AUSSIE

Blog entry posted March 16th, 2010 by Dale Worsley

“These so-called ‘golden threads’ are very nice, and probably what education should be all about, but if I followed any in my classroom, I can guarantee my students wouldn’t pass the ________ (insert name of any high stakes test),” wail the skeptics. On the contrary, as we discussed in Paragraph Six, #15, students who make connections “across life,” as Judith Langer put it in her study of schools that beat the odds, actually do better on standardized tests. If you’ve done your backwards planning and handle them dynamically, the detours enrich the journey.

I wouldn’t go into the issue again, as I’ve delved into it in earlier blog posts, but Jeez Louise is that beastly misconception a persistent one. I girded my loins for battle with it on numerous occasions this week. The particular teachers with whom I did chalk-to-chalk combat were operatically vocal, one going to the trouble of throwing the kind of professional tantrum that can occur when one’s pricy, artisanal camembert is moved. All of these teachers know their content thoroughly. It was the idea that they had to “teach the students, not the content,” that put them in a defensive posture. In the aftermath of battle, it occurred to me that DaVinci’s exhortation to “develop your senses, especially learn how to see” might warrant an extension: “learn how to see the students.”

The fact is, this kind of combat is not something that happens by coincidence in organizations undergoing change. It is the “storming” phase of what Bruce Tuckman, in 1965, described as a predictable group development process that comprises “forming, storming, norming and performing.” Neat, eh? I heard about it from Expeditionary Learning colleagues who make a point of being good at this stuff. In my experience, many of the individuals who holler the loudest wind up being the biggest advocates of the change at hand. My wife, the digital wizard in our household, will confirm that I am one of these obnoxious squawkers-turned-advocates when it comes to learning new computer tricks.

I was immersed in a day of unusually contentious skirmishes against ineffective didactic teaching when I ran across middle school math teacher Roberto Allen in the hallway of Edmund W. Miles Middle School, in Amityville. I stopped him to trace the origin of a shiny golden thread that I’d been playing out for some time.

A few weeks earlier, I’d been watching his colleague Rebekah Dillahunt conduct an astoundingly successful freewriting exercise with her ESL students when I noticed a battered oak tag poster on her wall that read:

I surreptitiously copied it down to give to a teacher at the Legacy School for Integrated Studies in Manhattan, who was looking for motivators for the short-changed students in her school. I’ll get back to that thread if the chart turned out to be useful there.

Soon after, I happened to be working in a public high school classroom where students with emotional and other learning disabilities try to get on track with their academic (and social) lives. The extraordinarily empathetic and nourishing teacher in the room asked me if I knew anything about working with wolves, because one of the boys in the class was interested in such a career choice. I’d once worked in a zoo. My nephew traps and tags lynx and hares in Alaska, and a friend’s son, as a high school project, raised some money and brought the Mission:Wolf folks in for a presentation. I mentioned these things to the inquisitive fifteen year-old student and suggested he volunteer at an animal shelter to get a little experience. He wasn’t too interested in pussycats and toy poodles, though. He wanted wolves. “How much can you make working with wolves?” he asked.

Here was a research question worth the price of admission. I whipped out my computer and showed him the “Education Pays” poster and explained that my wildlife biologist nephew was going for his masters now, but would probably eventually pursue a PhD. The boy was pretty quick with his math and computed the various weekly wages. (His brain seemed to work on a weekly time frame, when it came to money.) I wish I could put the expression on his face in this blog post. It would have a light bulb blinking with mathematical filaments on above it, as he computed the ratios. Now he wanted to know what these various academic degrees were, and what they entailed, and whether I thought he had a shot. “How much does a house on Long Island cost?” he asked. “You know, the two story kind with a yard. Don’t they have that kind of house on Long Island?” I assured him they did and pretty soon we were discussing mortgages. It was a riveting conversation for both of us. I had the uncanny sense we were visualizing the exact same details in this picture: The clapboard house, the manicured lawn, the picket fence, the daily commute to the middle class job working with…wolves.

Wait, I’m getting some kind but firm e-glances from Gina the Blog Editor. Shoot! I’ve blown my word limit. I’ll finish the story of the wolf boy next blog post. In the meantime, don’t get frustrated, enjoy the combat. It’s good exercise, it keeps your coaching weapons sharp, and there’s no nobler cause.