Month: February 2011

Things I Know 49 of 365: Boredom scales

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

– Ellen Parr

Noah and I were chilling in my godmother’s living room earlier tonight.

He and his family had caught a 5 AM flight from Topeka to D.C., so I assumed he was a bit frayed.

He told me no. He’d fallen asleep before takeoff. I asked him about missing the in-flight movie and he stared at me blankly. Evidently, this is not a feature of the Topeka-D.C. run.

I switched the subject.

“I’m guessing you’re in third grade?”

Noah shook his head.

“Secon…”

I stopped short, noticing a decided uptick in Noah’s head shaking.

“Fourth?”

“Yup.”

This is why I’d sat down next to Noah. He was easily the youngest person at the party in that way I remembered meaning I needed to entertain myself when I was his age.

Plus, I like talking to little kids. They give the most honest answers.

As he didn’t have the air of a dropout about him, I began to ask Noah about school.

“Who’s your teacher?”

“Do you like him?”

“What do you think about school?”

The last one surprised me.

Noah had been keeping himself busy for the better part of an hour and a half – following the dog around, walking around in circles, entering a room and whispering “Does anyone want to play Follow-the-Leader” so he didn’t get in trouble for interrupting. The kid was pretty fantastic by all accounts.

I’d totally love to teach him.

By fourth grade, though, Noah was broken.

“I don’t like school.”

“Wait, school’s awesome. How can you not like school? Give me the top three reasons you don’t like school.”

“I can give you four,” he said, and held up four fingers. “Boring, boring, boring, and boring,” he explained ticking off each finger as he spoke.

In some ways, I’m a little relieved. After four years in Philly, I was beginning to worry we could only bore the creativity and curiosity out of children in urban settings.

Noah was offering up evidence young children’s imaginations were being neglected in the rural Midwest as well. It’s a striking display of continuity of message.

It’s easy to argue I’m making snap judgements about Noah’s education after only a few seconds of conversation. As I said, though, little kids give the most honest answers. Imagine, though, what systems must be in place so that Noah can so quickly and self-assuredly jump directly to boredom when asked his opinion on school after only 5 years of what I’m certain his parents hope will at least be a 16-year tenure in education.

Some Topekan had the chance to make this funny little guy think and create, but he’d gone and bored him instead. That’s damage it’ll take years to repair, and faith in his teachers-to-come that Noah might never regain.

It made me sad.

So, I did what I do.

“Does your teacher know you’re bored.”

“Um, I don’t think so.”

“Have you ever told him?”

A smile, “no.”

“You should.”

It might have been wrong of me. I might have just set Noah and his parents up for a parent-teacher meeting. Then again, I’m sure Noah has had to sit and listen to what his teacher thinks and knows and feels for the better part of the school year. I’m a little bit ok with the tables being turned.

Things I Know 48 of 365: It’s okay to leave the classroom

Today’s the day.

– Joan Cusack, as Sheila Jackson in Shameless

I once heard people who live in apartments are less psychologically sound than those who live in houses and condominiums where they can walk out their front doors and be outside. Something about instantaneous access to the outside world, an immediate exit, makes things ok in their brains.

After years of apartment living, I live in a rowhome now. I think there’s something to the claim.

All my evidence is anecdotal, but my theory is the same is true for classrooms.

Forget the argument that teaching with your door open opens a literal gateway to collaboration and being a part of your larger school community. Ignore the touted benefits of talking to those around you. I’m claiming here and now, that stepping outside your classroom is good for your brain.

We’re having what I am taking to be a false positive on Spring’s arrival in Philadelphia right now. Today’s high was in the mid-60s. I took a walk to get my lunch.

I taught better the rest of the day.

My colleague Matt Kay took it a step further. He took his last period class down the street to a park near the school, and they read. Then, he circulated among their literary clumps and peppered them with questions for discussion.

Yeah, yeah, it was good for the kids.

But, I saw Matt walking down the hall after he’d entered the school. The man was glowing. He’d dared to step outside the classroom, outside the school, and it showed on his face that he was all the better for it.

Too often, I meet teachers who see the hallways outside their classrooms as Tron-like rails leading them perhaps to the office but definitely home.

They shouldn’t.

Our classrooms are connected. Beyond anything electronic. Our classrooms are physically connected. The world connects not just virtually, but physically as well.

My friend Jeff teaches middle school students history. Today, they were squirrelly (as is their wont). He took them on a field trip – a walk around the neighborhood. When he got back, he was a better teacher. What he knew was good for his students turned out to be good for him.

I’m not suggesting all teachers need to take their students for a walk (it’s not a terrible idea).

Tomorrow, I’m going to eat my lunch outside, maybe with another teacher. You should too. If it’s too cold, go out to a restaurant that has cloth napkins. Step outside.

Crazy cat ladies die in apartment, not houses or condos (I did a Google News search). Let’s not be the crazy cat ladies of our schools.

Things I Know 47 of 365: I like knowing where stuff comes from

When the shift to push-button telephones happened, my grandparents let me sit at the dining room table with their old rotary-dial and a screwdriver.

I was there for hours.

What the phone did was clear. How the phone did it do it, how the phone came to do it – those were mysteries.

At the end of it all, I had no answers.

I had many more questions.

I wanted to know how it all happened and came together.

These things are important to me. I want not only to know with whom the kernels of my ideas originated, but who jumpstarted my stuff cycle as well.

Friday, the students in my FOOD class will begin watch King Corn, a documentary about the rise and role of corn in American food production. Though I’d seen it before, I previewed it last night. Fascinating.

From high fructose corn syrup to agrinomics to industrial farming, the film traces corn’s role in everyday life.

We’re watching the doc because it sheds light on one of the most ubiquitous ingredients in the American day. I want my students to know what I wanted to know as I pieced apart that telephone.

As I watched the film, it reminded me why it had been hanging in my memory since the first viewing.

“If people only knew where their food comes from,” I irately IMed an unsuspecting friend, “they would be more thoughtful about how they consume.”

I hope I’m correct with that statement.

People buy bottled water because they don’t know about its environmental impact.

Once people read Fast Food Nation, they stop eating at McDonald’s.

When you learned about sweatshops, you stopped wearing Nike.

Or not.

It’s not, right?

People know these things and choose ignorance.

Still, I have to think knowing influences our decisions, at least a little.

Every once in a while, I’ll got back and watch The Story of Stuff to be reminded how connected I am to the rest of the world through the stuff I have and the impact having that stuff has on the world.

While I’m certain King Corn will help my students connect, at least a little, to an understanding of the food they consume, I realize showing a movie about the corn fields of Iowa to a bunch of kids from Philly could just as well be showing them images from the Hubble space telescope.

To combat the disconnect, I’m enlisting the help of SourceMap.org. Throughout the course of the quarter, my students will select their favorite comfort foods and map their sources and impact. They will see the myriad courses their main courses take to end up on their plates.

Knowing where stuff comes from, the origins of not our universal but individuals existences, forces us to be aware. Try as we might, we can’t return to the cave.

Things I Know 46 of 365: Education should never be our country’s Third World

If we take these steps — if we raise expectations for every child, and give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day they are born until the last job they take — we will reach the goal that I set two years ago: By the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. (Applause.)

– President Obama, 2011 State of the Union

I’ve been in trouble with the charity mob lately. They’ve called my phone. They’ve e-mailed friends and co-workers. They’ve faxed my principal.

Donors Choose is looking for me.

More specifically, they’re looking for my Thank You Packet. I’ve been horrible at thank you notes since I was little. Always loved the idea, but been horrible in its execution.

Rather than feel guilty, I’ve become resentful.

Not resentful toward Donors Choose – they’re just doing how they do.

Resentful there’s a need for Donors Choose to do how they do.

According to CharityNavigator.org, Donors Choose spent almost $17 million on program expenses for the 2009 fiscal year. That’s $17 million that school districts couldn’t get to their teachers, classrooms and students to make the learning happen.

I remember the excitement I felt when I first learned about Donors Choose. I was immediately enamored of the idea I’d never have to negotiate the funding tug-of-war within my district when my students needed new books. I remember telling a science teacher friend about DC and watching her face light up as she realized she now had an avenue for procuring the new lab supplies her students desperately needed.

If we are true to our commitment to making America a STEM powerhouse, a creative force to be reckoned with and a leader in social development, we must acknowledge the irony of an education that forces teachers to outsource the purchase of Romeo and Juliet or scientific calculators.

For every dollar brought in by DC, an administrator wasn’t reminded of the needs facing his or her school. As those dollars piled up, administrators didn’t see as much need in telling their bosses or there bosses’ bosses their schools needed money for books, for computers, for field trips, for art supplies.

According to Donors Choose, “Since 200, 182,386 projects have been brought to life.” That’s 182,386 reminders of the needs to better fund our classrooms that never made it past their online proposals.

I love Donors Choose, but I wish I shouldn’t need to remember it exists.

When I was teaching in Florida, one of the heads of the district came by to speak at our faculty meeting. It was part of an initiative to talk to talk up new programs in the district. They were great programs – really designed to help kids.

Our guest asked if there were any questions or concerns he could address.

I raised my hand.

“Can we get pencils?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can we get pencils. These programs all sound excellent. I know they’re going to help students learn. It’s just that, they never have pencils, and it holds up the learning in the classroom. If we could just get some pencils, I know it would make a huge difference tomorrow and take a load of stress off my day.”

Our guest chuckled.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I got a bit of a talking to from my principal after the meeting.

“Hey, he asked,” I said.

Stern stare and I was excused.

The next Monday, a package arrived via district mail – 1 gross of packages of 12 pencils.

I’ve never seen so many pencils.

What I said in the meeting certainly broke from protocol, but it also delievered the message that literacy specialists were going to be more effective had the children the tools with which to show their literacy.

In the age of Donors Choose, I worry those messages aren’t being delivered frequently enough.

Instead we’ve a sort of education Kiva doling out school supplies with repayment of teachers and students thanking donors for the tools of learning their schools and districts should have provided in the first place.

While I certainly support the work of both organizations, I cannot help resenting the systems which continue to make both of them necessary.

Things I Know 45 of 365: The difference between an allowance and birthday money

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.

– Benjamin Franklin

When I was a kid and up through my first job, money came to me by two means.

One was my allowance and eventually paycheck. As explained to me by my mother, my allowance was what I got as a member of our family. I had chores and the like, which I was expected to do as my part of keeping the family running. I contributed to the betterment of the family and benefited from the success of the family.

I used my allowance for the general upkeep of me and the upkeep of my adolescent operations. Snacks at lunch, movies with friends – looking back now, I can’t quite remember what I did with my allowance. Largely, I remember squirreling it away for nothing in particular.

The other means by which kid me acquired money was the act of being alive each year – birthday money. Brithday money was something altogether different from allowance and the eventual paychecks that accompanied my first job.

Brithday money wasn’t squirred away at all. It was spent on those things I would have spent my allowance or paycheck on were it not for the costs of being me which eventually included car insurance and gas money.

CDs, books, hats (I wore a lot of hats) – these were the big expenditures on which birthday money was spent. Nothing recurring like increased insurance coverage or a new car and the accompanying payments.

I understood birthday money came once a year and the amount was always uncertain. It was to be appreciated, but never expected.

I’ve been getting the feeling lately that the School District of Philadelphia doesn’t quite know the difference between allowance money and birthday money.

Birthday money is when the federal government gives your state about $4 billion for education initiatives as part of a one-time stimulus package. See, they even call it a package so you know it’s birthday money.

Allowance money is when the federal, state and local governments chip in to your annual budget to take care of the general upkeep of your schools and the upkeep of educational operations. It’s what you get for doing your part in keeping the bigger family running.

See. They’re different.

Even without birthday money, it was important for me to keep track of my allowance and first job spending. Spend too much on something new and shiny and I’d have trouble keeping up with my basic expenses.

I’ve been getting the feeling that the School District of Philadelphia has misunderstood the idea of managing an allowance as well.

They’ve maybe focused on the new (if not so shiny) and it’s going to mean having trouble keeping up with the basic expenses.

Of course, if I misspent my allowance or paychecks from my first job, it meant not being able to drive my car. As much of a bummer as that was, it’s paling in comparison to watching my friends and colleagues fear for their jobs.

See, when I screwed up, it really only inconvenienced me. I wasn’t responsible for the livelihood of thousands of people. It’s a good thing too, I was only a kid. What did I know?

In those times of screw up with my money and they were at their wits’ end, my parents would tease me they were going to put me up for adoption.

I wonder if anyone will get grounded.

I wonder if anyone will be willing to adopt an entire school district.

Things I Know 44 of 365: Positivity can be viral

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

– Mark Twain

Friday, Sam started class.

Well, she pre-started class.

“Mr. Chase!” as the rest of the students filed in.

“Mr. Chase!” during the general din of everyone taking their seats.

“Mr. Chase!” as I made my way to my computer to log attendance.

“Yes, Sam,” said I through gritted teeth letting only the voice of patient Mr. Chase escape.

“Can we do a high-grade compliment?”

“Um, sure.”

High-grade compliments are a piece of the opening of class I started a few years ago.

They have three rules:

  1. Be in close proximity.
  2. Make eye contact.
  3. Pause to collect your thoughts.

The difference between a high-grade compliment and a low- or medium-grade compliment is the focus on complimenting who you see a person as being – the best parts of that character my mom was always so concerned with building.

A low-grade compliment might be something like, “I like that shirt,” or “Your hair looks nice.”

Physical attributes, but still things that accessorize a person phyisically.

A medium-grade compliment might be something like, “You have a nice smile,” or “You’ve got a great sense of humor.”

Sometimes still physical attributes, but closer to who people are or who they present themselves as.

A high-grade compliment says, “I see you. I appreciate you. And here are some of the reasons why.”

From time to time, we’ll start class with a high-grade compliment, a student is picked at random, and I follow the three rules to compliment them publically in front of the whole class. A really good compliment can last anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute in delivery.

Sam was asking if we could start class with one.

As soon as my “sure” was out of my mouth, Sam followed her first with a second, “Can I give it.”

Usually, I deliver the HGCs. On ocassion, the kids will take it over.

Midway through my second “sure,” Sam was out of her seat and positioning herself in front of Douglas. As shocked as everyone else in the class was of her placement, no one was more shocked than Douglas.

The Douglas and Sam are any kind of oil-and-water-esque metaphor you can think of. They bicker, they tease, they call each other names.

And Sam was about to give him a HGC.

I was maybe holding my breath.

“Even though we call each other names and pick on each other, that’s just how we do. That’s Sam and Douglas,” she began.

“I wouldn’t want it any different. You’re like a brother to me. I know if there’s any part of the homework that I don’t understand, I can come to you and you’ll put the kidding aside and help me. And I know, when something’s wrong with you, you know you can come to me and I’ll try to help you. So, even though we call each other names and fight all the time, I wouldn’t want it any other way. ‘Cause then we wouldn’t be Sam and Douglas.”

And then the class applauded.

I swear. Douglas has it recorded on his phone if you don’t believe me.

But the class wasn’t done.

Another student raised her hand.

“Mr. Chase, can we do good news?”

Good news is my bastardization of a concept from Hal Urban. For 3-5 minutes at the top of a class, I ask the class what’s good that’s going on in their lives. We talk about how to mine the really good news rather than pieces like, “I’m wearing my favorite socks,” in the interest of not taking 20 minutes of class time.

“Sure,” I said again.

“Well, my mom had back surgery, and they had to disconnect her spine and stuff like that. And it’s been really stressful and scary. But, the doctors say she’s recovering faster than expected and she’s going to be coming home from rehab.”

Applause.

Another hand.

“After 28 years, my parents paid off the mortgage on their house.”

Applause.

Another hand.

“My brother has been having a rough time of managing going to dialysis three times a week, but this week someone from California called and said they’d like to donate one of their kidneys.”

Applause.

Another hand.

And it continued like this – students brimming over with stuff that was good in their lives.

Even the student assistant teacher in the room, a senior who the rest of the class is starting to see as an older brother, raised his hand, “I got accepted to college this week.”

A raucous applause. Why wouldn’t someone accept their mentor into college?

It was positively contagious.

One student stood her chair to share something she said only two other people knew. When she was done, the class applauded again. As she stepped down those sitting around her hugged her in congratulations.

Things were winding down and Sam yelled out again, “What about your good news, Mr. Chase?”

My mind went blank. Usually, when I schedule good news, I try to have something in mind to get the ball rolling. I’d been paying such close attention to what everyone was saying, I hadn’t thought of anything.

“Come on, Mr. Chase, what’s your good news?”

It hit me I was happy that I’d found out this week my little sister Rachel, now in her junior year at college, will be spending her spring break with me as she has every spring since her 8th-grade year.

Applause.

Now, tomorrow could just as likely bring a falling out between friends or a feud in a group project, but Friday showed me something beautiful.

It showed what fostering relationships in the classroom can look like. It showed that working to make sure all my students feel safe and supported is worthwhile work. It showed that they have come to trust me and the rest of their classmates with the deeper pieces of who they are.

We weren’t talking reading or writing, but we were definitely building our understanding of the power of words.

Things I Know 43 of 365: We can tell stories better

It is indeed true…I do not write at all, my not writing is taking on dimensions.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

April 19, I’ll be floating down the San Juan River in Utah with a group of high school students. It will be my third rafting trip in as many years. I can’t wait.

Last year’s trip took us down a stretch of the Colorado River. Returning to the San Juan means calmer waters and a chance to see some amazing petroglyphs.

I remember standing, staring at them two years ago.

Our river guides were explaining their pre-historic origins and importance as sacred relics to the native peoples of the areas.

“What do they mean?” I kept asking.

As seasoned as our guides were, they admitted we could never know, but only guess at the stories being depicted.

As a collector of stories, this saddened me.

One of my G11 students, Luna, IMed me this afternoon to share something she’s been working on as part of the Stones project my kids are collaborating on right now.

Stones on Prezi

It frightened me.

My formal training and experience is in the realm of reading and telling stories linearly. I’m not talking analog versus digital. My training, the stories I’ve been told work along line from beginning to end.

What Luna created starts to push against that.

It spiraled and flowed and moved. Readers can choose where they enter the text and in what direction they move from there. It has an order and sense to it, but those elements can be freely ignored.

I’ve never taught her that. I’ve not taught any of my students that.

I rally against digital storytelling for the simple reason it shifts the focus from the story to the medium.

I’ll continue to do so.

Digital storytelling, at least what I’ve seen, asks keeps the standard structure, adding images and sounds.

The Anasazi, Ute, Navajo and their archaic pre-cursors understood the implications of telling a story in pictures centuries before VoiceThread or Prezi came on the scene.

In fact, they did it better. Watch most digital stories online and consider how closely they are influenced by standard narrative structure. They remain beholden.

Stare at an ancient petroglyph, though, and realize there are ways to tell and read stories that have been lost to us. That loss opens the door to their re-creation.

I’m uncertain how to do that.

I worry I don’t do enough to help my students see words, language, reading, and writing as more than just skills, but to help them see those things as art as well.

Arts programs around the nation are being reduced or cut. Unofficially, it is because they are untested subjects. I’m fortunate to work in a subject whose survival is protected by standardized testing. Unfortunately, that protection also threatens its existence as an art.

I don’t know if the tools exist to help my students tell stories outside a traditional linear narrative. As a standard point of entry, PowerPoint does much of the early work of reinforcing the idea the tales we tell must move along a thread (voice or otherwise).

I’m unsure how to prepare my students to balance the traditional linear intake and creation of stories while giving them room to play with the ideas that because this is the way they’ve always experienced stories, doesn’t mean they can’t find a better way.

I don’t know how to teach myself that either.

I do know we can teach stories better.

Things I Know 42 of 365: I can’t anticipate imagination

Imagining something like 9/11 wasn’t failure of preparation, it was a failure of imagination.

– Paraphrasing of Diana paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld paraphrasing someone Diana couldn’t remember, but the sentiment stands.

The Building History Project was pretty imaginative. Changing up the way my students complete 2fers and revise using Google Docs felt like imagination. The free choice in reading and accompanying structures of learning about my students’ reading skills and preferences strikes me as a creative remix of some old ideas.

Still, I’m me. Just me.

My ideas are going to seem stymied compared to the collaborative creativity of students who have far fewer years of being told they can’t do something.

For the past few days, we’ve picked up on the collaboration we started with Jabiz Raisdana last week.

My role has been minimal. Halfway through a class period, I played Jabiz’s song composed of the students’ responses to his Flickr set. Then, I played Bryan’s. Then I played Noise Professor’s. Then, I read this message Jabiz sent my students through the collaborator e-mail function of the shared google doc we’ve created to track the project:

Then I said, “Ok, what do you want to create?”

The ideas broke down into four basic groups: music, text, photos, film. Still, I was worried that might be too limiting, so I asked if anyone wanted to do something else. A few hands were raised, so “Something Else” became the fifth group.

After a brief show-of-hands poll asking who was interested in participating in each of the groups and telling them to take note of who else was raising their hands, I gave the key instruction: Ok, create something.

And they grouped up. They were lying on the ground, sitting around tables, sitting on the window sill, discussing how to make something that didn’t exist yet. No one asked how long it had to be or when it was due. I’m not anticipating either of those pieces being problems.

I sat in on a few groups.

In one music group, they’re planning on recoding Jabiz’s original song. Newon asked, “Mr. Chase, can you e-mail Jabiz and ask him for the chords from his song?”

If I’d designed what they’re doing, I’d never have imagined asking for chords. I probably would have limited the groups to four as well. Voices would have been silenced.

I showed Newon how to find Jabiz’s e-mail address in the google doc and message him.

Checking e-mail after school, I found this:

None of my state standards, call for me to have one of my students in Philly e-mail a teacher in Jakarta to get the chord progression for the song he wrote based off of my students’ poetry, but I’m going to stick to my guns and say the learning’s still valid.

Eventually, I wandered over to the Something Else kids.

Tim said he was working on a way to create a piece of sculpture inspire by and including Jabiz’s photos and the photos coming out of the photography group. He was doodling on the dry erase tables to show his friend TJ what was flitting around in his imagination.

Ian told me he wanted to create a piece of art incorporating the original lyrics and inspired by Noise Professor’s mix of the song.

At that point, a music group checked in to say they were going back to the original comments to add lyrics to their version of the song.

Meanwhile, Luna decided to create a space to hold all of the creations and asked if she could be the webmistress.

Sure.

Then she named the project – Stones.

She ran it by the class who had no problem with it, and Jeff came over from the photo group to make sure they could embed their posterous account on the page.

And I checked in, and watched.

I asked questions and offered ideas.

Some were answered and accepted. Some were ignored. I took no offense.

Creation’s a great way to wrap up a Friday. Sure, we took vocab quizzes and edited analytical essays and read books. By the end of the period, though, we balanced it with creativity.

Rumsfeld and Diana would be happy. And you have no idea how difficult it is to please both of those two people at the same time.

Things I Know 41 of 365: Caring is reciprocal

Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge.

– Benjamin Franklin

It should be said, I was ready to go home.

On my way out of school today, I stopped by one of the tables in the hallway near my classroom. Gathering my things, I’d heard some students using their outdoor voices at the table.

I stopped not to tell them to move or repremand them. I started with a simple observation, “You are all sitting within 2 feet of one another.”

A slight smile from one of the students. I went on to bemoan the fact that it was the end of the day and we were all full up on crazy for the time being in that lesser referenced teacher voice that says, “I’m kidding around with you, but truly making a point at the same time.”

My message delivered, one of the students said they’d keep it down. I started to walk away when one of the students who’d been quiet since I’d stopped by said something ugly to another student at the table.

It was one of those moments of stupid. One of those adolescent powerplays meant to show his peers he was grown enough to spit ugly words in front of a teacher. As a former assistant principal of mine once said, he was feeling himself.

In that moment, my simple stop to ask the table to quiet down became something else.

In that moment, I needed to be present. I needed to be caring.

My coat, bag and water bottle in hand, I suggested he and I go for a walk. It took a few suggestions and the encouragment of one of the other students present before aquiesced to my invitation. This was not before he let fly a flurry of words that made a verbal cocktail with the rare quality of being profane without including any profanity.

He would leave, but not without assuring all present that he was the one wielding the power.

We walked a ways down the hall and turned the corner. I’d hoped to make it to another floor, but he had a good 50 lbs and a few inches on me, so I knew not to push my luck.

In these moments, when our students choose not to or are incapable of being the better versions of themselves, we must be the best versions of ourselves.

Standing there, in the hall with the lint of the day stuck to my brain and adored with the accessories of my walk home, I needed to be someone other than a teacher ready to go home.

My tone was soft. My sentences were largely questions. My goal diffusion.

He would have none of it.

“See, she says all of that, and I’m the one in trouble.”

“Who said anything about anyone being in trouble?”

And it continued like that – he intent on being angry and me intent on not.

And, I get this is the role adults must play when they choose to spend their days modeling life for those children in their charge.

We must be present. We must care…even when it’s a drag.

Thus was the internal conversation myself and I were having as sentences like, “What would you expect me to do when two students I love deeply are saying hurtful and ugly things to one another.”

He was having none of it.

Indignation fueled by righteousness can be an intoxicating thing.

One thing he failed to take into consideration, I care for all my students.

In a moment of reciprocity I’m certain Nel Noddings heard wherever she is, one of my students, Lenea, turned at the end of the hall.

The student I was listening to had  let loose a particularly baited and patronizing sentence as Lenea passed by.

I’d barely noticed her passing.

That is, until I heard, “You don’t talk to Mr. Chase that way,” in a tone, to that point, I was certain only my mother knew.

Appreciative of the vote of confidence, I kept on, “If someone said something like that about you in my presence, you know I’d take issue with it.”

He was mid-rebuttal when I heard Lenea’s voice, “I’ll talk to him, Mr. Chase.”

I turned to look at her.

She was staring at me with that look that says, “Go along now. Get. I’ve got this covered.” And, I knew she did.

I turned and walked down the hall to attempt to diffuse the other side of the argument.

A few minutes later, I walked back down the hall. Turning the corner, I was ready to re-engage. I couldn’t. They weren’t there.

Lenea had moved him physically (and I’m guessing emotionally) farther than I’d been able.

I’ve been mulling that idea tonight. I’ve considered the ninth grader I met when Lenea first entered my room nearly four years ago. I’m uncertain how many times I’ve hugged her, told her how much I’m proud to teach her and made a point to assure her I see the good she’s created.

What I’m certain of, though, is that all those moments, those pieces of mental and emotional investment, those moments of caring, were worth it.

What I’m certain of is caring is reciprocal.

Things I Know 40 of 365: I have an idea for a school

Coffeehouses have provided places to plan revolutions, write poetry, do business, and meet friends.

– Mark Pendergast, Uncommon Grounds

A blended online and face-to-face school.

The school is a coffee shop. It’s not like a coffee shop or based on a coffee shop. The school is a coffee shop.

Initially a 6-8 school, as the first class matriculates, it becomes 6-12.

In addition to their online learning, students are required to attend regular class meetings at the coffee shop.

Depending on need and what’s being investigated, these meetings are either hetero- or homogenous along the lines of age and subjects. As student needs shift, some courses are hosted by completely virtual schools and augmented by enrichment inquiry-based programming within the school.

Younger students are required to accumulate a set number of community service hours working within the elementary schools most convenient to their transportation abilities.

As they grow older, students must clock a certain number of hours helping to run the shop and can work outright in the shop after those hours have accumulated. Even once the shop is fully staffed, students have marketable, transferrable skills as well as well-developed resumes and favorable employer recommendations.

Taking a page from 826 Valencia, local writers, artists and thinkers are invited to join the school as tutors and guest teachers with the added bonus of shop discounts. Student artwork and music is showcased alongside local community artists on the shop’s walls and during various open mic events.

Once the upper school component is implemented, the school designs an internship program similar to SLA’s Individualized Learning Plan program connecting the shop with local organizations, farms, and businesses. Utilizing the space’s inherent plasticity, internship interviews are hosted at the shop.

As these connections are fostered, the shop serves a point of contact for the various community service organizations at which the students complete their internships and those people the organizations work to serve.

As an example, the shop serves as a drop-off/pick-up point for community supported agriculture programs to which students’ families can opt in at a reduced price.

The open, blended schedule allows older students to participate in a wide range of dual-enrollment courses with few time restrictions.

For physical fitness, students join local club teams and other community sporting groups.

Any profits from the shop are distributed among student activity funds as well as scholarships for the school’s graduates.

Graduates who attend universities near the shop frequently return as customers seeking a place to study, thereby providing a tangible model of success for younger students.

Teacher hours are malleable and shaped around programming needs.

As part of its professional development, the school hosts informal themed teach-ups for any interested local teachers.

Once enrollment hits the set maximum, the school is prepared for replication.

Who’s in?