Value-Added Models in Education and the Value of Terminology

One way to improve education recommended by many “reformers” is the use of “value-added models” or criteria to evaluate teacher performance. If you’re not familiar with the concept of value-added models in education, it means, in practical terms, that teachers are judged by how much their teaching improves a student’s scores on a standardized test from the beginning to the end of a year. Certainly, it is fairer to judge a teacher by comparing the scores of a particular class of students over time than simply comparing end of year scores for all students across all classes of a certain grade and different schools without a baseline. The composition of classes, the level of student prior knowledge or even familiarity with the English language, and so many other factors may vary greatly from class or school to school. This makes it extremely difficult to actually assess how much one class of students has learned in the course of a school year compared to another, and even more difficult to determine how much the teacher is responsible for that learning. Many supporters of value-added models argue for their position by correlating a student’s potential increase in test scores with an increase in future earnings. But think for a minute about just the terminology. I’m sure that I’m not the only one who finds it totally offensive to speak of “adding value” to students. As if you could (or should) monetize a person’s worth, like you monetize a piece of merchandise. We all know, I hope, what happens when we think of people as merchandise.

 

As educators, you can’t say, “I didn’t mean it like that.” Whether you mean it like that or not, the imagery of “value-added” turns students into items of production with a dollar value at the end. And I think the imagery anyone uses is not random; it reveals the perspective a person is taking on an issue.

 

A teacher’s attitude towards a child’s ability influences how well that child will learn in the classroom.  Likewise, how a culture thinks about and acts towards it’s young people will influence not only how well they learn and develop as teenagers but how they will think of themselves throughout their lives.  What does a child feel when treated as merchandise by “its” culture? How does a “product“ treat a “product”? I don’t think I’d want to walk down a street filled with people who think of themselves and others primarily in terms of monetary value. It would be too dangerous.

 

Some may argue, “Ok, the terminology is bad, but the reality is helpful. Even you admit that value-added evaluations are better than the alternative of not using a baseline.” It’s better than the alternative but it’s not good enough, especially if we want the goal to be educating students to be clear thinkers able to participate successfully and ethically, even compassionately, in their communities as citizens, workers, friends and neighbors. Value-added tests are not effective assessments, and in terms of educational practice they have too many negative side effects.  Any dependence on a standardized test as the central vehicle to judge learning or evaluate a teacher is flawed, even when the terminology used to describe the value of the tests is not offensive.

 

Value-added models are derived from business practices. For a business, it might be considered good procedure to fire a third of the workers when the business is not making a profit. It might also be good financially to fire the lowest performing students and teachers to raise the “efficiency” of a school system. I’d like to say that this won’t occur, but isn’t that one of the purposes of value-added models? Teachers adding the least “value” to their students are being threatened with losing their jobs; and if the claim by Diane Ravitch and others is correct, the most “problematic” students in some non-public schools, are also being “fired” or pushed out.

 

I’m heartened by the outcry against the use of standardized tests to assess students and hold teachers accountable, but where is the outcry against the dehumanizing mentality of “adding value” to students?

Thought Distortions and the Negativity Bias

How often do you teach a class or do something, do anything, and afterwards all you can think about is what you might have messed up? I recently led a ninety-minute workshop on different teaching strategies for a group of teachers. After the workshop and the thank yous and other compliments were over, I had a few minutes of being on my own, excited and happy about what I had done. And then, wham; I started thinking about one of the few things I didn’t do so well. All sorts of imagined negative judgments from people in the workshop jumped into my mind. It’s good that I’m fairly proficient at letting things go. But why did my mind jump to the negative?

 

There’s a so-called “negativity bias,” which causes humans to remember negative memories before positive ones. As described by Dr. Julie Haizlip et al, “humans are more attentive to and are more influenced by the negative aspects of their environment than by the positive.” I understand that this bias has great survival value. If we’re ultrasensitive to what might hurt us, then we will be ready to fight it off. The negativity is just the face of the fight-flight-freeze response. But this negativity jumps in even when the threat is imagined, when it’s social, not physical, or even when there’s just a small chance of being true. It is almost as if the mind creates the negative to fend off something even worse.

 

This bias interferes not only with clear thinking but clear perception. So, in a way, it can make us more, not less, susceptible to being hurt, and the primary hurt is self-generated.

 

Let’s say you’re a teacher in a class and the students are giving you a hard time. Young people can zero in on your vulnerabilities extremely well. Your frustration builds until it becomes anger and you’re about to explode, or “lose it.” What are you losing? It’s not “control” so much as awareness. You are afraid and angry at your own fear, which you then direct to the students. They are the threat and your response is a classic flight-flight-freeze response. Your thinking gets narrowed and only takes in what reinforces the sense of being attacked. You don’t notice how you create a narrative in your mind. You call yourself all sorts of names and imagine other people saying all sorts of things about you. And how does your narrative portray you? As a successful teacher? I don’t think so. You want to attack, escape, or hide and just get it over with.

 

This, too, is the negativity bias. We interpret reality as a threat, our thinking obscures and narrows and we lose awareness of our mental process. I remember another incident where this happened to me. It was in a middle school class near the beginning of the school year. One of the students asked what I interpreted as a facetious question. At first, I thought he was just trying to push my buttons. Then my mind quieted and I realized that maybe he needed to see someone face a challenge without anger and fear. Maybe he needed me to be someone different from what he knew at home. I realized that this situation was exactly why I was a teacher. This was what I was meant to deal with. I asked him if he was being facetious. He said he didn’t know the word so we looked up the meaning. I said I would never be facetious with the class, and asked what had teachers done in the past that was most helpful to them. And then I told a story from my own life about being threatened by a gang and how I dealt with it. The whole atmosphere in the room changed. Instead of joining the student mood of attack, I was present and kind. Teaching does not often conform to our images of what we’d like it be, and we can’t always conform to our images of who we think we should be. I chose awareness even when the object of awareness was painful. Kindness, taking a larger perspective, and awareness are powerful teaching tools.

 

This insight can help teachers with students who think everything they do must be “perfect.” Possibly all teachers know of students whose perfectionism is so extreme that they can barely turn in an assignment. A perfectionist wraps her or himself in a tight circle guarded by very strong narratives, and won’t step out of that circle for fear of reprisal.

 

Actually, I think we need to re-think the “negativity bias.” The bias arises as a component of a certain way of interpreting and responding to the world. It has to do with how I create a sense of myself. Notice how, after the workshop that I taught, I went from feeling really good to feeling bad. When I felt good, my self-image was glorious. When I felt attacked, my image was awful. When we feel ourselves as a thing enclosed in a bubble of skin, which separates us from the world, then we easily feel threatened, alien, insecure. A bubble easily bursts. Any good feelings must of necessity soon be followed by ones of threat.

 

So, what can we do? We can learn and teach the basics of cognitive therapy or how to identify and talk back to thought distortions like overgeneralizing, personalizing, jumping to conclusions. This is tremendously empowering. We need to learn and teach how to stay with awareness, to hear the comments we make in our mind and recognize the physical sensations of fear and threat. When we do so, the fear does not take hold of us because we do not turn away. Our attention is on noticing and not on living the narrative. This is mindfulness practice, learning to be continuously aware not only of what we are giving our attention to, but how. It develops empathy and kindness. When students exercise empathy for others, they can apply it to themselves. Being kind to others relaxes the borders of their circle. And if they can learn how to see their own thoughts and behavior from a variety of perspectives, not just one, then they will be more likely to let go of the narratives of threat.

 

Responding to noise with quiet, to a lack of awareness with awareness, or to someone else’s fear and anger with kindness and empathy, can make a tough day into a remarkable one.

Habits of Mind

In the 1990s, Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick wrote a series of books on fostering habits of mind that assist the learning process. I, and many teachers that I worked with, greatly benefitted from their approach. The books argued that if students learned these habits, then they would be able to successfully put in the type of effort that leads to deep learning. The habits included persisting, striving for accuracy, thinking flexibly, managing impulsivity, listening with understanding and empathy, thinking about thinking, responding with wonderment and awe, etc. This approach is being revived today and I think it is a tremendous step, hopefully indicating an increased understanding of the necessity to teach the social and emotional aspects of learning. I would make minor adjustments, such as adding patience to persisting, and gratitude to responding with wonderment and awe. And I’d ask: Is it accurate and beneficial to call these mental processes or qualities of mind “habits”? Are the habits separate and discrete? Or are they merely different ways to view one quality of mind or experience? And what is the most efficacious way to teach what the habits teach us?

 

Costa and Kallick describe many excellent methods for teaching these habits. For example, you can use “word splashes” or brainstorms on the meanings of the habit. You can use questioning strategies that help students elucidate and analyze a problem, and you can incorporate the habits into rubrics students can use to reflect on their thinking process.

 

We teach through modeling. To help teach reflection, for example, we model awareness, honesty and humanity in the class.  We need to admit what and when we don’t really know something or if we get something wrong. If we want to teach flexibility or hearing with empathy, for example, then we teach with those qualities. When there is any doubt about what a student means in his or her analysis of a passage in a text, for example, we don’t just assume we understand what a student means; we paraphrase and then ask for confirmation.

 

Other ways to teach these qualities that I use include linking class content and student concerns. By asking students to work on questions that are meaningful and important to them, we can stimulate the student’s own striving for accuracy, curiosity, and ability to think flexibly and critically.

 

Costa and Kallick state that the habits work together. Thinking critically, for example, is a complex and multifaceted mental process and is best taught as a whole process. I think it begins with clarifying the problem or question and careful observation. Then gathering and immersing yourself in the material, presenting and questioning evidence and theories, mindful awareness and reflection on your process, incubation or stepping back to gain some perspective. And, finally, stating and testing a synthesis or conclusion. It involves not one but possibly all of the beneficial habits Costa and Kallick describe.

 

And I recommend teaching the habits experientially, with mindful meditation. Take a moment to sit back and relax. Just settle into the chair. Close your eyes now, or in a moment or two, as you feel comfortable. Just let your body settle, relax. Pick a place to put your attention, like maybe the area around your eyes. Just feel the muscles around your eyes. Can you feel how your body, very subtly, expands as you breathe in? Just notice it. And as you breathe out, can you feel your eyes relax, settle down, let go of any tension?  Just feel that for a minute.

 

Give the following directions or ask the following questions one at a time, with patience.

 

Now, think of a time that you were very patient, or you witnessed someone else being patient. Just observe yourself or the person. What did you or this person do? What actions did she or he take? What qualities did you or this other person show? How do you think the person felt while being patient? How do you feel when you’re patient? How does it feel when someone is patient with you?

 

Now just sit for a minute with the feeling of patience.

 

When you practice this meditation, notice what you feel at the end. Patience does not stand by itself. It comes along with other qualities of mind, more than I could sum up, qualities like calmness and clarity of thought. You manage impulsivity, for example, by first monitoring it, or by allowing awareness of how the impulsivity is specifically arising moment-by-moment in your body and mind. If you get absorbed in your internal comments or become judgmental of yourself for “having” the impulsivity, or if you don’t allow the awareness of what is going on to fully arise, you become lost. You manage nothing.

 

And this is true with all the “habits.” They are different aspects of awareness of what and how we “pay” attention. To start learning habits of mind, allow into awareness, “How am I thinking, now? What habits am I using now?” One of the habits, for example, is “thinking about thinking” or metacognition. We could also call it “attending to thinking” to avoid using the word ‘thinking’ too ambiguously. What is the goal of attending to our thinking? Is it an intellectual analysis of how our thinking could be improved? Or is it actually thinking consciously and clearly? The two are not necessarily the same, any more than eating a meal and the description of the tastes are the same.  Analysis is based on memory and is an after-the-fact commenting on conscious experience. The other is direct experience. The former depends on the latter. Mindfulness meditation teaches us how to be aware of direct experience, or our moment-by-moment quality of attention. This includes, as we pointed out with “impulsivity,” being aware and open to whatever arises, even confusion, anxiety, or fear. Without developing this clear awareness of direct experience, metacognition is handicapped.

 

The habits of mind bring attention to important mental processes or qualities of mind. However, these “habits” are not discrete and separate. They arise and work together. And to fully utilize a complex mental process, you need clear awareness of your own mental state. Mindfulness meditation provides a wonderful method to develop this clear and direct awareness.

 

Energizing Meaning

We usually act as if the meaning of a word were inherent to its sounds and shapes. But I bet you’ve had the experience where you looked at a word and suddenly it had no meaning. Not only did it lose semantic meaning but you couldn’t even sound it out. It became merely random marks on a page. Experiment with this; it can teach useful lessons. The easiest way to do this, actually, is to start with the sound instead of the written symbol. Say a word over and over until sound and meaning decouple. You become mute.

 

All language depends on complex layers of associations. A word means something only as long as you can give it meaning. But it’s not only yours to give. Students sometimes argue in class that a word can mean anything you want it to. Try it out. It doesn’t work very well, not if you want to talk with someone else. If a word meant anything you wanted it to, then how could anyone understand you? Your meaning would be different than anyone else’s. You would isolate yourself; your words would be merely mutterings in the wind. Ask yourself and your students: Where do meanings come from? When you speak, it’s not only you speaking. It’s a whole culture. It’s a time and place in history speaking.

 

But this connection takes energy. You can lose it. When you’re tired or angry, how hard is it to read or write? Word meanings disappear on you. Or imagine trying to write a poem or essay when you’re worried about something else. How much meaning you derive when you read a book varies greatly with your focus, quality of attention and emotional state. This is true not only with reading a language but even more with reading math symbols or scientific formulas.

 

This has great import to all of us, but especially to teachers. It provides a great subject for students to investigate and study. It reminds us that education often begins with uncovering what was hidden, assumed, right in front of us, and then constructing new understandings. And it reminds us that understanding and learning takes energy. So any work assigned in school must have a well motivated and clear learning goal. Even tests must be thought of in terms of what the act of taking the test teaches students.

 

But if meaning requires energy, what sort of effort should students be encouraged or taught to expend? To many people, work itself is good, hard work is even better. Hard work supposedly teaches persistence, how to face adversity, develop “grit.” But unjustified work imposed on people is just unjustified, and being told to do it in a school mainly teaches how useless schools can be. Work imposed only from the top is completed mostly out of fear, or out of a desire to please an authority figure. The fear might be of a bad grade or of looking bad; the work itself is not compelling. Fear can motivate, but it also creates resistance, stress. Do we want to associate learning with fear or with pleasing authority-figures?

 

However, work which emerges from and elucidates a student’s own life concerns, crises, joys and questions is barely work at all. It is not imposed top down but emerges from one’s life or from one’s own assessment of what is important. The effort to complete it is almost effortless.

 

In psychology class, when we teach about stress, we talk about the “3Cs” of commitment, control and challenge. These 3Cs develop hardiness, the ability to take on demanding work, intellectual or otherwise. Applying this to a school situation, the more a student feels committed to or interested in a topic or assignment, is given a choice or some control, and feels the task is a useful challenge or adventure, the less resistance or harmful stress they will experience, and the more they will learn. The 3Cs are a good guide to fostering effortless effort and clear learning. It also makes school more enjoyable and engaging.

Writing As A Process of Discovering Your Truths And Power

Sometimes teachers ask themselves, “How do I get students to use the full writing process, to start with brainstorming and proceed to outlining, first draft, etc.,?” I think that question assumes that the writing process, as usually taught, is the most appropriate way for each student to approach writing. I prefer to start with: “How do I help each student to think clearly and express that clarity?” Or: “How do I help this student to write well?” Or: “How do I motivate this student to write?” And: “How do you write what is your own truth?” Discovering what works best for you, and why, can help you relate to your student’s struggles. And when writing is viewed as revelation or discovery, a means not only for expressing but thinking critically about yourself and your life, then writing becomes intrinsically motivating. It is not just something imposed by a teacher. And then the most important part of writing instruction is already taught.

 

I noticed that whenever I first try to discuss the process of writing with a group of secondary school students, they rarely like or fully understand how to outline or brainstorm. Or maybe they don’t like it because they don’t understand it. They think the “full writing process” is a waste of time. Outlining feels artificial, inauthentic. Brainstorming, they think, only gets in their way. They want to “just write” or just get something down on a page.

 

It’s helpful to ask students how they approach writing and what is most difficult for them, but you have to listen and watch closely for answers. They might not be able or willing to say it all in words. And you need ways to individualize instruction in response to what they say.

 

Sometimes, the problem is that they don’t know how to organize their ideas or they are easily overwhelmed by material. In that case, I offer a form guiding them step by step through structuring their essay. Or, in the past, I showed students an old process used by scriptwriters. It involves writing, on 3 x 5 cards, each scene you envision for the movie. Then you place the cards on a table and move them around to find the most appropriate plotline. You could do the same thing with a research or persuasive essay by recording facts, theories, and lines of reasoning on the cards and move them around to build the strongest argument for your position. Or you could use a concept map or computer graphics to serve a similar purpose.

 

Other times, students feel an outline or brainstorm takes away the creativity. Or, underneath that, they don’t trust their intellect or feel that if the process were too organized it would chase away their ideas. In that case, I explain that brainstorming allows them to work with their own brain and not against it. The brain processes that foster insight and creativity are different from those that edit, or check spelling and grammar. So doing a brainstorm frees the mind from anything that is irrelevant to writing a first draft.

 

But even more, I talk about uncovering your own truth. “What is it that you really feel, think and want to say?” Brainstorming is a way to free your mind from assumptions and get at what isn’t initially clear. It is a way to integrate material and synthesize information.

 

Actually, it’s helpful to talk about writing as part of thinking from the very beginning of an assignment or project. Start by giving students meaningful choices to write about. Then use prompts to help brainstorm how to approach the subject: “What intrigues you about this subject? What do you love or hate about it? What are your assumptions?” To help students understand the question or assignment, ask: “How are you hearing the question? What is it asking you to do? What are the different parts of the question?”

 

When you brainstorm, what do you do? Just put your pen to the paper and write whatever comes to you in response to the prompt. “What do you hear in your head? What thoughts and ideas come to you? If you get lost or confused, write down your confusion.  Write what you hear, hear what you write. Don’t edit. Just let your self go free. Edit later. Write until what you hear feels real, honest, exciting, and large enough to do justice to the topic. Write until the topic feels new or fresh to you.” Sometimes, when you don’t know where to begin an essay or can’t figure out how to answer a question, make the essay the unraveling of your confusion. Start your brainstorm or the essay itself by voicing what troubles or confuses you. By going directly into it, it unravels. Much of this instruction I learned from a wonderful form of meditative writing called proprioceptive writing. This practice can be adapted to a classroom setting. It asks students to use a pen or pencil instead of a computer or phone because when you write with the hand, you actually shape the words and thus have a greater ability to see and hear what you write.

 

Emphasize that any writing, not just short stories or poetry or film scripts, is creative, and can follow the creative process. You begin with preparation and immersion in the material. You go through a time of frustration, even confusion, questioning. Then, before insight, you allow an incubation period. You step back. You meditate. You do exercises. You play games. Especially for younger students, but its great with anyone, have some fun. Loosen up. For example, if the assignment is to write a persuasive essay, ask the students, ”If the different sides or aspects of this question were animals, which ones would they be?” Or, you can imagine each side of an argument has a different tone of voice. Or you can have students draw the central questions they are dealing with.

 

When writing is explained in this way, it’s creative, not just work, not only logic. When the student’s actual thoughts, obstacles and ways of thinking are made part of the process, the assignment becomes less an imposition and more of a revelation. The student feels like you’re helping them discover their truth and power, not taking it away. And that’s exactly what you want and what writing is about.

 

 

 

*Over the next few months, I will be devoting more time to completing my book on teaching, less to these blogs, so don’t be surprised if I miss a week now and then. Wish me well.

Big Sky Mind and Perception

How often do you look up at the sky? I mean, just look at it? I am more likely to do it at night. I walk out of the house, onto the deck, and the stars are just there. Of course, it’s easier for me than for most people because I live in a rural area where the night sky is not hidden by the lights of a city. But usually, especially during the day, I look at the sky only as the distant background, like when watching a hawk fly off from the road into the sky. My mind is usually taken up by human affairs, plans, news, and the remnants of a conversation, not the empty sky.

 

But when I do look at the sky, I can get lost in it. The vastness overwhelms me and, interestingly, I then see more clearly. This can be a great lesson. When my mind quiets, my perception improves. Why does that happen?

 

There are so many questions about perception and the best ones are not only scientific but philosophical. We look at the world and think the world is as we perceive it. When we see a tree, we think it is just there, entirely separate from us. We see the blue sky and don’t feel the blue is our own artwork. We think it is out there, on its own. But is that true? And, if so, to what degree? To what degree, if at all, does what is perceived depend on the perceiver? I won’t even go into the toughest question of them all, and that is how is it that I can perceive, or be conscious, at all? Teachers need to ask these questions of themselves and their students.

 

Remember the game of peek-a-boo? It’s a common and wonderful game to play with children, who are not sure that the world, you, their parents, will not disappear when they close their eyes.  The question is, if you close your eyes, what is it that remains of what was seen?

 

To better understand the role of the perceiver in what is perceived, maybe start by thinking of a person who is colorblind. If you’re color blind, can you imagine the world full of color? Or if you’re not color blind, can you imagine how your sense of the world might change if the world was less rich with color, closer to grey and white? Or can you imagine seeing the world with four primary colors, like some fish, instead of three? Or, better yet, try to imagine you’re a dog or a cat. A cat has less visual acuity than a human, but their ability to perceive movement or see at night is far superior to your own. A dog’s sense of smell is at least 10,000 times stronger than yours and a cat’s is almost as strong as the dog’s. This sense of smell is further enhanced as the nose has the quickest route to the brain of any sense. Smell, even in a human, is also the first sense to fully develop. The messages received by the nose go directly to the older emotional centers of the brain.  The cat or dog thus moves through a world of emotions arising as scents. They move through a world defined largely by scents just like you move through a world of sights.

 

What our eyes sense is light waves, not color. Color is the way we perceive a certain wavelength of light to which our senses (and brain) are sensitive. There is so much light out there that we just aren’t equipped to see. So, the world without beings who can sense is full of different wavelengths of light, but not colors. Wavelengths of sound, but not symphonies. Floating molecules that can stimulate smells, but not the delicious aroma of liquid chocolate.

 

What we see and who sees are thus inextricably tied together. They are one.

 

So, when you look at the sky, I recommend that you just look, without any inner commenting. Or, if you’re in a room, use your imagination. Let your body settle down. Focus on breathing in and then breathing out. And let come to mind the blue sky in all its vastness. No wind, no disturbances, just an open, bright, blue sky. How do you feel when the sun is shining and the sky is clear? A wonderful feeling, isn’t it?  Just sit with this sense of openness, this clarity and spaciousness.

 

When the mind is open and spacious, then self-concern, self-description, self-commentary are all dissolved. There is not a you, here, and the sky over there, separate, off in the distance. The sky is no longer a baby blue color off in the distance on a cloudless and quiet day. The sky is right in front of your face. It is so close, you don’t see it or think of it as sky. You don’t label it, separate from it, but you do breathe it. Or, better yet, it is simply breathed.  You do nothing. Openness of sky just meets openness of mind.

 

Can this be done? Can you perceive the world and other people with such openness, with no distance, and with everything beginning with a breath?

Teaching For Meaning

One of the great drives in life is for meaning, for living fully and deeply.  This is certainly true for teenagers, but it is also true for adults. As a teenager, I remember feeling a great fear that my life wouldn’t be meaningful. That as I got older my job and my society would deaden my dreams and my full humanity. I think Langston Hughes’ poem, A Dream Deferred, gets at this fear. I feared my life would “dry up” or “fester.” This fear was, on the one hand, a great distorting influence. So many times, I would hear of a potential job or opportunity and I would reject it as not good enough or I’d feel the daily requirements of the job, getting up early, sitting at a desk, etc. were walls that would imprison me. On the other hand, the need for meaning drove me to take chances. It drove me to hitch-hike across the country a few times and across Europe and to join the Peace Corps. It drove me to study philosophy, to protest against wars and to get to know people who knew what meaning tasted like.

 

As teachers, when we enter into the classroom, we have to remember that our students have this same drive for meaning. They might feel themselves pushed to the edge, to take chances, just like we did, but not be aware of why. We have to teach students how to look underneath their interests and fears for the meaning waiting there. We have to understand what it is that we seek in order to better understand and help uncover what anyone else seeks. By better understanding our own drives and needs we are more capable of understanding and feeling those of others. Other people become more alive to us. We have to remember the times when our lives felt full of meaning so we know what makes a moment or a life meaningful and we can make our teaching be the discovery of that drive. And we don’t do this by telling students what to think. We do it by mentoring students and ourselves in self-discovery and questioning.

 

In order to better understand what works for you so you can better help your students, try the following practice. It involves inquiry and visualization. Inquiry does not always have to be hard work. It can sometimes be relatively easy and fun. It will take just a few minutes and can be adapted to the classroom. You could record this and then play it back so it’s easier to practice.  If you have a lazyboy or a couch, feel free to use it for this exercise. Or if you’re in your classroom and the chairs are not so comfortable, just find the most relaxing way to sit in the chair.

 

Take a moment to sit back and relax. Just settle into the chair. Close your eyes now if you can, or in a moment or two, as you feel comfortable. Its good to feel comfortable, isn’t it? Especially in doing school work. Focus just on breathing in and out. Just follow the breath in. Do you feel how your body expands a little as you breathe in? Then what happens as you breathe out? Does your body relax, settle down, let go?

 

Pause between each sentence of the directions. Read in an easygoing, comforting yet focused voice.

 

Now think of a time that you had an illuminating, educational, engaging experience, where you felt truly alive, in or out of a classroom. Just let come to mind any experience where you felt involved, that had a sense of meaning and depth to it. It could be a walk you took, a trip, a conversation. Just see it in your mind. Let whatever comes to you be there for you. Where was it? Who was involved? When did it occur? What was around you?

 

What made the experience so engaging, illuminating? What did you learn from it? What did the experience feel like?

 

Now, just sit for a moment with the feeling of being engaged, of finding meaning. Sit with the feeling that your life is meaningful and full.

 

Afterwards, ask yourself: What lessons can I take from this experience and apply to my classes? To myself?

 

Another practice is to make the classroom a place where the deep questions in student’s lives can be uncovered, respected and made part of the curriculum. When I taught a high school course called The Historical Development of Human Ideas, one of the overarching understandings I wanted to teach was that history is the story of human interdependence. Change occurs through the interaction of multiple, maybe innumerable, forces. Out of this came essential questions like: How are the various forms of interpersonal human suffering created in and by a culture? So, on the first day of class, I asked them to write down: What are the biggest problems you see in the world today? We analyzed these, looked for the central problems, and then I told the students that their final assessment would be answering the question of how and why their problem developed. They would have to follow a strand through history and the different cultures we studied of the specific and defined “problem” in human history that they perceived and picked out.  They would have to describe and analyze the nature and extent of the problem and any forces, beliefs, conditions  (technological, historical, environmental, political, artistic, psychological, scientific, religious or other factors) which greatly increased or decreased the problem. In this way, their own questions became the class.

 

*Photo is of the library of Celsus in Ephesus, Turkey.

Why Teach?

Why become a teacher? After high school, I told myself I would never teach in a public school. I wanted to be a writer or do something else that was creative. In my senior year of college, I wrote a poem about poetry. In writing it I realized that what I loved about writing was the feeling of being inspired. I loved pushing myself to pull ideas and images together. It was alive. I felt that I had something worthwhile and meaningful to say. In other words, poetry had the power to teach. The only thing I was unsure of was whether teaching had the power of poetry.

 

And I discovered that it did. A good lesson can have the intensity and artistry of a poem. And when teaching with the Peace Corps, I felt respect from my students. What I was doing mattered to them. So I wanted to do it even more when I returned to this country.

 

In today’s world, the question is not only why become a teacher but, if you are a teacher, why stay one. Because teaching in some ways is more difficult now than it was thirty years ago. Class sizes are bigger, there are fewer support staff, and the profession is more maligned and more strictly judged. If anyone purposely wanted to undermine the teaching profession and public schooling, they could learn a great deal from the present situation.

 

So, considering all these factors, why teach? Because it is one of the most meaningful things you can do. After a day of teaching is over, you don’t have to find other ways to make the world a better place; you do it daily. Of course, this can be as true with other professions as well. Focusing on helping others is very different from focusing on how much money you can earn or how you can stand out or look better than other people. It changes how you view your own life. Standing out is isolating, helping is connecting. With the former, you feel bad if you aren’t at or near the top. With the latter, you can feel good about what you do no matter what.

 

When you walk down the street, you might meet up with an old student who remembers how you inspired him or her. I remember meeting a former student who I thought hated me because I held him accountable for some unacceptable behavior. Fifteen years later he thanked me. He is now a teacher. In any crowd, someone might be there who appreciates what you did for them. So on those days when you forget how important teaching is, or you get depressed because a student dropped out of school or because of some newscast you heard, or you feel overwhelmed by the difficulties many of your students face, you can remember the student who, 15 years later, thanked you for how you changed his life. Or you remember the former student who told you she was the first child in her family to graduate from college and the only reason she was able to do so was the trust and self-belief that you taught her. Now that’s a worthwhile way to live.

 

*The mural is of teachers from the Alternative Community School painted by a few students.

Beginnings: How Do We Begin The School Year, Or Anything, As Skillfully As Possible?

There is nothing like a beginning. Just think of different beginnings. First meeting someone. Building your own home. Starting on a vacation. Of course, it’s not always clear where any event begins, is it? But let’s start with the sense of a beginning. What is its essence? Something new, unknown, exciting, scary yet filled with promise. You don’t know what will happen and are hopefully open to that. To begin something, you end or let go of something else.

 

To start the year off well, understand what beginning the year means to you. What do you need to be open? What do the students need? You can’t do it solely with thought. You must also be aware of your feelings. Many of us, if we don’t train our awareness, will plan our classes or vacations or our blogs so tightly that the realm of what is possible is reduced to what seems safe and already known. It’s not a beginning if you emotionally pretend that you’ve already done it. A beginning is constructed of questions.

 

To train your awareness, I recommend two practices. The first involves how you plan your courses. The second involves your mental state when you enter the classroom.

 

First, to plan any trip, you need to know where you’re going. To begin, you need to know the end. To teach students, you need to know what you want students to know, understand and be able to do. I often used what is called the backwards design strategy, and I highly recommend it.

 

The energy behind backwards design comes from using essential questions. They are big questions, philosophical, existential, even ethical. These questions are open-ended with no simple answers to them. They evoke the controversies and insights at the heart of a discipline. They naturally engage student interest because they connect the real lives of students to the curriculum. The classroom becomes a place where mysteries are revealed and possibly solved, where meaning is created. In working with questions, teachers don’t dictate answers but direct, model and coach active inquiry. Especially with secondary students whose lives are entwined with questions, essential questions are the DNA of learning. They are intrinsically motivating. Students look forward to coming to class.

 

I recommend leaving space wherever and whenever possible for asking the students to verbalize their own questions and then use these questions in shaping the course. You could ask for their questions at the beginning of the year and with each unit or class. For example, how might you begin a unit in an English class on the novel Demian, by Herman Hesse? The novel describes the influence of archetypes and dreams in an adolescent’s development.  You might ask students what questions they have about dreams or on the role of archetypal imagery or literature in shaping their lives. Their assessment on the unit can include using the novel in answering their own question.

 

Education, to a large degree, is about uncovering questions.  Let’s say you like sports or are teaching PE. Underlying your interest in sports might be questions about your potential: What are my physical capabilities? About competition: Do I really compete against others or is it against myself? What role do other people play in my life and in developing my strengths? And in ancient history you can ask: What can the Greeks show me about what it means to be human? Where in my life can I find the remnants of Athens? Is the past only an abstraction of what once was or is it alive in me today? Young people can easily get so caught up in their social relationships that they can’t see their lives with any perspective. What does history reveal about what I could possibly do with my life? What are the cultural and historical pressures that operate on me? How am I history? If you’re teaching biology, you are teaching the essence of life on a physical level. How does life sustain itself? What does it mean to be alive? To die? Such questions can challenge assumptions and reveal the depths that students crave but which are often hidden away. The Greek philosopher, Plato, said: “Philosophy begins in wonder,” the wonder from which real questions arise and which they evoke. This, right now, is my life. These other people—they’re alive, just like me. Can wonder be allowed into the classroom?

 

Secondly, begin by shattering any fears or expectations that your students might hold that you will hurt or distrust them. Enter the class as a fellow human being, not hidden behind a role. After you greet and look closely at each student, say what you’re feeling in that moment. Mention your excitement and nervousness. When you trust students in this way, you yourself will be trusted. You model awareness, both of your own inner state as well as of the other people there with you. You are very present. There is no other place you want to go. This is compassion. You care. To be a teacher, be a student of your students. In each moment, you are learning. You recognize that there’s more you don’t know than what you do know. And one of the things you don’t know and want to learn is who these other people are.  When you enter with this compassionate awareness, you will be relaxed and confident. When you enter hidden behind a role with a schedule to keep, you will be stiff and nervous. This is the ultimate end you want to teach from the beginning, being a compassionate human being. And since mindfulness is central in the education of awareness, practice mindfulness both in and out of the classroom.

 

What stressed me out when I began a school year was the idea of a whole year to lesson plan and so many students whose educational needs I would have to meet. All that work, all that time. But if I planned from the end, so I was clear about what I was doing and why; and I developed my awareness with mindfulness practice, then, instead of facing the idea of a whole year of work, I faced only an individual moment. I was prepared, alive with questions, so I could trust myself and be spontaneous. One moment at a time, I could do that. And this changed the whole quality of my teaching and of my life. My teaching and my life was one life.

Adolescence and Mindfulness: Two Books To Begin Reading Before School Starts

I’ve been reading two books lately. The first is Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, by Daniel Siegel. The second is Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, by Joseph Goldstein.

 

Adolescence has commonly been described as a transition period from dependence on adults to independence, marked by raging hormones and an immaturity that has to be endured until we grow out of it. I think this viewpoint reveals a very mixed attitude towards teenagers. We fear “them” as well as dream of “their” youthfulness. Siegel uses the latest neuroscience to characterize the common viewpoint as a set of harmful myths.  Adolescence is generally defined now as ages 12 – 24. He says it is a time when skills and approaches to life that are of enormous importance to the continuance and growth of society are developed. It is less a time to be endured and more a time to be appreciated and encouraged. It is a time of emotional intensity and social engagement, of great brain growth leading to the breaking of boundaries and creative exploration, of seeing the world anew. It is a time where someone can move not from dependence on adults to independence, but from dependence to mutual support or interdependence.

 

As Siegel points out, a teacher’s attitude towards a child’s ability influences how well that child will learn in the classroom. Likewise, how a culture acts towards it’s young people will influence not only how well they learn and develop as teenagers but how they will think of themselves throughout their lives. Siegel’s gift to us in this book is a transformed way to view not only teenagers but ourselves. He provides not only an analysis, but mindfulness exercises and reflections so we can transform adolescents, adults, and our society from the “inside out.”

 

In many descriptions of mindfulness for schools, business, medicine, law enforcement, etc., the full context and potential of the practice of mindfulness is not presented or even hinted at. Mindfulness is not just stress reduction or the ability to let things go so you can concentrate on your work. It is moment-to-moment awareness that is open to whatever arises in the mind or occurs in one’s environment, with no added commentary. This awareness is both ordinary and of startling depths. The question that the common description of mindfulness does not answer is: how do you get to those depths?

 

One source for an understanding of, and a path to, those depths is Buddhism. Mindfulness is one element of the Buddhist 8 Fold Path, a larger practice that includes wisdom, or clear knowing, ethical behavior and compassion, and concentration. Goldstein’s book leads us in a study of The Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha’s discourse on the “four foundations of mindfulness.”  Sutta is a Pali word (the Indian language spoken by the Buddha; sutra is the Sanskrit word) whose root means to sew (as in suture). Suttas are texts, originally oral teachings, sewn to hold things together.  The four foundations are of the body, including your breath and activities, of feelings and sense perceptions, of mind and thought, and of what is true or real (dhammas in Pali). The book, and the sutta, is extensive. I usually read only two or three pages at a time and then think about and practice what was discussed.

 

Both of these books provide insights and practices which might make the transition from summer to the new school year less stressful and more inspiring.