Reforming Children

 

This may seem a strange title when we think about that institution we used to call Reform School. That was the place we sent children who had not been properly formed in the first place (according to our society’s standards) and so, were in need of re-forming. And though there are many families, counter-cultural groups and yes, schools, doing a fine job of getting it right the first time and giving children what they so deeply need and richly deserve (a lovely phrase coined by my colleagues James Harding and Sofia Lopez-Ibor), the reports are coming in that the choices we are making are obstructing the natural formation of children— and thus, on some level, they all are in need of re-forming. How does that play out in the school? 

 

When the kids line up outside your door, they also will step in with a crowd of invisible companions. There’s the personal life they carry that will affect how they can receive your brilliant teaching. Did they get enough sleep? Eat breakfast? Spend four hours last night playing violent video games or scrolling through toxic tik-tok posts? Is their dog sick or their sibling mean or their parents struggling with alcoholism, drug abuse, anger issues, trouble paying their bills? None of which we can fix but all of which we should be aware of. 

 

Then there’s the collective permissions given by the greater culture for kids to give up their play-based childhood and outsource their physical fitness, social intelligence, critical thinking, emotional well-being to electronic devices. A child who walks through the day with a phone in hand is a different being than one carrying books, pens, paintbrushes, xylophone mallets, balls, jump-ropes and such. Well-researched books like The Anxious Generation and The Myth of Normal paint a bleak picture of depression, anxiety, bullying, suicide, addiction, a growing epidemic of learning dysfunctions, lack of motivation and more. Phone-based childhoods are rapidly replacing play-based childhood and nature’s timetable for the child’s developing intelligence, emotional regulation, social skills has been disrupted in a mere 15 years of “technological progress.” Teachers who have been teaching 20 years note the difference in their students’ motivation and ability to read, think critically, respect the teacher. People who have been teaching for 40 years, even more so. Many feel that it is has never been so difficult to teach children of all ages.

 

Does all of this affect what happens each day when the children walk into our classroom? Yes, it does. Should we be concerned? You bet. Should we educate parents about the dangers of these devices, outlaw cell phones in the classroom, read and discuss the books above (and others?), monitor our own use of screens in the classroom? Of course. But again, that’s a strong current to swim upstream in and again, we will not solve these problems in time for Monday’s class. 

 

And that brings us to the next post. 

 

 

Reforming Schools

Sometimes it happens that these blogposts, my Facebook posts, my Podcast and my books leak over into each other. Only natural that they would and since each attracts (I think) different audiences, it’s fine to repeat things. Even if the same people who listen to the Podcast read a similar post, it’s also fine to repeat things. Especially if they’re worthy of repeating. 

 

That’s yours to decide, but the fact that I post them means that I, for one, think they’re worthy! So here is a written version of my next Podcast, more or less, divided into three parts. In looking at how to help teachers struggling with particular issues and questions—which should mean ALL teachers, no matter how accomplished they are— I list three factors that are at play:

1)   School and the surrounding culture that informs it— parenting, media, law, religion, physical location, etc. 

2)   Children and the way they reflect both the tonic and toxic practices of the above cultures, how it affects them, how it prepares them or obstructs them in their capacities to learn.

3)   Teachers and how they meet their obligation to nurture children in the sacred trust that teaching is—or should be. 

 

And so a few words about Part 1.

 

SCHOOLS: When you, the teacher, walk into the classroom, you don’t step into it alone. By your side is the particular school culture you’re immersed in, with all its ideas about what education means, all its rules and procedures, all it’s notions about who children are and what we want them to be. 

 

And then behind the school culture is the greater culture. From your particular county or town or city, with its particular blend of churches, temples, mosques, Mom and Pop stores downtown and megastores at the mall, football stadiums and jazz clubs, to the policies and ethos and diverse populations in your particular State, with its own history and laws that either support or obstruct your mission as a teacher, to the entire history of the whole country, the horrors of centuries of wars and injustices side-by-side with last night’s media fare with guns blazing and the latest awfulness on the 24/7 news. All of it walks in behind you, in front of you, side-by-side with you as you enter the sacred space of a school classroom and almost all of it is invisible and unnamed. But not unfelt.

 

All of it is written in invisible ink in your teacher contract and spells out the very notion of what it means to be a teacher, a moving target that is constantly changing, usually without the teacher’s consent. Like the frog in the slowly boiling water, we don’t notice the death-dealing heat until it’s too late and the culture has sleepwalked their way into a new notion about what it means to be a teacher that is toxic to the children, the teachers, the parents, the administrators and our future as a thriving country alike. Where once a teacher was expected to thoroughly know their subject, have reasonable skill in conveying essential information to the students and maintain some semblance of social decorum in the classroom, suddenly we’re expected to be each child’s therapist, life coach, guidance counselor, learning specialist, friend and surrogate parent. We are expected to make sure each lesson is geared precisely to each child’s individual needs while also attending to their emotional intelligence, physical needs, diagnosed learning disability, proclaimed gender identity. Depending on which state you teach in, we’re expected to either include social justice issues or purposefully exclude them in our lessons.

 

The list of things we’re allowed and not allowed to say or do is long and constantly shifting, the consequences for making mistakes more extreme, our voice in determining school policy and shaping school culture is unwanted by the rulemakers, the physical danger from unhinged students more prevalent,, training for handing school shootings and if some had their way, training to carry a gun in the classroom, part of our teacher preparation, all for the same (or smaller salary), less and less appreciation from admin, parents, students and the culture at large and more and more blame that we’re not taking on the responsibilities for our children’s mental, emotional and physical health that parents, politicians, media promoters are failing miserably to meet.  This is as true in elite private schools as it is in progressive independent schools as it is in public schools. 

 

When we walk into the classroom, all of this walks in with us. Both the failings and gifts of the surrounding culture. All of it. We would do well to recognize its presence when we consider why teaching feels more and more difficult and less and less satisfying. It’s part of what’s at play when we find ourselves struggling in the classroom.

 

Should we recognize these forces at work and name them? That would be a good idea. Work on changing school culture? Where it’s not working, we certainly should. On changing the surrounding culture? Absolutely. Should we discuss these issues at staff meetings? Now there’s a radical thought! And depending on our particular school situation, it might help to. attend school board meetings and when needed, to petition or protest or strike or vote.. 

 

But that’s a long-term vision and not likely to change in time to make Monday’s class more engaging, fun and satisfying. So while we’re contributing to such changes and waiting for them to take root, that’s not where our whole focus should be. But before we arrive at that, there’s more to consider. Read on.

Dear Dr. Dougie

As promised, here’s a sample of the kind of question and answer I imagine for the next “season” of my Podcast, a kind of cross between Dear Abby (Dougie?) and Ask Dr. Doug. Whether or not you’re a music teacher, the principles can be useful for any teacher— or even parents, for that matter. Here’s the question: 

 

I am an elementary music teacher in a small town in Montana. I've been enjoying your blog, books, and podcast. I have a question if you have a moment to offer some advice. I love the idea of teaching through silence (explaining less and going through a musical activity without speech). When I've attempted this it is sometimes pretty tricky for the kids to maintain silence for very long. When a student starts making noise, I find myself getting frustrated and wanting to stop and address the issue which seems to take the magic out of the moment. Do you have suggestions for redirecting those students who are making it hard to maintain the magic? Thank you for your time,

 

And my answer: 

 

Great question! I often begin workshops with teachers teaching two or three pieces over a 45-minute period without saying a word. But I will sing or clap  or recite a rhyme for them to echo. Silent teaching is not actually silent— there’s musical sound, but no unnecessary explanations. I’m giving instructions, but with the body and gesture and hands and face, like a conductor communicates so much information to the symphony orchestra or a jazz musician shapes the music through the music itself. The teachers are often astounded by how much we can accomplish in this way. And then I warn them, “But don’t expect this to go smoothly with kids the first few times you try it. They often will shout out, “Why aren’t you talking?!!! What’s wrong with the teacher?!!!” and the whole magical bubble bursts. 

 

My general philosophy about any “classroom management problem” is to anticipate the problem and make a game out of it. So one remedy is to write on the board:

 

” Kids, my throat hurts today and I can’t talk, so let’s see if I can teach this lesson without talking. Just watch me. And remember that like any lesson, you shouldn’t talk out of turn. Raise your hand if you think we can do it! Okay, let’s go!”

 

A related strategy is make up a story. Wear a nice shirt and once the kids enter and are settled in a circle or other formation, ask them:

 

“Put your thumb up if you like my shirt.” If most liked it, you might go on:

 

 “I see some of you agree with me— I really like this shirt. It belonged to my friend and every time he wore it, I complemented him. One day I told him how I went to a workshop where the teacher taught us for 30 minutes without saying a word and at the end, we had made fabulous music.  He didn’t believe it was possible and so I said, ‘Well, if I can do it, will you give me your shirt? And if I can’t, I’ll give you any of my shirts that you want.’ Then he added, ‘But the kids also have to not talk while you’re teaching.’ I agreed and we shook hands.

 

So this was a few years ago and I had a fabulous class of ______ graders who I thought could do it. Do you think we did it? Well, here’s the proof—I’m wearing his shirt! Since then, I’ve always been looking for another class as great as that one and I’ve never found one yet. But you guys are pretty fabulous. I think you might be the ones. Shall we try it? 

 

And by the way, he learned not to offer me any more shirts. So there’s no reward if we do. Just the pleasure of meeting the challenge. And if you do it, I will be telling stories about you in the years to come! Ready? Let’s go!”

 

Of course, none of these are foolproof, but they’re intriguing and playful and motivating to the kids in the right way. Offering them a challenge rather than a “Do this—or else!” command. And if one kid talks out of turn, you don’t have to get angry. Just a playful, “Ohhh! We were so close. Oh well!” Or “Shall we try again?”  Or “Maybe another day.” No blame, no shame, just keep it light and playful. 

 

Give it a try— give it many tries— and let me know how it goes!

 

Kids are kids and teachers are people with different levels of tolerance, but these kind of playful ways to motivate students and keep the energy light and fun are gamechangers. It’s a big part of how I can still be teaching kids for over 50 years and not feel burn-out. Indeed, feel more energized after the classes than when I began. Give it a go!

 

Serendipity

 

Serendipity: the ability to find good and valuable things by accident when you’re not looking for them.

 

Synchronicity: a meaningful coincidence where an internal thought or feeling aligns with an external event, even though there is no logical cause-and-effect connection between them.

 

Tonight, if I’m lucky and my name gets chosen from the basket, I’ll tell that story of looking for Jim and Karen Bold in the Yorkshire Dales (see An Extraordinary Tale blogposts, May 30/31st)) at the storytelling venue, The Moth. The theme of the stories is serendipity. While the dictionary definition suggests that such experiences are random accidents, I disagree—they’re signs that when you’re on the right path, invisible forces gather around you and helping hands appear. Perhaps that’s more accurately described as synchronicity (see above), but I think both words are deeply related. As suggested by Goethe:

 

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation),
there is one elementary truth…
That the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one
that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents
and meetings and material assistance,
which no one could have dreamed would have come their way.
Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

So having just recorded the last of my ABC’s of Education Podcast, I’ve been searching for the next incarnation of it. Suddenly, I’ve gotten e-mails from several of my recent Level III students asking for advice about specific challenges they’re facing. And then I got one from a teacher in Montana who had never studied with me but had read several of my books and my Blog and followed my Podcast. He asked an excellent question that deserved a thoughtful response and I will share both his question and my answer in the next Blog. But the timing of this serendipitous/ synchronistic moment was noteworthy.

 

1)   It came just at the time I was considering continuing the Podcast with questions from teachers about the details of specific issues in their classes which I would address. After the visionary, ideal philosophical perspective of the episodes in the ABC Podcast, this would be a chance to apply the ideas to the practical world of the daily class. 

 

2)   The stunning unexpected surprise is that the inquiry came from the husband of a daughter of a dear friend who died too young some 18 years ago. I occasionally get news of her and knew she was married, but had no idea her husband became a music teacher! Yet another unexpected moment that affirms my intuition that there are mysterious forces at work that give meaning, shape and design to a life. Certainly to mine!

 

Read on for the question and my answer—which may go on to be the first episode of the new Podcast “Season.”

Communitas

Last night I had a wonderful visit with my nephew Kyle. He lives in Austin, Texas and I hadn’t seen him in 3 years. Imagine my delight to not only see him but meet his 3-year-old son! Kyle is an old soul. We have some of the same poems memorized and he is also writing his own poetry. (As am I.) He had just come from a five-day retreat with Michael Meade, literally an old soul (around 80 years old) who speaks eloquently of the soul’s journey. 

 

Kyle shared an interesting distinction that was made in that retreat, the difference between “community” and “communitas.” The latter is a Latin term made popular by the anthropologist Victor Turner and describes the sense of togetherness and bonding people feel when they go through a shared experience together, a kind of collective rite of passage. Such gatherings are marked by a spirit of equality and unity and often involve some physical discipline with a spiritual/ soulful/ artistic expression —meditation, dancing, music-making. It is often a short-lived retreat kind of experience like the recent Michael Meade gathering, a Zen week-long sesshin meditation retreat or an Orff training. People often leave feeling intensely bonded to others who began as strangers and the echoes continue into the future like the diminishing vibrations of a struck gong as people keep in touch. 

 

Community, by contrast, is a more stable and static type of human gathering, with people bound by common geography, religion, social roles and rules. The members of the community share certain viewpoints or values in common (hence common-ity), feel unified by these norms (com=with/ unity= unity). 

Where communitas is an active verb, constantly creating and re-creating the conditions to spontaneously realize both the diversity and commonalities of fellow seekers, community can feel more like a passive noun, simply existing just by showing up to school each day or church on Sunday. 

 

All of this resonates deeply with my experience of the Orff gatherings I help lead, much more in the spirit of communitas then mere community. And I found this sense again in an old Hermann Hesse book I recently re-read, Demian. He writes:

 

(I was) surrounded by nothing but beautiful, pleasant things and feelings. I  could tell that this was a foretaste of the new, higher community we were imagining. Occasionally I would be seized with mourning for this happiness, since I knew full well it could not last…I could feel that one day I would wake up out of this beautiful picture of love and happiness and stand alone once more, completely alone, in the cold world of other people, where my only choices were solitude or struggle—no peace, no shared life. 

 

…I clung to these beautiful days like a butterfly to the honey clover. This had been my time of happiness, the first time in my life I had found fulfillment and been welcomed into a group of like-minded individuals. 

 

                  Demian: Hermann Hesse (pp, 128-129) —published 1919 

 

I’m always looking for the words that describe that gifted retreat experience and both the Hesse quote and the communitas definition fit well. Somewhere I have Victor Turner’s book From Ritual to Theater, but dang if I can find it at the moment. If I do, stay tuned for further elaboration.

 

Meanwhile, it feels like consciously creating communitas within any given community is a good idea. That’s what my daughters used to call my DTOD. (Deep thought of the day). 

Facial Unrecognition

Looking in the mirror these days, it’s not the happiest experience. I keep wondering how that old man got into my face. But the changes are mercifully small and gradual, giving me time to get used to them. And I can always recognize myself.

 

Not so my phone. Suddenly the facial recognition feature has no idea who this guy is and sends me to cumbersome numerical codes and passwords to simply open the phone, never mind, check out my banking statement and other features. Of course, I did nothing to suddenly make that stop working, unless a new additional wrinkle put me over the line of recognition.

 

Meanwhile, I arrived back home in San Francisco with all flights on time and lovely weather greeting me as I took BART from the airport, boarded a bus and walked eight blocks to my house. The pleasure of unpacking, a bite to eat of food still edible I found in the kitchen and thought I’d enjoy a bit of the new Ted Lasso before bedtime. 

 

But now the TV didn’t recognize me—well, the wireless connection —and all bets were off on Apple TV, Netflix, Prime, etc. Unplug the TV, unplug the router, plug them both in again and the same “Sorry, sucker! We’re just not going to work and you’ll have to spend hours figuring out what the hell is wrong.”

 

And so I think about how I stepped out on the Lake Michigan cottage deck every night to watch the sunset. Though there might be clouds or rain, in one form or another, it’s just there—reliable, dependable, nothing to plug in and not a single code to enter. And in the end, more spiritually uplifting than the next murder on the detective series. 

 

Sigh. Can we learn to just be content with the world at our feet, in front of our eyes, above our heads? Can we recognize “the face before we were born” (a Zen description of our true nature) that never wrinkles or sags? Can we change mirrors reflecting back to glass offering a view out? 

 

Note to self: yes, I can and yes, I should. And you should too. 

Meanwhile, enjoy the sunset!

Summer Farewell

The canoe, kayak and cornhole boards brought up from the beach, the bikes back in the basement, the clothes in the closet stuffed in the suitcase—it’s time to go. My wife will stay another 10 days with a new group of people coming up who care not for canoeing, kayaking, cornhole or biking, but will enjoy their own ways of being at the beach in the last weeks of summer. 

 

Me, I’ll be settling back in in San Francisco with no trips planned until mid-October. Back to my routines there in the best season in that marvelous city. Opera in the Park, Comedy in the Park, Flower Piano, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and other annual delights await, with summer fog (hopefully) gone and winter rains yet to arrive. Some little projects eagerly await me (getting my 12^th book out, preparing for my Flower Piano gig), others less delightful demand my attention (the complicated fiasco of my book publishing business). Happy to return to Trader Joes, Tartinne bread and cooking in my own kitchen, walks in my Golden Gate Park backyard, reunions with friends and colleagues. 

 

Meanwhile, my flight leaves in five hours and hoping for one more walk up Sugarbowl dune and one more swim in Lower Herring Lake. It has been a most marvelous three weeks reviving my biking-hiking-swimming body and remembering my summer self with my teacher identity laid to the side. But all good things must pass. Or from another point of view, the baton of one good thing is passed to the next and the new runner carries it further around the track. 

 

Though technically it’s another month until summer officially ends, this my farewell to that still-delightful season.