Remembering

My mother and I travelled from St. Petersburg to Beijing by train this summer. It was an extraordinary adventure. One of our stops was in Ulaanbaatar (the capital of Mongolia). While we were there, we visited a monastery and listened to the monks chant, a joyful, colourful experience; it didn’t feel rehearsed or solemn, but instead like friends gathering to share music and laughter.

Afterwards, we turned prayer wheels, fed the pigeons to increase our karma, and allowed ourselves to be seduced into buying souvenirs. I bought a necklace with a brass medallion. Happiness is upon you, said the smiling man as he put it around my neck. Mom bought a bone bracelet. It wasn’t until later that we noticed the little markings on it were skulls. To our surprise, we learned that skulls are important Buddhist symbols, reminding us that because there are only two truths – we are born and we die – we should live in the moment. We used the bracelet for the rest of our journey, especially at the end when our minds began to turn to lists of things to do on our return; we touched the skulls and remembered to be fully present in the moment.

At home again, my mind is so busy that it’s only at night before I fall asleep that I see again the wide sweep of hills in Siberia, the sudden rainbow on the Gobi desert, the Great Wall of China stretching forever across the green, green mountainside. My days are filled with the struggle to understand teaching, but answers keep slipping away. Perhaps it’s the influence of my journey, but more and more I think that teaching is only moments in the moment, no matter how I long to pin it in place with theory, to tie it up in neat phrases and tidy lists of best practice.

Today, the moment – the soft wind blowing in the window, the pale pink sky, the blank page on a bright screen – keeps disappearing as my mind floods with memories of Marc. Eleven years ago today, my brother died. How he would have loved the stories of our mother riding a Mongolian pony up the steep slopes behind our ger camp and galloping a horse across the Russian steppes. I can picture him, sprawled out in a chair, laughing. I’ve seen him, just so, so many times. Our life and our love – and learning, too, I’m almost sure – are built on moments, moment by moment.  Even moments like this, saturated with sadness, remembering.

Pondering the Gift of “Nothing to Do”

I read aloud passages to my oldest son from the book I've purchased my son-in-law for Christmas – The End of Absence. The author, Michael Harris, suggests that we who are the last generation to experience pre-Internet life need to “reclaim what we've lost in a world of constant connection.”  He writes:

I think that within the mess of changes we’re experiencing, there’s a single difference that we feel most keenly; and it’s also a difference that future generations will find hardest to grasp. That is the end of absence – the loss of lack. The daydreaming silences in our lives are filled; the burning solitudes are extinguished.

I’m enjoying the book and sorry to have to wrap it at last but we are dashing out the door for our second big holiday dinner and there’ll be no time tomorrow before the rest of the family arrives (including my son-in-law) for the third dinner. We drive to Courtenay, a beautiful sunny mild afternoon and are welcomed by the houseful of guests – my father and step-mother, two of my step-sisters and five of their children ranging in ages from 12 to 17. We laugh, talk, tell stories and eat much more than we should.

On the drive home, David remarked on something that didn't even register with me at the time – the young people only engaged minimally with each other or us. It exemplified, he said, the premise of The End of Absence. David, not so far away from being one of the kids, noticed that the young people all had phones out, one was plugged in completely, using ear-buds, the youngest played an online game, the girls chatted in a desultory way and engaged with the “other” in their phones. No one went out to play darts, he said. They didn't bundle up to play tag or pull out a board game or put on a skit. In fact, they didn't do anything they might not have done any other day of the week. There was nothing special about the evening, in fact. They weren't bored. But the boredom of a long evening doing “nothing” didn't drive them to invent new games and challenges, to connect or re-connect with siblings and cousins. They didn't interrupt the adult conversations with questions about what to do or badger us into the inter-generational play that is always the first thing we all remember about past years.

It made me think. In eliminating “nothing to do,” have we lost the best part of being together?

Why learning should not be like playing video games

I was reading, recently, a conversation between Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, and Sebastian Thrun, founder of another online education platform, Udacity. Thrun talked about the directions he hopes to go with online learning and asked: Can we make learning truly addictive in the same way we make video games addictive? If so, how do we get there?

The question is in keeping with a constant refrain in education, demanding we find ways to allow students to follow their passions (something I've argued against before), to get them excited and engaged in learning, to make learning FUN. Like video games.

But I’m wondering if we are heading down a dangerous path. Addictive things, it seems to me, are not what we want to chase in the first place, and our methods to achieve this state are worrisome: we use games, excitement, action and play to hook kids and sweeten the “bitter pill” of learning. Learning, surely, is in and of itself, delicious, but it is a taste that needs to be acquired over time. It’s hard work, focussed attention; it demands learning things you didn't know you didn't know (not just what you’d like to know) and pushing yourself to stick with hard things longer than you ever imagined you’d want to, past the fun part, past the easy part, past the frustrating part, past the part where it becomes easy again until it becomes a part of the way you think and know the world. Perhaps learning is addictive, but not in the way video games are, not in the way sugar and drugs and alcohol are - instant, easy. It’s only addictive years after the hard work has been done, after difficulties and failures and pain and frustration have allowed you to understand that the end is just a signpost, that the journey, including – maybe especially – the hardest parts (the parts that aren't fun at all, in fact) are what make it worthwhile.

I don’t think that means learning needs to be dull drudgery, but it’s certainly hard and it’s always slow. It’s possible to entice people into learning something hard for the short term with games and gimmicks, but since sticking with it is always an inner struggle against the lure of easy and instant distractions, that method is like encouraging children to eat vegetables with the promise of dessert. It too often leads to a desire for the prize rather than for the good thing we wish to instill.

Indeed, it seems to me that our current efforts in education are designed to thwart deep learning, to create a mindset that waits for learning to arrive custom-fit, always fun, easy and engaging. No wonder so many of our children now are bored in school. The problem, we are told, will be solved if we make learning more FUN, if we personalize and tailor the experience so it is just right for each child, if we infuse play, inquiry and choice into our lesson design, if we add tents and bouncy chairs to our classrooms. I’m worried that our solutions are crippling our students rather than helping them, atrophying their capacity to sift, sort, figure out, struggle, seek, fail, restart, persevere, and find their own way. Surely, a better question than how we can make learning fun might be – how can we support our students to do hard things?

Remembering why I’m grateful to be a BC teacher

Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in all the things I can’t change as a teacher. Which is a lot. The size of the classroom. The number of books to meet the needs and passions of my new students. The in-class support. The adverse conditions at home.

But there are even more things I can change. Small things: noticing a student, adding a visual, acknowledging effort. I know how much small things can make a difference. What’s more, what I do have, when I lift my eyes to think into the past or across the world is extraordinary. On a trip to Uganda I visited a school. They had children of all ages in one room – very big girls who had never been to school before a law requiring attendance sat alongside very small children. When I asked to see the library, I was shown a book room with a handful of worn and out-dated textbooks. I have so much.

It’s easy, too, very easy, to get lost in all the things I do wrong as a teacher. Which is a lot. Every day.The small things I didn't change. The student I didn't notice again, the conversation that went sideways, the lesson that slid into chaos. But there are at least as many things I’m pretty sure (I’m hoping) that go well, small “aha” moments, students who realize their extraordinary potential as they learn, a child who feels a sense of accomplishment at last, a kindness that lands.

Dear Ms. Beleznay: 
I have learned so much about English and Literature but more about life. I promise never to ‘bury my gift.’ You have taught me so much and I will be forever grateful. No words can express how thankful I am to have had you in my life.  I will never forget all I have learned (or you).  

Dear Ms. Beleznay:
I like the way you teach. In all my other classes I would never state my opinions aloud, and by doing things as a class, I've gained more confidence in my thoughts and opinions. I think that each and every person should have a chance to realize that their thoughts are valued as much as the next. You helped me realize that, so I thank you very much!

Dear Ms. Beleznay:
I've never really been smart, but you make me feel like I’m glowing. Thank you for everything. I’m truly grateful.

No matter how often I get lost, I am grateful that I always find my way back through the astonishingly kind words of children who routinely forgive my blunders, or if they are silent (and most are), in their shining eyes, in a frown of concentration, a surprised “I get it!” I am grateful to be a teacher. I am grateful for the extraordinary resources available to me, for the open hearts of the students I teach, for the impossible generosity of the teachers I work with, and most of all, for the opportunity to do work that matters every day.

On Kindness

I have a quote above my desk by Vaclav Havel: “Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.” The other day someone sent me a kind note to say how much she appreciated my work. It was one of those days when I was feeling low, when I was thinking that my work was not only unsuccessful, but perhaps not even good. How can we be certain? But those kind words lifted me up again. While it’s been said often enough to be a cliché, it doesn't diminish the truth: a small act of kindness can make an enormous difference to us.

During the teachers’ strike so many people were kind in small ways, honking, waving, bringing cupcakes, pizzas, notes of appreciation. Now that the strike has ended and we return to our ordinary hurry, it’s more important than ever to think about kindness, especially when bitterness, hurt feelings and anger against colleagues has been inevitable in this battle. Each of us does what we believe is good. Who can know for certain? The only certainty is that our bitter words hurt and our kind ones heal. 

The surprising advantage of larger class size, dyslexia and losing your parents

In Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, David and Goliath, he tells the always appealing story of the underdog – the little guy who wins despite the odds - from a seductive standpoint: our disadvantages are often the advantage that allow us to win. For example, he tells of dyslexics whose very struggle with reading allows them to win in the world by conferring some advantage – the capacity to listen carefully in one story, in another, the capacity to take risks, because frequent failure numbs fear. He shares stories of people who have gained an advantage – again, a kind of fearlessness – from losing a parent before the age of 20.  A researcher reviewed the lives of people whose lives merited more than one column in the Encyclopedia Britannica or Encyclopedia Americana. By the age of 10, 25% of these high-achieving people had lost a parent; by the age of 15, 34.5% had had a parent die; by age 20, 45%. On the other hand, Gladwell also points out that prisoners are two to three times more likely to have had a parent die in childhood and the number of dyslexics in prisons far exceeds the average.  When I was telling my very practical youngest son about the people whose disadvantage gave them an advantage, he said that he had no doubt that the number of dyslexics and people with early childhood loss in prison far exceeded the number that excelled. And quite likely, he added, the high-achievers had other advantages that factored more importantly in their success.

Yes, but we are always so easily seduced by the story of the underdog, especially the story of an underdog whose very disadvantages are the weapon against the established top dog. The vast majority of us, after all, are underdogs with a full gamut of disadvantages. (Gladwell lists some of them in Outliers; simply being born after March, for example, is a disadvantage.) Surprisingly, one of the disadvantages that turns out to be an advantage in Gladwell’s book is class size, a topic of great interest in British Columbia right now, where schools are shut down for a teacher’s strike that includes a demand for a more thoughtful approach to class size and composition. According to the research that Gladwell shared, class size falls into a category of things that follow “inverted-U” logic. For example, too little food is detrimental to health, but at some point, adding more food to our diet becomes as harmful. So, too, he writes, too many children in a class is a disadvantage, but at a certain point, too few children is equally disadvantageous.

Any teacher would agree. As Gladwell writes, “It is a strange thing, isn't it, to have an educational philosophy that thinks of other students in the classroom with your child as competitors for the attention of the teacher and not allies in the adventure of learning?” Indeed. That’s why BC teachers never speak of class size without composition; diversity in a classroom also falls on the inverted-U:  too little does not spark creativity and divergent thinking; too much causes chaos. (How do you know when you've reached the tipping point from advantage to disadvantage? Ask the teacher. But of course that would mean we respected teachers’ understanding of the complex dynamics in their classrooms. We prefer to find a mythical mathematical formula.) Gladwell argues that wealthy people who send their children to expensive private schools with small classes may be conferring an unwitting disadvantage. I find it hard to believe. I’d argue that a larger class size is like the “advantage” of dyslexia and losing a parent, helping a few (perhaps) and harming countless others.

The most disturbing part of the book for me was how many of the stories showed that disadvantages in early life allowed the person to be ruthless or deceptive enough to win – and these qualities, serving a “win,” were renamed an advantage. Of course, that’s how the Davids win. And really, when you think about it, that’s how the Goliaths stay on top (or the Davids, once they've beaten Goliath).

I keep wondering, lately, if there are different stories to grip our imagination, that don’t focus on who wins or who loses or how to gain an advantage over our enemies. Today, thousands of years after David took out his sling shot, in what seems an endlessly perfect summer of blue skies and gentle breezes, the tragic battle continues in the land of David and Goliath and the bitterness deepens in the decades-long dispute between the BCTF and the government. No new ending seems possible in either story. The rhetoric of peace and negotiations, fair deals and settlements are merely maneuvers to gain advantage. It seems to me that as long as we continue to focus on how to be or remain the winner, we lose the story of good.  That’s a story I’d love to hear.

Counting the Blessing of Wrinkles

My home is filled with family this week.  My youngest is getting married on Saturday, so we’re all gathering to laugh and play and be merry together.  Today, though, I’m taking some time to remember my brother, who is missing.  He died ten years ago today. How he would have loved all the family festivities and the wedding, his youngest son the Master of Ceremonies, his “other son,” as he often referred to Will, the groom.  We are taking advantage of the gathering of so many family members to also celebrate my daughter’s becoming a dermatologist last month, a profession that her uncle had recommended to her when she first told him she was going to be a doctor.  We are all getting older, he told her; you go to school, I’ll set up your office and we’ll make a killing off all the people who want to look young again.

Getting older is a blessing we don’t count often enough these days.  Today I’m grateful for the wrinkles and grey hairs, for the grown children and for Jack, our grandchild, filling the house with squeals of delight as uncles toss him in the air – and for the memories of my brother who will never grow old.