Learning is Change

14: The "ba, ba, ba" of a new idea. #LifeWideLearning16

I fidget, relentlessly. I have two rings that do not stay on my fingers for more than 20 minutes at a time. I run my fingers through my hair and rub my beard stubble. I tap on seemingly everything. I crack my knuckles loudly. Whether on my laptop or on the desk, it is a rhythm that syncopates my thoughts. And then there is the clacking on the keys. I do not simply let press them down. I hammer them into action, as if it was the hardest manual typewriter in the world. I need to hear the clack, clack, clack to know that something is being created in each moment.

It is the verbal expression of work, though, that is the most noticeable. The “ba, ba, ba” of an new idea or the half hummed lyric of a song that gets me to remember which task I was on. In its most pronounced form, I will actually sing what I am doing or the words I am writing. I hope this is endearing because I really don’t know how else to work.

I have “lost” my rings to the floor in more meetings and classrooms than I care to count. I have come back to consciousness from a tapping episode only to realize that I was the only one who needed those taps to keep on going. I have cracked my knuckles at times of pure silence, trusting that the interruption made for a nice transition to discussion and debate. These are the noises of work, the sounds of thinking and building and collaborating. Or, at least they are for me.

 

13: The Trackball and the Touch Screen #LifeWideLearning16

My first smartphone was a blackberry. It was the kind with the little trackball in the middle and a physical keyboard that was an absolute joy to type on. In 2008, I would use this marvel of modern technology to catch up on the crashing economy or the presidential race. I would refresh the atrocious Associated Press app on that little square screen as often as I could just to pick up what was happening on Super Tuesday or with the Lehman Brothers liquidation. Those two events are inextricably linked for me. The hope of a new type of leader and the absolute terror of the markets bottoming out.

The trackball gave way to the touch screen. The crash gave way to the recovery. The presidential race gave way to actual policy. And I followed each.

Today, I am desperately listening to every political podcast that I can get my earbuds on, hoping to hear something that gives me the same kind of hope. I am watching the jobs numbers roll in week after week, showing what I already know: we are better off now than we were at the bottom. And I access both through my ever-present glowing screen.

 

No one has to convince me that his policies have worked or that my life has steadily improved every year that Obama has been in office, just like no one has to convince me that my iPhone 6 is far superior to my Blackberry Pearl.

But, what I would like to hear is what comes next. How will we keep building on the gains we have seen in the last few years and not slip back into the abyss that was 2008? How will we convince others that it is worth pushing forward and being bold about climate change, education funding, internet privacy, human rights, and lasting peace? How will we use this moment to launch the next generation of activists and protestors who build on the last 7 years of hard won fights.

So, what do I want from Obama? I want him to make the case for learning deeply from his years in office and then moving forward. I want him to convince us (all of us) to reinvest in our country and double down on hope and change.

12: Writing and Reading Letters #LifeWideLearning16

 

There are very few books that I read more than once. Even fewer are the books that I feel compelled to come back to again and again because they feel like home. These books are the ones that I will never put down once I have started. These are the ones that fill me up with a moment in time so completely that I must give myself over to it, leaving anything happening in the real world behind. They embrace me in that moment just as much as I embrace them. These are my books, and they have a curious similarity to them.

I first read Dear Mr. Henshaw in the second grade. It was a present from my teacher, Mrs. Buck. She gave it to me on the last day of school before winter break that year, and I must have read it three times before we came back to school in January. The letters written to a real Mr. Henshaw and then to a diary that the boy still addressed to Mr. Henshaw were so personal and revealing. I wanted to receive those letters myself and have someone be so open about their life. In fact, the words “Dear Mr. Henshaw” are a trigger for me. They signal to me that a secret inner life is about to be revealed, that someone is about to find something out about themselves through the process of writing. And from this book, I learned that writing was going to save me. It was going to bring things to the forefront that I would never be able to get access to within myself otherwise. And it did.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is likewise an Epistolary novel. The major difference being that you never really find out who the character, Charlie, is sending the letters to. This novel is the book I have read the most in my life. I read it, on average, once a year. It is the one I recommend to anyone who has even the slightest interest in Young Adult fiction. I think this is because it is the one that resonates most with my own coming of age. While the events in the book do not mimic my own life, the perspective does. The protagonist is the wallflower, the observer, the one who takes notice. He may not be great at knowing what to do or understand the nuances of every situation, but he does see and interpret the world in a fundamentally transcendent way. He “feels infinite” and “lets the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.” Whenever I read the book, I know my own story better because Charlie is the friend that I want to be. He is the right kind of nostalgic and courageous. He is self-reflective, but never self-righteous. And most of the time, I just want to see the world through his eyes.

The less obvious choice for this triad of books is Will Grayson, Will Grayson. Although it is not technically a book of letters, it is a back and forth between two characters named Will Grayson that gives the feeling of call and response. I come back to this book again and again because of the third act. In it, Tiny Cooper, puts on an autobiographical musical within his high school. And it is spectacular. Tiny is described this way: “[he] is not the world’s gayest person, and he is not the world’s largest person, but I believe he may be the world’s largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world’s gayest person who is really, really large.” I keep coming back for this character and his interaction with the two Wills. Its description of Love is so full of hope that I want to stay inside of it and live there. I want to feel as deeply as Tiny does about his musical about anything in my life. I want to create something that touches those around me in the profound way that his art and his personality do. So, I keep coming back because I want for the whole world to emphatically choose to say “yes” instead of “no”. To love instead of mistrust. And above all, to try.

There are other books that could fit the desert island all time top five. There are books that would be torture never to read again. But those are different definitions of me than these, describing different sunsets within my life. But, so it goes.

11: I hope that makes sense. #LifeWideLearning16

I once went to a the Denver Zen Center with my wife. We went for an introduction to meditation and to learn by attempting it ourselves. The building was absolutely beautiful, and as we sat in total silence on our zafus I came to the exact opposite realization than I had intended. Instead of clearing my mind of all words and thought, I found myself with words ringing in my head. So much so that they became visual and all I could see were the shapes of letters as they rattled around in my brain.

I need words. I need to write them and to read them. I need to know what they mean and how to find out more of them. I lie awake and type out my thoughts on a virtual keyboard behind my eyelids. I draw my signature with my fingers into tables. I drive distracted whenever a billboard shows up. I read the fine print on magazine ads.

Words are how I make meaning of my world. I need them to stay with me. For as long as I am living, I need to be able to make them with my mouth and share them with others. I need to be able to take them in or write them down.

If you were to ever study my emails, you would note that I write a single phrase in nearly each one. It isn’t in the signature or an introduction. Rather, I continually write, “I hope that makes sense.” I write this habitually because I have to know that my words mean something to someone else too, that I am not simply writing them to the void. I must prove that my words have impact with each message I share.

I fear this changing more than I fear losing a job or my house burning down. Were I to lose my words, I would lose myself. They are more than just my companions as I sit in a quiet room, they are the voice in my head telling me to move forward and create something new. They are the courage to have difficult conversations or ask for forgiveness. My words are supporting my sanity, and I hope that never changes.

10: One Owned Hour #LifeWideLearning16

 

I loved being the first one to school, arriving in the dark with so much promise still to be explored. I would plan and I would write. I would grade and I would rearrange desks. That time was more my own than just about any other. I owned not just my classroom, but also the whole of the school for the first hour of every day.

When my daughter was born, that hour vanished. A new hour, around 2:00 AM replaced it. I listened to podcasts and wrote on my blog. I planned lessons then too, balancing her head in the crevice of my elbow while I typed out new ways to read The Outsiders.

My first son split the hour into wonderful little pieces where I could only catch up on a few tweets or grade a single paper. They were scattered in the morning and the evening, always with love from him to bookend the times that I could own for thinking of my classroom.

I stopped owning the school, far before I left it.

And it was the slow realization that I needed the flexibility of splitting my moments or shifting them into the wee hours of the morning that showed me I had to leave. As much as I called my students “my kids,” my actual children were stepping into that role. My childrens’ room became the classroom I needed.

I believe there are those who can do both. There are those who have found ways of living inside of the salary and the hours. They have made the moments work for them. But, I couldn’t keep my classroom at the school. I had to carry it with me, ensuring my own children were the beneficiaries.

It is selfish to think that your own children are the most important. It is hubris to believe you can make a bigger difference farther away from an individual relationship with a student.

And yet… I own my moments. All of them. I own up to the fact that my first home was my classroom and I will always miss it. I own up to the betrayal I feel in teaching others to do what I could not commit to. I own up to the desperate need I have to love my three children and to ensure they are learning deeply.

They do not keep me out of the classroom, though. Instead, they bring me closer to it. They help me to see why I was there in the first place. It wasn’t to own an hour or a school. It was to create something worthy of the effort. I believe that they are just that.

 

9: Teaching Disappointment #LifeWideLearning16

I am a big fan of unintended lessons. They aren’t quite teachable moments and they certainly weren’t a part of the original plan. The unintentionally learned is perhaps the most powerful because it is mostly seen through actions rather than words. It is mostly something being modeled directly in front of you, causing you to know a hidden strength or unforeseen flaw.

It is in this that I most recently taught others to get their hopes up and be disappointed. I modeled the excitement of what could be, the optimism of how everything was going to work out. I showed just how much we are in control of our own destinies and how well we are able to build and create when we do it together.

And then, I taught the disappointment of having those things become a lie in front of you. I showed just how badly things can go wrong when you blindly trust. This unintended lesson was all over my face and it showed to others that my optimism can be just a naive wish.

And then as I tried to pick up the pieces, I hope I taught another lesson. The way we come back from disappointment is even more important. The way we continue to embrace our values even as we learn from our mistakes is the true test of our fortitude. It doesn’t make the lesson of disappointment any less poignant, but it does make it more hollow. It makes it so that the wound heals rather than festers.

I hope that both lessons were unintentionally on display. I hope that both of them were taught and then learned. I hope that those who saw the disappointment, also saw what it means to not let it win.

Both. And.

8: Innovation #LifeWideLearning16

I used to love innovation. I used to love how we talked about it and how we made it something to strive for in schools and within ourselves. We reinvented and improved upon. We expanded what was possible.

But, it doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

Innovation is a code word now for when we don’t want to research. It is when we are trying to sell someone on what comes next. It is when we want to repackage and rebrand.

I’m exhausted with innovation.

 

7: My Father's Logic #LifeWideLearning16

When I asked my father if I could get a hamster, his response was that he needed to “cogitate” about it. He did not need to thinking about or even contemplate it. He needed to cogitate.

This was the first time that I realized my father’s type of logic was different than most other folks. Although the answer was eventually “yes” to the hamster, the process that he went through for this and every other decision held a gravity that I could see readily in his eyes. The wheels were always turning, always looking for a deeper understanding or a new set of data that he had not considered previously. Whether it was about hamsters in the household or research that he wanted to do as an electrophysiologist, he threw himself into those decisions and they became “the right decisions” in the process.

My father’s logic is within me. I too try to separate the emotion of the moment from the decisions worth making. I too try and see a third option when there is a seeming dichotomy. I too look for root cause in the face of anecdotal data.

Or, at least I wish I did.

I am so less sure of my decisions than he ever was. I am too swayed by a good story or by the situation right in front of me that I can’t quite see what comes next. I do not plan the way that he can, years in advance. Logic is a hobby of mine, but for him it is a full time job. But, that means he must put in the hours every day, while I can put it away for a while and do something else.

I can live in the frenetic emotions of my kids and get caught up in their worlds. I can lean upon others to solve problems when I can’t quite reach the perspective necessary. I can intuit what comes next, and adapt to meet the needs of whatever is thrown at me.

I do not cogitate nearly as much as my father does. But I always see it as an option, and when I need it, I make it mine.