Creating a Model of How to Live in Friendship with Life Itself: Celebrating An Educator and Education that Freed and Sang to Us

In this time where teachers are being overburdened and education itself is under attack, where propaganda and lies are being elevated and facts, science, and diverse examples of literature are being suppressed, it’s more important than ever to speak of schools where something very different occurs. Where not only critical thinking but compassion and the wisdom and freedom of young people is fostered.

 

Yesterday, I attended the celebration of life of Dr. Dave Lehman, who died recently. He, with his wife, Judy Lehman founded the Lehman Alternative Community School (LACS), a public secondary school where I was lucky enough to teach for 27 years. Dr. Dave was the principal from 1974-2004. I attended the event as a grieving colleague not as a reporter or chronicler. I didn’t get permission from all the wonderful organizers and speakers, so I can’t mention their names or quote exactly what they said. All I can attempt is to somehow discover and reveal, to you and myself, my feelings about Dr. Dave and the school.

 

The speakers evoked in me so many memories. I was reminded how Dr. Dave sang to us, or more characteristically, led us in song and joy. In fact, all during the afternoon, whenever I looked around me, I was surprised by memories. Time itself took on new meaning. A former colleague shared with me their own experience of this. We might recognize how then influenced now. But what about the “reverse?” How is now influencing then?

 

Here we were, people spanning over 50 years of history at LACS. For me, right over there was a student from my first year of teaching and another from when I retired. There was one who went with me to Toronto to study theatre and one who went whale watching near Boston. There was one who helped create a replica of a Paleolithic art cave or read John Paul Sartre. They were 15, 16, 17 then, are 50 now. 50! They have their own children now in the school. How does who they are now illuminate who they were then? Or who I was? Or am?

 

I was reminded how successfully the school served as a place where everyone concerned, young people and adults, students and teachers, administrators, counselors, and janitors, secretaries and nurses, were allowed and supported in taking responsibility for educating and being themselves. We were learning how to be compassionately aware of our role in creating a community in which we and others could thrive together.

 

I was reminded that Dr. Dave often spoke about relationships and community as being the heart of a school and education itself, so our school was structured accordingly. Some examples: Each student and staff member had a family that met twice a week to plan and support their education. There was a weekly all-school meeting (ASM) where democracy was taught by actually making decisions about the school. There were committees to help plan the ASMs, clean and beautify the school, give support to diverse groups, take ecological action, and mentor new students. Students had choices in what courses they took and input into what was taught. The course material often grew out of student questions and concerns. Students themselves voted to require, as part of their education, 60 hours of community service.

 

I got to the school after having left teaching for a while and drifting from one job or area of interest to another. Then a friend told me about an opening at LACS, and I went to an interview. It turned out all the diverse experiences that I had had, all the courses I had taken and subjects that I loved were exactly what the school needed. Before teaching at LACS, I didn’t understand the underlying themes in my story. I did not know the feeling of being both centered and capable of helping others on a daily basis. But then I did.

 

During the event I kept thinking: how does anyone start such a school? How did Dr. Dave do it? Where did the vision and dedication come from? The persistence? Confidence? He didn’t do it alone, of course. I mentioned his wife, Judy, who ran the office and was like a mother to so many of us. Once started, he recruited an amazing core of educators, ready to give their hearts and enormous amounts of time to the job and with little financial renumeration. Most were so committed to helping young people that, for many years, they gave up part of their salaries in order to increase the number of staff and variety of courses.

 

And through the first 20 years or so, the school was frequently questioned, doubted, and even attacked by administrators and sometimes residents of the area, for being too different, not fitting into their ideas of what a secondary school should be or what young people were supposed to be. But not often by students and parents. For many years, there was a long waiting list to get into the school; potential students had to choose to attend. Dr. Dave was a great protector. He so capably worked to protect the school and all of us while our education continued.

 

And he taught us about change. That it was life itself. As one speaker pointed out at the event, he didn’t let us ever get too attached to seeing or doing things one way. For example, he tried to change the 45-minute class structure to 90 minutes, to allow for longer teaching periods and increased involvement in learning. However, after a yearlong trial period, the students voted down the change. And Dr. Dave, instead of getting upset, honored the wisdom and choice of students. Now, some 90-minute classes remain but most are 45.

 

And maybe most of all, Dr. Dave cared about us and for us. He taught us a language of caring. One example: after I had a difficult surgery, he came to my house to help with my recovery. We talked philosophy, and he helped me think about something other than pain, something uplifting. He did such things for all the staff, as well as students. When doors of such deep honesty and heart are opened, they don’t close so easily. A model for how to better live in friendship with life itself is created.

 

That’s what this school did for so many of us. Uplifted us. This is what education is about. This is what leaders could and I think should be. I was lucky enough to have known him, to have worked with him. And to have worked and shared with so many people, so many young people and older ones. Such an amazing group of colleagues; such an amazing assortment of students. What a gift.

 

*Photo by Rebecca Costello.

Learning How to Face Right Now: The Deceptions We Inflict on Ourselves and the Possible Liberation

It can seem that some lessons need to be learned over and over again until they finally live in us. These lessons are often the most basic, maybe even the most obvious.

 

But sometimes, instead of an old lesson needing to be re-learned, we’re noticing a new perspective on an old situation, or seeing a new dimension in something we thought we should’ve known all along.

 

For example, we have an expectation, fear, or regret, a project and we get lost in it; we ruminate on a detail and forget why we started the project to begin with. We lose ourselves in thought and don’t recognize that we’re living being lost in thought; we’re living an idea and no longer feel our life. We do something and feel we did it incorrectly and think we’re now and forever a mistake. And then we live angry at ourselves. Or we get angry at someone; and somewhere inside us we imagine this anger at another will save us from our own shortcomings⎼ but there’s no such escape. We’re just living scapegoating, living resentment.

 

Oh, and here’s one that’s common: we’re exercising and thinking mostly of getting it done. Or, similarly, we’re in a car driving to meet friends in order to relax together. But we drive fast; we get all tense trying to get to a future where we can let ourselves relax, instead of driving at a more leisurely pace where we’re at ease right now. How many times do we have to learn such lessons?

 

These insights are inspired by the 13th century Japanese Zen Master Dogen Zenji’s Being-Time, not that I have more than a basic understanding of his teachings. We often try to withdraw from or escape a situation, emotion, or expected future. We certainly can “time travel;” it’s one of humans’ greatest gifts. It allows us to plan ahead, empathically feel what another person feels, imagine a work of art or what the consequences of an action might be. It makes critical thinking possible. But when we lose perspective, time-travel can become a great peril we inflict on ourselves.

 

We can never step outside our lives, outside the universe, outside time. The imagined mental travel is itself a moment of life. A thought is time. A cry is time. A book is time. The first flower after winter, the first snowdrop, is the time that is spring. We are being time.

 

We too easily forget everything around us, everything we’ve experienced, every being around us is our life now. This, right here, right now. There’s no exit from it, not until we die, if then.

 

The French philosopher, J. P. Sartre, who was a member of the French resistance during WWII, gives us an interesting angle on these insights. Sartre wrote a play during the WWII occupation of France by the Nazis. The play was called No Exit. From one perspective, the play can be seen as an exposition of the hell created by a hellish war and the way the Fascist occupiers treated their fellow human beings. The Nazis deceived themselves, lied about their aims and the reality of others, refusing responsibility, refusing to feel the enormity of pain and destruction they inflicted. The play was first performed in 1944, during the occupation with Nazis in the audience ignorant of this layer of meaning in the play.

 

The three main characters in No Exit share a room together in hell for eternity. There are no torturers other than themselves, no flames other than the fire of lies and deceptions they lit in themselves….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

If 6th Graders Can Learn to Do This, Why Not the Rest of Us, and Society?

There are moments in life when we’re given an opportunity to participate in something special, a once in a lifetime moment.  Or maybe, it’s an opportunity to realize that every moment can be a unique, once-in-a-life moment.

 

This past weekend was the 50th Anniversary Reunion of the Lehman Alternative Community School {LACS] where I taught for 27 years. It’s a school that gives students, and it gave me, the opportunity to figure out who we were. For me, it was where I spent many of the best years of my professional life. It provided the chance to learn how all the disparate aspects of my life made sense and showed me how to pull all those aspects together. Just when I needed it most, and maybe when the school most needed me, we found each other.

 

The event began Friday night with a meet and greet dinner. Saturday, we gathered in the gym for welcome activities, photos, a talk from all 4 principals of the school⎼ the one who founded the school and led it for 30 years, and then the 3 principals who followed him.

 

Then there were school tours, art shows, and workshops; examples included The Seeds of Pedagogy, Climate Activism, Work in the Garden, etc. And the one I helped plan, on how our experiences in theatre classes and productions at the school and elsewhere empowered our lives.

 

On Saturday afternoon, a movie on the school was shown; there were meet ups for different groups, and an All-School Meeting was held. At night, a talent show hosted by graduates. And on Sunday, a lunch together at a park⎼ that nobody wanted to end until we were all exhausted.

 

The theatre workshop was a panel of graduates discussing two questions:

How has theatre helped you in your life?

What has been your experience pursuing your passions and exploring your career since leaving the school?

The panelists covered almost 45 years of our history. The moderator was a contemporary senior. 4 of the panelists were theatre professionals or studying in college to be one. The 5th used their theatre experience in their corporate career.

 

I had few coherent images of how the panel might turn out, just dreams and wishes. But the reality exceeded the dreams. The event was a testament to the profound possibilities that can occur when any group, certainly any group of young people, are trusted and given the opportunity, guidance, and support to openly be themselves⎼ and are encouraged to think deeply about the real issues of their lives and the world.

 

I was totally engaged with stories by graduates about how theatre, and the school in general, shaped and benefitted them, including how to face adversity and pain. There were stories about how theatre prepared one panelist to testify to congress and directly face all the giant cameras focused on them. Another panelist discussed how their experiences at the school showed them how to love auditions and be successful in movies and tv. Another talked about how it prepared them not only to direct theatre productions in Manhattan, but also to teach acting to college students. Or to follow their hearts and act to benefit others and society in general. An audience member, who is a medical examiner in New York City, shared how theatre prepared them to testify in trials.

 

Democratic decision-making is at the heart of the school….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Are We the Masked Species? What Can Wearing a Mask Teach Us About Ourselves?

What can wearing a COVID-mask teach us about ourselves and how we look at others? After almost two years of living in a pandemic, we could benefit by thinking not only about how wearing a mask can protect others from us, or us from a deadly disease, but about what mask wearing can teach us about ourselves, and relating to others.

 

We use the word person to refer to what we are and say we have a personality. The root word here is Latin, persona, meaning a social role, image, or a theatrical mask or appearance we wear in public. Psychologist Carl Jung used the term to mean the social face we present to others, a mask or image we create, or way to hide elements of ourselves. So, in a way we were the masked species even before the pandemic.

 

From antiquity, masks have been an important element of possibly all cultures. Most staged dramas began with performers wearing masks. In Ancient Greece, for example, the legendary poet, Thespis, was supposedly the first to put an actor on a stage and turn choral recitation into drama. He created larger than life masks that also acted like a megaphone. The first written stories were myths with existential and religious themes, about creation, life and death, heroes, and heroines. The first dramas were enacted myths, so drama emerged from religious ceremonies. But what happens when we wear an actual medical mask in public while doing everyday tasks?

 

Of course, politics also enters the picture, as the right-wing in the US and elsewhere have turned a medical necessity into a political statement, thus undermining the effectiveness of masks as simply a practical way to prevent the spread of a deadly disease. This influences how we respond to masks and perceive those who wear them, as well as undermines the value of rational, factual based decision-making. It purposefully turns the social sphere, the public commons into a stage for enacting a political and possibly even a religious drama.

 

Other people are no longer perceived as persons very much like us, but as characters in a drama. And when political leaders of one party threaten and call for violence against another party or against anyone who disagrees with them, that drama can too easily become deadly.

 

According to a research article by Frontiers in Psychology, COVID masks cover about 60-70% of the area of the face responsible for emotional expression. This makes identification of others or any social interaction more difficult. It limits the ability of other people to read our emotions and hear what we say, as the sound of our words is usually augmented by the sight of our lips moving and changes in facing expression. Consciously reading subtle emotional cues as well as the trustworthiness or honesty of others can be difficult enough for many of us without a mask. A mask obviously diminishes this ability.

 

How much does a mask become a blank slate for us to project our own personal dramas? We all know how deeply important how our face looks is to most of us. Especially today, with so many suffering from anxiety and trauma, we can feel extremely sensitive, self-judgmental about how we look, afraid of the tiniest “imperfections.” …

 

**To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.