A Quick Coronavirus Thought

Life flipped.

In normal days, existence isn’t really a consideration. How can it be? We run from event to event, making it to appointments, practices, grocery stores, barely with enough time to take it all in. Life moves so fast, and we lament how the days fly by. 

Now, though, existence is very much in question. Life as we know it hangs in the balance, and the daily barrage of busyness has halted. Abruptly, our moments have become unrushed. Didn’t get the socks folded? There’s always tomorrow. Wished we could have read more to the girls? Go to bed, get up, and try again. There is much to drink in, and chances for re-tries abound, in these days of grace and dread.

New Decade's Resolution Revisited

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Ten years ago I published a list of goals that I would strive to accomplish from 2010 – 2019.  The hours I write in now are the last of that decade, and mark my failure to meet almost every one of them. But I’m not even a little disappointed.

Life has twisted and turned dramatically in these last 10 years. On January 1, 2010, I was a husband, father of three, Chicago Public Schools Special Education teacher, and Evangelical Protestant Christian. Today, I am a husband, father of six (three teenagers, a nine, seven, and three year old), Olivet Nazarene U. professor, and Orthodox Christian. 10 years ago, I loved to read and discuss big ideas, but mostly with a very small group of trusted friends. Toward the end of the last decade, my friend Chad encouraged me to start a blog, and that helped to me find a voice – to spark a few conversations, to force me to hammer out some ideas, and to declare to myself (and to anyone who happened upon my blog) that I am a thinking person. (In all sincerity, I didn’t realize this before the blog). Fast-forward. Today, I read and write and discuss big ideas as part of my daily work. Indeed, designing activities and questions that elicit discussions and thoughtful responses is my favorite part of university teaching.

Here’s how it works: multiple times a week, I get to lead young adults in conversations that are fascinating, about deeply important issues for our society, at the time when these young adults are making decisions that will shape their own world for generations. And it’s riveting. I know this may surprise some, but I find teaching at a Christian college a truly robust academic “venue.” While polarization seems to be a hallmark of our time, there is a true plurality of opinions and viewpoints among Olivet students. For any topic – from human sexuality, to war in Afghanistan, to global economic systems, to ethical garbage disposal – the classrooms at Olivet are full of diverse, and diverse Christian opinions, and the students manage to listen attentively and disagree respectfully at nearly every turn.

So there’s no shortage of space for me to dive into big ideas, but in every instance, I want to keep my own voice out. I may add a thought here or there, but I think that the students learn best by articulating their own thinking, and no one wants to go to class with Professsor Opinionated. I love being along for the rides of student discussion, and even to push the rides along, but those rides are ultimately not for me. So for the last few years, I’ve been mostly keeping to myself my own notions God, work, family, education, politics, or whatever else comes to mind.

I have hesitated to share my thoughts in writing since becoming a professor. For one, I’m not just a dude who thinks some thoughts anymore. I am affiliated with a denominational university, which has funders, who may care what kind of stuff this dude is putting out there. Next, I’ve been worried about being inaccurate. Bearing the title of an academic means being careful with facts and sources, and it means writing for an audience, each of which slows down the writing/posting process. At times, I've wondered whether students will read my post and label me (either conservative or liberal, depending on the topic) and turn off in my classes.  So at first, I would write without posting.  Lately I’ve spent my time in academic writing, which just isn’t that fun.  Of course, social media is a bad alternative and for a thousand reasons. 

I’m realizing that this shift away from posting personal processing is a problem. It occurred to me the other night at dinner. I was telling the kids that I was needing a bumper sticker for my car. (Oh yeah, 10 years ago I walked to work; now I drive). The bumper sticker would say: “Love thy neighbor, boycott Amazon” with the possibility of replacing the comma with a semicolon or a colon or leaving out the punctuation altogether. Now what I told the kids was an obvious fact: I do need this bumper sticker. But my teenage daughter responded with no understanding. Why would I be so mean to such a helpful company? And couldn’t I just be positive? And how can I argue with free shipping?

Oh dear! Have I failed to articulate to my Suzie how boycotting amazon is an act of hope? Have I neglected to teach her about the dangers, toils, and snares free things from companies, particularly free things that undercut local businesses by giving away world-burning fuel for shipping on trucks and planes like it’s parade candy?  Of course, Suzie is welcome to disagree with father opinionated. But her surprise showed me that my silence has created a vacuum. And amazon always beats a vacuum. 

in search of a space to create thought pieces that I can share with my own kids . . . in search of a thought sandbox that’s different from the college classroom, and from academic journals,  I find myself needing a space to think publically: to take up the task of turning ideas into words, and sharing them with all who may click.

Let’s start here: I will post my 2010 New Decade’s Resolution below, with an updated comment next to each resolution. And then, just to keep you all (Chad, mom) reading, I’ll write yet another resolution at the end.

2010 New Decade Resolutions 

Family

1. I resolve to take my wife on weekend getaways 20 times – Utter Failure

2. I will coach a baseball team that with Isaac, Suzy and Eli on the roster. Partial success. The 2013 Little Village Rays won the title with 9yo Isaac pitching out of his mind, and 6yo Eli turning every walk into a double. Suzie played for my coaching friend Gaby in a different division. 

3. I resolve to live with with my family in a poor country for an extended period (a month or more). Fail

4. I resolve to try to teach each child to play an instrument. Fail. But how was I to know that the most talented three musicians in our family were yet to be born?

5. I resolve to allow my children to learn to grow and raise food on a farm (I would say to teach them, but I don’t know how to do this myself). This is a fail, but I’m proud to say that they can all work. 

6. I resolve to take the family camping 10 times. 40%

Community

1. I resolve to develop meaningful relationships with 4 families (not just the kids) on our block. Success, thought I don’t know what 2010 Brian meant by “meaningful”

2. To lead a Bible Study or discussion group with neighbors Depends on how I was defining "neighbors"

3. To train one neighbor as a Christian disciple; Umm, success. I think when I wrote this I was thinking of someone who didn’t already know Jesus. I wasn’t thinking then that almost all of my neighbors were baptized Catholics; a fact that carries considerably more weight for me now than it did then.

4. To become a board member for the Little Village baseball league. Success!

Spiritual

1. To fast for two weeks from media 10 times Success

2. To fast for two weeks from food and media 10 times  Orthodox fast differently. You don’t get to set your own terms. 

3. To do a 40 day food fast. See #2.

4. To study 10 books of the Bible (like with commentaries and what-not) Fail

5. To focus study on Theophostic prayer, and develop a ministry of prayer with others Success, though it’s been a while!

Physical

1. To bat .500 for the Little Village Lugnuts Fail, but I sure miss those Sunday afternoons!

2. To pitch a no-hitter for the Little Village Lugnuts Fail

3. To beat Siri Greeley in ultimate Frisbee once Fail

4. To work out for a period of 6 months, once Fail

The Arts

1. To practice my cello 20 days out of one month. Fail

2. To finish the canons of: Wendell Berry (just his fiction), C.S. Lewis, Leslie Newbigin and Frederick Buechner. What a list. Success on Berry; I’ll never finish the others, and that’s fine.

3. To read the Koran and the Catechism of the Catholic Church Fail on the Koran, partial success of the Catechism

4. To write 10 songs - Fail

5. To add 100 postings to this here blog – Success

6. To send 20 hand-written letters – 25%

Work

1. I resolve to continue working as a Special Education teacher for these ten years – Success; same field, different role.

2. To achieve National Board Certification – Success

3. To come up with some more goals for work; Success, I now have a zillion of them.

2020 New Year’s Resolution

A decade’s worth of resolutions presupposed far too much agency on my part. So instead, and as a means to find this slipping voice, let's keep this simple: I resolve to write 12 new blog posts in 2020. 11 more to go. 

Happy New Year,

Look & See for yourself

The documentary Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry has finally dropped. The film festival run is over, and it's now available for all. 

As a Kickstarter Backer, I was able to watch the film a few weeks ago. The documentary was made by Laura Dunn and her production team with steady, deliberate thought and care. The spoken words and breathtaking images come slowly, inviting you to take long, slow draughts. Even still, they are almost too much to imbibe in at once. Just trying to keep pace, I found myself closing my eyes. The documentary manages to channel Berry's style of quiet and steady critique of the modern cultural and agricultural insanities, mixed with hopefulness and empowerment for anyone who cares. This critical-hopeful balance comes across about half-way through the film while Mrs. Dunn is talking to Berry off camera. Dunn mentions to Berry that living in harmony with family and place is difficult for her because she come from divorce. The Mad Farmer cuts her off gently but incisively:

"We all come from divorce, now. This is an age of divorce. Things that belong together have been taken apart, and you can't put it all back together again. What you do is the only thing that you can do: you take two things that ought to be together and you put them back together. Two things, not all things. That's the way the work has to go."

To me, this is the rebuttal to those who read Berry and dismiss him as one who advocates for the impossible solution of returning to a pre-technological age. The reality is simpler: that people and places and their interrelationships are broken in ways that they were not in the past, and that we may (Timshel) put them back together, piece by piece. 

There is much more to be said about this documentary. Let's do that face to face. You can watch the trailer here. 

You can watch a promotional Today Show interview with Nick Offerman here. (By the way, this clip is a remarkable demonstration of modern man's utter incapability to think seriously for more than 2 minutes).

Finally, as of Saturday night, you can watch the whole documentary on Netflix. This means that you can watch this beautiful and moving work in small segments and at your convenience. It means you can watch it all alone. It means you can watch it on a plane, or waiting at the DMV, or going to the bathroom. Don't. Instead, brace yourself. Turn your phone off for a couple hours. Gather friends and family and locally sourced snacks. May you have eyes to see, and ears to hear. 

Teachers as Gardeners

Note: This is the text for a talk I gave to Olivet's graduating teacher candidates last April. The audience consisted of seniors who had just finished student teaching, and were poised to enter the field. I used the space to reflect on the changing and unchanging aspects of teaching, and gave some advice to our graduates on how to hold steady amidst what can feel like a tumultuous world of education. At the end, everyone got a trowel.  

                  I’d like to thank the ONU School of Education for the opportunity to address you student teachers as you leave the period of teacher preparation, and enter the field of teaching. And field is an appropriate word here, because the point of my talk tonight is to invite you to consider teaching as farming, or gardening.

                  As you well know, the theme of the Olivet Nazarene University teacher education framework is “Professionals Influencing Lives.” One of your teacher-candidate colleagues recently asked me whether I thought this phrase was one of those nice-sounding sayings that is more form than substance. Whether “professionals influencing lives” really means something. And this student spoke with all the confidence of a Junior, which he is. He said that "influence" can be positive or negative. He said that "professionals" might refer to anyone who gets paid for their work. So really–this student said–“Professionals Influencing Lives” could mean “Paid workers doing work that affects those around them either positively or negatively.” The student’s point called into question our theme, the backbone of who we are. I mean it’s literally the writing on the on the wall outside our offices! In one sense, this student is right. It’s always important to define your terms. And while I know your professors who taught you as freshmen were clear about what we mean by “professionals” and “influence,” I want to take one more stab at the phrase before you leave us.

                  What do we mean by professionals? What do we mean by influence?

                  If we were to poll 100 veteran teachers, I am willing to wager that all 100 would tell you that teaching has changed drastically in the last 20 years. The changes in educational technology are nearly impossible to keep up with, data analysis is a new job demand for teachers and school leaders, increased competition has entered the educational marketplace, reliance on experts and evidence has supplanted teacher instincts, and high stakes evaluations have moved “teacher accountability” from a political talking point to a reality for teachers. So here we are, at a time of change for teachers. And many school reformers are pushing to apply concepts birthed in the business world to fix our schools. You can hear reverberations of business-talk from each of the trends I mentioned: increased technology; increased data analysis; greater competition; reliance on experts and scientific evidence for our teaching practice, and high-stakes accountability.

                  This cross-roads—this time of change—reminds me of the crossroads faced by our nation’s farmers in the years following World War II. My own grandpfather was one of those farmers. He grew up before the war, and before the war, he farmed in the “old way,” with a humble, 80-acre plot in Central Illinois, in close proximity with his dad and his brother, and with his animals. Grandpa Stipp never went to college, but he was known as a bright man and as a prankster. After the war, Grandpa came home and married my grandma, and they began farming in the new way that is quite nearly the only way professional farming is done today. Teams of work horses were replaced by tractors. Days of camaraderie with father and brother were replaced by days of solitude. Small farms were replaced by big ones. And the list of changes goes on.

                  I want you to listen the characteristics of this new way of farming: it had an increased use of technology, it involved greater data analysis, it required trust in agricultural experts. And famers of whatever scale needed large-scale machinery, debt became a way of life, and became a way that high-stakes accountability entered the sphere of agriculture. Do these changes sound familiar? Increased use of technology, increased data analysis, more rigorous competition, increased reliance on experts and research, and high-stakes accountability.

In addition to farming, grandpa Stipp also enjoyed collecting antique tools, guns, and knives. Part of his draw to these old tools was the opportunity to remember. He told stories of how old tools were used, and in so doing provided windows into how life had been. Shortly before Grandpa Stipp died back in 2013, I asked him about the horses he worked with in his fields. As he described them, he began to cry. Even though he embraced new farming methods as much as anyone, It was clear that grandpa also missed something, and felt something about deeply about the old way of farming. The working life of my grandpa’s boyhood was barely recognizable from the farming work he did from 1945 up until 2013.

Well since I’ve been a professor here at Olivet, I’ve gotten to take a step back from classroom teaching, and do some watching. When I go to our schools, either to observe teacher candidates, or even to attend my own kids’ parent-teacher conferences, I observe two categories of teachers. First, there is the type that acquiesces to the changes in the field without a vision. These teachers adopt any new technology or teaching tool, with the wrong assumption that the “new” will provide shortcuts that make the teaching profession easy. These teachers are frustrated with the uncontrollable nature of students and building administrators, and find that the "new" ways provides more pressure than relief. Threats of losing their job are felt daily, and cause them to question their pedagogies. Often, it is these teachers who encourage young people, “don’t go into education.” And if teaching were merely the frustrating dead-end that these women and men experience, they would be offering good advice.

But there is another category of teacher I observe, too. These are the teachers who take the long view. These are the teachers who find the joy in instructing, in their students’ humor and wonder, in the “light bulb moments,” and even in the challenges of teaching. These are the teachers who recognize the ancient nature of teaching. Who would share a fraternity with previous generations of teachers from one room schoolhouses, Mann's common schools or Dewey's progressive schools. I think of these teachers as gardeners. They are not relinquishing the joys of teaching because the educational trends provide new challenges. This is the type of professional influencing lives we want for you to become. If these teachers are gardeners, then their classroom is their garden plot, and the students are their plants. 

Good gardeners are concerned with the long-term health of their plants. Your job is to remove weeds and to water your plants, but to do so with care. Not for short term yields (like standardized test scores) but for long-term health markers like curiosity, neighborliness, mutual enjoyment, and delight. You are concerned with the health of your plants. So don’t teach your students strategies for comprehending isolated paragraphs. Teach them to loves stories; teach them to get lost in novels. Don’t teach your students techniques for cramming their short-term memory for test success. Teach them to care deeply about your content.  

                 Good gardeners use all their senses to adapt to their garden’s needs. Good teachers do the same. Good gardeners are collaborators. Good gardeners are hungry for ideas that can improve their garden, and love to share their ideas with others.

Good gardeners are primarily interested in their own plot; but always recognize that the context of this plot is important. A garden of diverse vegetation is easier to grow in Illinois’ rich topsoil than in rocky Wyoming. In the same way, a classroom “plot” is dependent largely upon its context, too. The broader context of a classroom—the history, sociology, economics, and culture that exist in a school or in a neighborhood—are critical for full understanding of the garden plot.Gardener-teachers are students of their context. Over the course of their careers, gardener-teachers arrive at conclusions, subsequently challenge their conclusions, and are careful to listen to natives of a given context. I hope that you are finishing your liberal arts degrees with a humble understanding of how little you understand. Too much confidence can hurt your ability to understand. In the words of Frederick Buechner, "it is no so much their subjects that the great teachers teach as it is themselves."

Good gardeners have a vision for their plot that is not dependent upon anyone else’s approval or opinion. Remember the teaching philosophies that you wrote as freshmen, and revised and reworked over the years? These philosophies were just the start of your philosophy that will evolve over the years. Like good gardeners, good teachers are independent thinkers who know their ideal, their philosophy,  regardless of what their administrators tell them.

                  Good gardeners use a combination of science, experience, and intuition as they plan, tend, weed, and harvest. Good teachers use a similar combination of research-backed practices, experience, and intuition as you plan, teach, and assess. Good gardeners are grateful for the gift of the good earth and for its bounty. In the same way, good teachers recognize that they building upon prevenient graces. Think of all the things teachers must together to make a classroom work:

•        Students’ intellect and curiosity.
•        The books they use, all of which are authored by those who have gone before them
•        The symmetry and internal logic mathematics
•        The natural world
•        History, fascinating, terrifying, and compelling

All of these are gifts for which a teacher should give praise, and none of them are created by the teacher. It is the teachers job to weave these gifts together, to make the content understandable, to make it pop, and to make it stick. Teaching is difficult to do well, but a work of true beauty when all the moving pieces align.

                  So what kind of professional do we want you to be as you go out into the field of education? What kind of influence do we want you to have in the face of the changing nature of education? We want you to teach as one who recognizes the dignity within each of your students. We want you to water your garden plots with careful attention, and with prayer. We want you to nurture your students into health and growth. We want you to survive the changing conditions that threaten the vitality of education as a profession. We want you to enter into your plots each day ready to endure what there is to be endured, and enjoy what’s there to enjoy, day in and day out. Like a gardener.