This is an idea that came up during an excellent conversation with Urban Studies undergraduates. What does happen when a teacher’s altruism fades away? It also helps you think about whether this is a tank that can be refilled. It also helps you think about whether altruism is or should be considered a fuel source.
Thank you. It’s an honor to be here to talk about these wonderful graduates. I’ll be brief and I’m only going to share from their own words. I’ve pulled a few quotes from the activities, projects, assessments, and work you’ve done over the past nine months. The wisdom and power of each of you shines through.
All of us are lucky to have spent time with you. To have learned from you. To have experienced the immense potential that each of you possess. Like all human beings, things are going to get rough, and I hope, I hope, I hope that you can remember some of these moments when that happens. These are your moments, your insights, and your thoughts.
CR:
“I connected to the world by first thinking what the world needs and then I try and change it.”
“I’m not an expert on anything for real, but J is, and J is, and T is.”
“Love who you love, it’s pretty simple.”
ES
I think this bit of writing is good advice not only about project work but about life. Here it is:
And our last senior:
“It’s important for projects to connect to the outside world because this is a project based school. I don’t know exactly what to say so I’ll leave this. Either way, we get real live skills out of the deal.”
“Why I do my best? I should do my best because it builds good work ethic and someone could look at what I’m doing and give feedback and how I could do better. It says that I always put forth maximum effort. It is okay to shut down though when you’re done and when you deserve downtime. You figure that out by looking at what you have done, what you could do, and look at the number of hours in the day. Everyone needs sleep.”
“Get more inspired to do the things that you set out to do. Go back to your previous inspirations, influences, and see what mattered.”
Our friend Aiden likes to say that our lives are conversations with folks important to us: some are with us, some are with us but no longer near us, and others have gone. Continue those conversations and stay close.
On behalf of all of us at the WS, thank you for your work, your ideas, your voice, your vision. You have come so far, we’re all waiting to see what you do next.
MC
SFL: The SFL has been a great success although I’m worried its life in the neighborhood is winding down. When we went to bed, there were 8+ books, including a battered but readable copy of Angle of Repose. When we woke up, there was this:
A neighbor around the corner uses their tree for political (moral?) messages. Love this one.
And the current status of my community garden plot. Chard! Hooray Chard!
I don’t always like but once I’ve read his stuff I end up thinking about it.
“…which shows that while some teachers are good at raising their students’ test scores, other teachers are really good at improving their students’ school engagement. Teachers in the first group are amply rewarded these days, but teachers who motivate their students to show up every day and throw themselves into school life may not even realize how good they are, because emotional engagement is not something we measure and stress.
Teachers are now called upon not only to teach biology but to create a culture: a culture of caring criticism, so students feel loved while they improve; a culture of belonging, so fragile students feel their work has value. Suddenly, teachers must teach students how to feel about their own feelings; how not to be swallowed up by moments of failure, anger and sadness, but to slow the moment and step outside the emotional spiral.”
All true and well-said. However, very few teachers of any sort are “amply rewarded” at this point. The best you might say is that raising test scores frees you from a visit from a coach or a misguide principal with a clipboard.
Another kind of teacher work: the extended missive to an entire class:
Dear 215,
We made it! One week, sixteen exhibitions, sixteen amazing presentations, and a good pile of portfolios completed. No matter how varied the quality of presentations, every evaluator and visitor commented on the quality of feedback you offered each other and on the community you have made with each other. We will talk on Monday and Tuesday about results and about the amazing opportunities you’ll have next year, whether you’re doing college, internships, or preparing to build your own projects. This letter offers my general reflections on what I heard this week, which along with $1.88 will get you a small coffee.
First of all, every presentation I heard reminded me of the potential that all of you possess. Every student provided at least one amazing statement about how humans live and work. All of you had something insightful to say about yourself and your own work habits. What I felt, more than anything, was possibility. For some of you, it was the feeling you get when you watch a great movie preview — Oh, I have to go see that — while for others it was the feeling of listening to a rough first album when you start thinking about what could happen if people worked harder, focused more, and committed to their work.
It’s somewhat of a cliche, I know, for a teacher to talk about potential. Ironic, too, because most schools talk about potential and then do as little as possible to help kids realize it. In little and big ways, all of you seized this opportunity to present your work, and, as a whole, the results were stunning.
A second thing I observed was the number of you who talked about workspaces and finding ways to get work done. KM noted that she wanted a “viable workspace.” Others of you talked withdrawing via headphones or going into the closet. This is a long-running problem: how do we find space where everyone can work together? As a community, what do we owe each other? TC described a “chill button.” DS proposed a concentration room, a kind of quiet car, where students could count on everyone present being focused. Everyone has a slightly different idea of what the perfect work space looks like; that being said, there are some things everybody struggles with: non-work noise, dirt/filth, tools out of place, broken tools. As part of a school community, we can’t run our spaces as if each person can do whatever they want. On the other hand, I hope people can think about how they will work to make their advisory next year as good and productive a work space as possible.
In making a work space, the community has to function together. One thing I truly appreciated was how closely you read each other’s work in the fourth section of part one. (Were there really twelve sections? Are we crazy? Are you so proud of yourself for completing all of it? I hope so). One thing I’ve struggled with this year with my current 11th graders is helping them to understand how they support each other and how the community of learners makes everyone better. I’m a good writer whose work is much better with when I get help. I’m a good teacher who stands on Ms. Rowe’s, Mr. Hauger’s, Ms. Erin’s, Ms. Matthews’s shoulders — they make me much better and sometimes I help them too. What can we do next year to help each other with this process? How do we take the strong bonds created in 215, the strong helpful bonds, and bring them into the next year? In Rocky’s words, how do we fill each other’s gaps?
Part of making each other better will also be about project design. All of you will be involved in designing your own projects next year. Some projects will under a topical umbrella — public health or local politics or the problems facing Philadelphia — while others will be of your own design. There are great possibilities here for all of you. VG said it as well as anyone I’ve ever heard: “I want my deadlines to shape my designs.” He also made the following statements together — “I overestimated what I knew and underestimated how much time it would take.” These are all worth thinking about for next year.
Another part of this will be about figuring out what these skills are. Many of you told the story of how a group didn’t work and how you need to work on collaboration. Our hope for all of you is that much of the drama, unnecessary drama, and petty stuff can collapse all of that into an hour instead of letting it take hours, days, or weeks to resolve.
During the me-by-the-numbers section many of you read portions of your worksis; others of you talked about honor roll or improving your grades. What’s the difference between improving your grades and creating powerful projects? There’s a sense where grades will matter but why do you think I’d ask you to think more about whether your project worked or not? Outside of school, no one EVER does anything for a grade. We do things and measure them against external standards of excellence. If I’m a business person, do people want to buy my goods or use my services? If I’m a writer, has a publisher decided to publish my piece? We want you to think about what makes something excellent not about what grade it might earn. (I’d note, too, that if you do excellent work then the grades will take care of themselves.)
In terms of Gateway itself, I was impressed by every presentation I saw. With some of you, even though you hadn’t done much on your portfolio, you were still were able to stand and talk through your work as well as your work process. As sad as I was for those of you who did not complete a portfolio (and therefore failed Gateway), I and the reviewers respected the effort to analyze your work out-loud. For those of you in this boat, I’d ask you to think about what drew you to present while not completing the most important document of your two years of high school. What can you build on next year? How can you find your way back to this process so that you can take advantage of the very real opportunities available to you? (If you’ve read this far, see me at 11:43 tomorrow and I’ll get you a cheesesteak)
Thank you so much for spending half a year together. I learned a lot from all of you and look forward to next year.
Clapper
There’s a scene near the beginning of Huckleberry Finn where an old sinner talks of the joy of going to church, telling a particularly salacious tale, feeling good about the confession, but even better about the new suit and the cup of change.
Our students have an amazing command of the emotional language around completing projects. They can talk in clever and important ways about their final products and the work process. They’ve internalized the language of our place in cool ways.
Yet many stand up and use this language as they describe how little they got done. Any human willing to stand up and be held accountable deserves praise; how, though, do we take the rhetoric of change — “I need to focus” or “I can’t let myself get distracted” — and turn it into changed behavior? How might this exhibition process fuel the development of checklists or pathways or timelines that students can actually use?
As teachers, particularly exhausted teachers, particularly exhausted end-of-the-year-I-just-want-to-cook-big-breakfasts-garden-and-read-novels teachers, it’s hard to keep track of some of these individual claims.
Idea one: Can I distill three of their claims for themselves into tweets that we use as measuring sticks? Perhaps in their trackers? As circle activities? Could I print these claims and then laminate them? Could I have them begin their opening project with these claims?
Idea two: Take all of these distilled claims and present them all to the new 11th grade advisories. As they develop the four words have them think about how these four words might address their identified areas of improvement?
More to come. I need to think more about this…
Problem one: Garlic falling over
I know it’s not ready to harvest (I planted on 9/23/15).
With all the rain we’ve had, I’m not thinking it’s moisture, although I will water heavily after two 90 degree days.
I’ve yet to hit with fertilizer; maybe I’ll pack in some vermicompost from my neighbors.
Update tomorrow.
Problem two: Flea Beetles
I’m going to try and make this solution today. This article suggests an organic pesticide — spinosad — that I might try and track down.
Wednesday early dismissal and we meet with our staff. It’s the end of the year. Everyone is exhausted. This is the activity I cooked up, which is aimed at the frustrations that studentshumans feel as they come to the end of a project. After describing a project successfully completed, I want folks to write about the dumb things they said and did as they finished as well as the supports they leaned on as they concluded. Then we’ll describe some of the crazy things students we’ve seen lately, and, most importantly, the ways we can support our students as we finish the year (and the big projects) together. There’s also a “let it go” box for the stuff the battles that simply can’t be fought at the end of the year.
I think about various projects where I’ve struggled mightily at the end; the night before I defended my dissertation I declared that I had nothing, that it was all shit. I had all sorts of supports to get things done. Many of my students have never had an emotion they can’t handle inappropriately. For better or worse, we are modeling and providing the support systems one needs to finish strong.
In the end of the year fadeaway (something I can’t stand and resolve to get in front of every year) we’re continuing to sharpen up our graduation plans. Today we wrote about the biggest obstacles we see for ourselves and our group. Then we passed papers and proposed solutions.
As always, I wrote about how most humans are wired with a “I’ll turn it on when I need to switch”, which is rarely as easy as it seems.
Some clusters of themes:
1. I won’t really have any obstacles if I work hard.
2. My obstacles are mostly about paperwork or bureaucracy and if I just handle those, I’ll be fine.
3. I need to worry about my grades. For some kids, this emerged from an understanding of the quality of their work; for others, it was about grades as if they had nothing to do with the work.
