Classroom quips, chapter the last

Cleaning out my public school teacher's desk perhaps for the last time, I found my notebook of quips. I'll miss these kids dearly.

9/22/11
To set up a debate, I had the kids divide themselves between pacifists and supporters of war. Most kids went the war-supporting side. One of the pacifists, a sixth grader, looked across at his opponents and mumbled, "you people are sick."

8/15/12
me: (inspirationally) I want you guys to write a paragraph about he person YOU ARE.

Mariano: 256!

me: what, Mariano?

Mariano: It's 128 times 2

me: couldn't have said it better myself


10/2012
Gerardo was crying in class. When I asked him why, he wouldn't speak. I allowed him to write about his feelings, and he wrote that he was scared of Captain Underpants books at his house. I told him he should stop reading those books.

The next day, he came in with two Captain Underpants books and set them on my desk. I said to him, "oh, you want to give these to me because they're scared to have them at your house?"

He nodded and replied, "four dollars."

I got out my wallet and completed the unforeseen transaction. Gerardo walked back to his seat as if this interaction fit squarely into his expectations.

1/2013
Mario: Man, kids are saying I have ADD.

Me: You do.

Mario: Aww, man! I'm crazy?!

Me: No, that just means you have a hard time paying attention.

Mario: Oh, good.

2/2013
Me: Do any of you have a step mom or step dad?

Niko: I have a whole bunch of step dads!

6/2013
Rosa: Who was George Bush again?

Paloma: the white guy....the president....we hated.

When Computers Teach

Last December, during our school's holiday break, I went to my school building for a training on a new computer-based teaching program, "Compass Learning  Odyssey 2012." I went mostly to honor the bold and adventuresome name, which indicated to me that this would be the program. The one to take the students on a learning odyssey! 

Now until that day, the web-based programs I had tried had been predictably lame. Rabbits teaching letter sounds, or encouraging skateboarders that reinforce correct answers with either a "Keep it up, DUDE!" or a "Aww, BUMMER! Let's rock that one again!"  But this December day, I hoped that finally, 15 years after the internet itself went viral, there would be an on-line program to truly teach my kids. 

So with adventure in my heart, and a compass in my pocket just in case, I entered our school's library-turned computer lab. Imagine a nice-sized school library whose walls have shelves who have books who have authors who have names like Dahl, and Soto, and Myers, and Rowling, and Lewis and Sachar. And that's just the fiction. There are shelves of biographies, too, and histories and books about sports and books about nature. 

But the books are no longer the library's main attraction. In fact, the books have become a mere decorative perimeter, wedged in tightly, fitted wherever space allows. But the area of the library, the space where students learn and think, is now taken up by rows and clusters of computers. It is to one of these computers that I sat down to do a little learning and thinking of my own. Luckily, I had a guide.  

The smiling Compass Learning Odyssey 2012 trainer asked me what I teach and I told her 6th grade Special Ed.. Well, that was all she needed.  The selling points - tailor made for a 6th grade Special Ed. teacher - came out in rapid fire. How I could take a kid's IEP goal and design activities streamlined for that kid, and how it is completely aligned to the Common Core State Standards for Reading and Math, to NWEA MAP RIT scores, to the Descartes framework (which she pronounced Daycarts). She told me that the program is workable with RTI and even has 3 tiers of activities per grade level.  It even has an IEP goal writing tool! She went on with selling points I didn't even understand, while I nodded with feigned confidence and admiration.

I thought that maybe she was a salesperson, a position which could cloud her understanding of the product's objective awesomeness. So I decided to ask her a hardball question. "How will I know if the children are getting better at reading and math and not just clicking around on the mouse?" And whoo boy if she wasn't ready for that one!  She wasn't just going to tell me how. She was going to show me. 

She directed me to the log on to the teacher portal where I can assign a pre-test to my students that will allow me to see exactly where they need improvement, to monitor progress and their time allocation:  jobs that in the old days I had to perform by physically interacting with kids. But not anymore. With Compass Learning Odyssey 2012, my students would be going on learning odysseys without me! 

To the portal we headed, but there was a glitch with the portal. ("Aww, BUMMER!" I thought). That the trainer was surprised at the glitch, reminded me of my vast experience with glitches. I remembered all the hours spent on glitches, and wondered how much teaching time has turned into glitch-fix time in my 10 years at this job. Glitches with passwords, glitches with mice. Glitches with LCD projector cords and and some with bulbs. Slow Internet, no internet, internet on some computers but not on others. The wrong browser, the programs not installed. Viruses. Printer failures and lost documents. The times kids went to the wrong site on accident, and the times they went to them on purpose.  The time I came to  school early to find pornographic videos on the desktop of a student computer. The time I tried to find a black and white smiley face on Google Images with a 5th grade boy watching as  a woman holding her naked breast popped onto the screen.

For the present glitch, my trainer needed to go to her computer. While she did, I began to wonder how I would spend my excess time now that I'd be managing work from the portal. I found myself drifting to my fantasy football page. Lest you judge, I want to be clear about the fact that I didn't decide to go to the fantasy football page. I drifted. What I did decide to do was drop Eric Decker and pick up T.Y. Hilton for the upcoming match. The trainer was on the phone with the help desk, working one last minor kink, and I got to thinking  how many fantasy football moves I'll be able to make while the students are away on their respective learning odysseys. 

Well, we never were able to get onto the portal. Something about the browsers in our lab not being optimal. But the trainer did us one better: she logged us on as students. Maybe because she was recognizing my wayward tendencies, she stood next to me as I picked my first learning adventure. From the list of eight reading skills, I picked "Cause and Effect." 

To start off the session, a robot danced onto the screen, singing, 

"I'm Mr. Bot 
I will teach you a lot
open your mind 
and bring all you got

We'll get better at reading
and math to be sure
on this Learning
Odyssey Adventure.

The trainer whispered to me, "All the lessons start off with Mr. Bot. I just think it's so cute how the program designers use a robot to start the session. The kids really love that robot dance. Plus, research says that kids pay attention better with flashing lights and music than to a human voice." 

The robot got to explaining Cause and Effect. I didn't hear his whole spiel because my trainer kept whispering about the reading passages the program uses: they use non-controversial non-fiction passages, they use kid friendly language, and they always highlight and define words that may be tricky. But throughout her whispering, I did hear Mr. Bot say that the characters within a story (or subjects within a history) often cannot see how their actions will lead to effects. 

And this idea got led me to think about the effects of programs like these: "Where is all of this going? Has education devolved to a world where the newest teaching techniques require a salesperson? What is happening when an enthusiastic robot interacts more with my students than I do? Can't I perform the core roles of a teacher -  instructing, assessing, caring  - better than this machine?" 

With high-minded idealism I began to excuse myself from the training session. 

But when I noticed my trainer had gone to help someone else, I dropped the idealism like I'd dropped Eric Decker and wandered back to the Fantasy Football page. Who was Cleveland playing this week, anyway? 

The Blessed Wildness

when what we believe breaks down

"...But what we believe doesn't matter unless we know who we believe. And when what we believe breaks down, if we trust who we believe, then even we don't understand, or are uncertain about things,  we can trust the person that we believe." 

I used to be a doubter. I went through season of intense doubt, and more than once seriously considered walking away from Christianity. But my experience over the last 18 months of connecting with Jesus, and helping others connect with Jesus has changed that part of me. I haven't doubted since. The video below is from Jessie Handy, a trainer in the Immanuel Approach to Healing and to Life. I was in the class when she gave this devotional, and I was writing feverishly, trying to capture what she said. This morning I found the video. It reflects exactly what I have experienced.

I Know Whom I Have Believed from Alive and Well, Inc on Vimeo.

Signs that wonderful things are afoot

This is a link to a fascinating Fresh Air interview by Terri Gross with Sam Parnia, a scientist studying resuscitated cardiac arrest patients.

Regardless of culture or religion, people around the world are reporting stories of the time between their technical death and their resuscitation that share the following themes:

They describe watching things in the hospital and recall conversations in the hospital room that happened while they were dead.
They feel incredibly peaceful.
They no longer fear death.
They see a warm light.
They feel that a warm, welcoming,  loving, compassionate being leading them through their experience.
They see a review of their lives, form early childhood to their death.
They experience the pain they have given others during their lives. They judge themselves (within the presence of the warm compassionate being I presume) and come back committed to living better.
They felt a sensation of detaching from their body, looking down at their hospital room, and seeing and hearing conversations that occurred in other rooms.

(By the way, these experiences are universal regardless of culture or religion).

The "warm, welcoming, loving, compassionate being" sounds quite congruous with the Jesus that I and many of my friends have encountered using the Immanuel Approach to prayer. Dr. Parnia's conclusion is that we humans no longer need to fear death. The story is all the more interesting because in the end Dr. Parnia explains that he holds no religious views.

Give it a listen, and let's talk about it.

March 6, 2013, in the backyard

My favorite part is Eli's stockpile of snowballs toward the end. What's yours?

Three More "Sabbaths"

This hand-written business seems to call for poetry. So here are 3 more, which I've written on recent Sunday mornings.

For a Country Once and Again in Mourning

2 more poems

My longing to be known dwarfs my longing to be great. It is for this reason that I share my meager attempts at poetry.

School Reform

The strike is over, but I'm still thinking about school reform. A post with my thoughts on the matter is coming. For now, as a primer, give a listen to the This American LIfe episode entitled, "Back to School." I bet it will knock your socks off.

Travels with Charley...wanna come?

From Inside the Strike

I wrote this piece as two separate mini-essays, but they are too closely linked to post separately. The first part explains the importance of Unions in general. The second explains the opportunity that presents itself right now, on Monday afternoon, the eighth day of our strike.

Part One: Why Unions Matter

A world in which the scale of our interpersonal connection is small enough that love would guide us and keep us from exploiting one another is a thing of the past.  When life was harder, and people were nobler, we had this. The days of small communities, interdependence, and first-hand knowledge of our neighbors' pain are no longer. Today's world is built upon industry and upon the concept of large scale, so that success requires and stems from benefitting from, and using others whom one does not and cannot know.

Since the onset of industrial society, we have seen two sorts of power emerge; one is automatic and the other is created. The automatic power comes from capital. Those with land, money, connections or other resources automatically control those who don't. They do so without concern for the people they control; for they do not know them and thus cannot love them. It's nothing personal. The large scale that precludes love creates a buffer between owner and worker that allows the owner to get as much as they can from their worker without guilt. It is to the owner's clear advantage to pay and treat his worker as poorly as he can, to the point that the very human dignity of the workers is a neglected. (For poignant demonstrations of how this process works systematically, spend some time with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.)

The created power in the industrial society is that of the people, joined together. When the people refuse to heed the bidding of the powerful unless all of their members and paid and treated well, a great equalization occurs. And somehow, interdependence replaces exploitation as the creative force. Skipping over love entirely, the system of collective bargaining makes the powerful treat their workers well, without even knowing them. So unions are important because they create the possibility for industrial society to go on producing on a large scale, allowing for the participation of the powerless, while protecting their dignity.

The Chicago Teachers' Union's fight against Chicago Public Schools has been a classic struggle between powerful employer and its labor force, with an important twist. The powerful in this case are the mayor, and his wealthy appointees of the school board, many of whom are tied to charter schools. The labor force, though, is not primarily interested in protecting itself.

The Talk on the Picket Lines

From the inside of this contract dispute, I have noticed a shift from normal, self-serving, contract negotiations to something that I think is truly significant. In the case of this strike, the teachers are fired up not about how they are being treated, but about how their students have been treated over the years. The media talk is about pay and evaluation. But on the picket lines and at the rallies, these issues are perfunctory.

From deep inside the union, conversations like this e-mail exchange between two teachers after yesterday's union meeting are common.


Teacher 1: This contract is more of the same old thing that (union) leadership has brought to us for years. I believe there are many of us who are willing to sacrifice wages for improved working/learning conditions. We need to make sure the union leadership and other factions of the union hear our voice. I'm curious what your take is on what is going on (i.e. how did the other representatives present feel about where we are at right now and why do you feel it wasn't resolved today?).

Teacher 2: One thing i can say is that the union body, many at least, seemed that they don't want something unless it truly starts to address many of our concerns.  There was a strong calling to not end the strike.


So what does Teacher 1 mean about working/ learning conditions? Why did Teacher 2 hear a strong call to not end the strike when we've already been promised a decent pay raise and scored some sizable wins already?

Among teachers, this strike has become a lever for true education reform. We are convinced that Charter schools are a terrible solution to our education problems, and that investing in struggling schools instead of starving them of resources is what our city's kids deserve. The school board's agenda to close, restaff and charter off our most needy schools on the South and West sides is clearly self-serving and short-sighted. Anyone who has worked at an all black school in Chicago can tell you that the veteran black teachers who work in these schools are some of our city's most valuable resources. They are heroes, and our school board's intention is to systematically replace them with a cheap and poor imitation. There is a buzz among the teachers to stay on strike until we have assurance that our brothers and sisters on the South and West side will keep jobs when their schools are closed down later this year.

The other issues that truly impassion us,  manageable class sizes and adequate social work and nurse services, are related directly to our kids. As CPS shows consistently, the appointed board is either misinformed of what true education reform should look like in Chicago, or they are corrupt. And right now, in the middle of September in Chicago, we have leverage to fight for the kids of this city against the powerful and ignorant/corrupt. There's no telling when we'll have this sort of power again. With the city's current plan to chartering off neighborhood schools to corporations, we may never have it again.

The politically neutral comment we always get as teachers is, "I hope the two sides work this out soon." And we do too; we can't wait to get back to our students. But we can't help but wonder if there's a chance to be truly heard and make some real inroads for our parents and students who have no political voice. We can't help but wonder if the media attention we could gain from holding out and sacrificing our raises for our students would show the world our true priorities and spin our mayor's agenda on its head.

In a large city where we all benefit and suffer from systems beyond our comprehension, it's easy to shake our heads and say injustice has to be this way. But really, it is fun, and maybe even healthy to hope. And this strike ain't over yet.

Let's keep watching.

A Sabbath Poem

I've taken to getting away to a quiet place on Sundays, and being still for about an hour. Poems, or seeds of poems, have often emerged from these times. This is one that came last month as I sat at Northerly Island by the lake, just south of downtown Chicago.

Eli as Froggy

This happened last Spring and I never got around to posting it.

That's my boy!

read this blog post

I think this blog post is really good.

-brian

Wendell's speech in Louisville

So the Perfect Wont be the Enemy of the Good...

Betsy

Posted: 13 May 2012 06:41 AM PDT As our fifth child crowned early Friday morning, the uniquely beautiful lives and faces of our other four kids flashed before me: Suzy's rambling mind and empathetic heart;  Eli's fierce anger and hilarious one-liners; Isaac's quick wit and scheming bent; Leeli's grunting hugs and stubborn stares. What joy in studying them, teaching them, laughing with them, and training them.The blessedness; the givenness of life itself came to me dressed as these 4 kids. Next thing you know, there's a head emerging. Then a neck with a cord wrapped round, choking as the tiny baby came further.  And just as quickly had come the weight of life's blessedness came the truth of its fragility. I feared for the baby's death and I knew from my other kids all that stood to be lost.  In my fear I looked up at my Beth's exhausted, sweating face. She had once more given more than she has for her family. Thanks for her, beyond what I can express, filled me and broke me.  And while I looked at Beth and cried, Dr. Kara's hands untangled the umbilical cord, and her voice cried out, "and it is a girl!," Then came Beatriz Ann Stipp's first breath. Then her piercing cry. She was alive.  Alive!

more from Wendell Berry

Last week, Wendell Berry delivered a speech to the National Endowment for the Humanities. All who have ears can give it a listen by watching the video here.

I'm cautiously heartened that Wendell Berry's work is lately getting attention. The fact that he gave this speech at an event put on by our federal government, and the fact that he was chosen to write the forward to Prince Charles's book about feeding the planet sustainably means that more people will hear his thoughts.  And we need to hear what Mr. Berry's been prescribing for the last 40 years; from the way we eat, to the way we pattern our weeks, to the way we raise our kids, to how we think about where we live. It is ancient wisdom, wearing (semi-)modern lenses, and spoken in a Kentucky accent.

I was struck in listening to the speech, how consistent Mr. Berry's message has been throughout his career. The book that put him on the map, and the one that first captured my thoughts, is a collection of essays called The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Much of what he said in his speech last week is a reworking of the same themes he developed in that book, which was publishing in 1977.

Below are some excerpts from the book that grabbed my attention right away; they struck me as both startlingly different from anything I'd heard before, and startlingly true.

Here is his first paragraph:
One of the peculiarities of the white race’s presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, wherever we have been, we have never really intended to be. The continent is said to have been discovered by an Italian who was on his way to India. The earliest explorers were looking for gold, which was, after an early streak of luck in Mexico, always somewhere farther on. Conquests and foundings were incidental to this search – which did not, and could not, end until the continent was finally laid open in an orgy of goldseeking in the middle of the last century. Once the unknown of geography was mapped, the industrial marketplace became the new frontier, and we continued, with largely the same motives and with increasing haste and anxiety, to displace ourselves – no longer with unity of direction, like a migrant flock, but like the refugees from a broken anthill. In our own time we have invaded foreign lands and the moon with the high-toned patriotism of the conquistadors, and with the same mixture of fantasy and avarice.

A few paragraphs later, he goes on:
If there is any law that has been consistenly operative in American history, it is that the members of any established people or group or community sooner or later become "redskins" - that is, they become the designated victims of an utterly ruthless, officially sanctioned and subsidized exploitation. The colonists who drove off the Indians came to be intolerably exploited by their imperial governments. And that alien imperialism was thrown off only to be succeeded by a domestic version of the same thing; the class of independent small farmers who fought the war of independence has been exploited by, and recruited into, the industrial society until by now it is almost extinct. 

Immanuel Approach continued

Much of my thinking about God and man lately has stemmed from using the Immanuel Approach to Healing Prayer. I learned about this approach at a conference held by Dr. Karl Lehman  back in November, and have been testing it out on my (daring) friends since then. I knew some things about healing prayer going into the conference, but the new stuff I learned there excited me. I hoped as I left the conference that this slightly different approach to helping people pray through pain and trauma was easier to use and  more effective than the approach I had used before (something similar to Theophostic prayer).

I have not been disappointed. For all the sessions I've done (barring those where the pray-er had to hurry and catch a train or something) the people have heard from Jesus directly to their hearts in really powerful ways. In some cases, people who haven't felt the presence of Jesus in years have been able to receive breakthroughs.  Before you think in your mind that I'm doing something altruistic here, I have to say that watching Jesus show people what He has to show them is fascinating for me personally.  It's like watching a true movie about the truest thing there is, but told in a different way, and to a different person with every session. All of this goes a long way in enriching my own faith walk.

Dr. Lehman wrote up a brief description of the Immanuel Approach, that I think is clear and succinct.  I haven't found it online anywhere, so 'm typing up and posting it below for people who want information about Immanuel prayer. Also, if you life near Illinois, Tennessee or Kansas here is a list of people (all of whom are more qualified than I) who you can contact for help in removing the barriers between you and Jesus.

So here it is in a nutshell

The Immanuel Approach:

• Immanuel means "God with us" in Hebrew, and the Immanuel approach takes the reality of God's ongoing presence as its primary foundation.
• Thousands of professionals and lay people around the world are applying the Immanuel approach to resolve past pain, deepen intimacy with God, and discern God's ongoing guidance. 

The Immanuel Approach to Emotional Healing:

• Shifts the primary objective from "resolve trauma and relieve symptoms"to "help the person connect more intimately with Jesus by removing barriers between her heart and Him." We gratefully accept the resolution of psychological trauma and the associated symptom-relief as side benefits, but the more important priority is to remove blockages that stand between our hearts and Jesus. 
• Starts with recall of positive memories and deliberate appreciation, to prepare our brain-mind-spirit systems for connecting with the Lord; and then establishes a living, interactive connection with Jesus as the foundation for the session.
• Is organized around turning to Jesus, focusing on Jesus, and engaging directly with Jesus at every point in the session.

The Immanuel Approach to Life:

• Includes healing for psychological trauma, but clearly recognizes that this is only one part of God's agenda for working in our lives. For example, the Lord also wants to build our capacity, grow our maturity, and spend time "just" being with us as a friend.
• Takes the tools for helping us connect with the Lord outside our special "sessions," with the ultimate goal of helping us get to the place where we perceive the Lords' presence, and abide in an interactive connection with Jesus, as our usual, normal, baseline condition as we walk through life each day.
• Again, identifies the primary objective, the most important priority, as intimacy with God.