. It is almost sacrificial. If the actor fails, forgets a word, loses connection to the dramatic reality, they often feel devastated. In this way, an actor is heroic. This is extremely powerful. To be seen in stage lights is to be seen in a heightened light, in a way you can’t be seen in ordinary life.

 

Just imagine the effects acting can have on a student. A shy student, a student unsure of her identity, or a student who is disenfranchised or ignored by others can, with drama, become a hero. The intensity, creativity and sheer amount of work that goes into a production can also bring students closely together, make them feel cared for, part of a group, part of something larger than themselves.

 

But this power can work on people in many ways. The actor, feeling the vulnerability on stage, can either carry that openness over to their daily life or build walls around it to be opened only in the lights. They can let themselves think their special status onstage is their due offstage. They can so identify with being in the lights that they mistake the mythical power of the stage as their own. Our culture worships stars and this worship can either fuel or distort the creative process—and one’s own sense of oneself.

 

This worship and the dreams it inspires in students made casting our annual big production the most difficult time of the year for me. There were always disappointed students, always tears. Some schools just thought of putting the “best” singer or strongest actor in the lead role. I wanted not only a great performance but a great learning experience for everyone in the group. Sometimes it was not the lead who carried the play, but one of the supporting roles. Sometimes, I had the students cast the show themselves. This practically always worked out well, with few complaints.

 

Students must learn the historical background out of which modern theatre emerges. They must learn how to take on and then let go of the power of the stage. The power is not only one’s own but derives from one’s engagement with the role. The role is part of a whole play. It is dependent on the rest of the cast, the tech crew, and the process of rehearsal. It is dependent on the audience. The actor must learn that identity arises in a situation. It is not formed once and forever, but moment by moment. You don’t do something wild, like play Romeo or Juliet, and for all time you are a romantic hero or heroine.  For one glorious moment you enact that role, you give people that example of how to live. Then, a new moment arises, a new situation. What role will you then play?

 

I clearly did not always succeed in getting across these lessons. The pressures that develop during a production can be enormous. In order to help both the educational and creative process, it is important to get students to take on roles not only on stage but off. Students can help in casting and in researching and choosing the play. They can be assistant directors and choreographers. Almost all schools have student costume designers, stage managers, and tech crew. It is important to choose plays and even musicals that have several good parts, so as many people as possible can be stars. I did a series of one act and short plays each fall. This enabled almost everyone to get a decent sized part and one that they wanted to play. Each spring, we did a larger production. We did shorter runs, of one to three shows, in order to not get overloaded—and to emphasize that the whole process was important, not only the show itself. We used meaningful rituals to get everyone engaged, loosened up, energized, and to have fun. One of our most important rituals was doing the Hokey Pokey very loudly before each performance. Instead of me deciding on all the stage action, as much as possible I had the actors improvise stage action during rehearsal. And, on the first school day after the show was over, we always had a check-in session, to discuss people’s feelings, reflect on how the show went, put audience feedback in perspective, and say farewell to what was hopefully a great experience.

 

The cultural and personal expectations, as well as the sheer effort required by a performance, made drama the most difficult class I ever taught.  It also provided the most amazing highlights.

Embedding Compassion In The Curriculum Part C: The Arts, Drama

Arts education is being cut in school districts throughout the country. This is extremely shortsighted. For many children, the arts provide a doorway into learning itself and the motivation needed to graduate. It makes school something more than mere work, but a place where students can come alive and see their lives reflected in the curriculum.

 

The arts provide a more direct entrance into understanding and caring about the experience of others than any other discipline. The arts provide unique lessons about personal identity and the power to affect others. As such, the arts provide one of the best ways to embed compassion into the curriculum.

 

The arts, whether it be the ancient dramas of the Greeks or our movies today, teach us about facing our world. For the ancient Athenians, the role of the arts, particularly drama, was clearly recognized. They led a life amazingly social and public. Unlike us, who view our emotions as individual, personal and essentially hidden, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly claim that for the Greeks, “moods were public and shared.” Emotions were visitations by the gods of the community. Being so social, they needed a way to purge those emotions (other than going to war). They lived in a violent time. So, at the height of the Athenian democracy, citizens were paid to go to the theatre. ‘Catharsis’ comes from the Greek ‘katharis’ meaning purification or cleansing. In fact, according to Thomas Cahill, in earlier times in Greece, when drama was developing from a choral performance to staged action, there were only two parts in a play: the soloist, often in a costume and sometimes with a mask who stepped onto the stage to tell a story, and the chorus itself, which would comment on the story and play the role of the community. The audience would listen reverently to the soloist but join in the choral responses, which they often memorized. It was a ritual. ‘Leitourgia’ (meaning “work of the public”) was the ancient Greek word for this audience-choral interaction and the origin of our modern word ‘liturgy.’ Through feeling the emotions evoked through the play, the audience was educated about how to live, and stored up collective emotions were purged and social tensions relieved.

 

In an earlier blog I talked about how communication is not just about expressing ourselves but connecting with others. A conversation takes at least two; to speak with another person, I have to imagine or feel who the other person is or I can’t speak to them. When we try to speak and only hear our own voice, we are hearing the voice of disconnection, and the hunger for connection. The Greeks joined with others in liturgy. Today, we have different practices.

 

In my school, in the fall, we always did a series of short or one act plays. The show became a greatly anticipated community event that lasted only one night and was coordinated with a fundraising spaghetti dinner. The theatre would often be full, standing room only. Student MCs would develop their own routines to introduce each play and whip up the enthusiasm of the audience. To the degree that the actors would feel and speak the part, the audience would live the story along with them. The energy was heightened for the audience by the fact that many knew the cast members personally. I remember one night. One actor was an extremely shy student who in ordinary life hardly ever spoke up. During the show he seemed to break free from some inner restraint and fully inhabited his role. He strode boldly across the stage and the audience cheered on each step that he took.  That was connection.

 

Keith Oatley takes this analysis a step further. Art allows us to not only feel what others feel, but feel without a layer of self-interest. When we watch a drama or movie or read a novel, we can identify with the protagonist, feel her feelings, yet also, in a more developed work of art, also feel for the antagonist. We can be interested yet impartial and thus have the opportunity to study the affects and moral dimensions of our emotions. In this way, the arts are a school for citizenship where we refine and enhance our capacity for empathy. Cut the arts and you cut one of our greatest tools for teaching students how to be moral, responsible, hopefully compassionate members of a community.