Stay Edgy, Stay Creative: Making is Key to Living

In thinking about how we might remain engaging and engaged as teachers with many years in the classroom, we have to find those things that not only move us but also move our students. The list I offered from one of my students in a previous post points in that direction. Students recognize and feel when there is a draw for the teacher, some curiosity or novelty that excites and energizes.

An example in my own career was the good fortune I had to be asked to create a middle school humanities class that focused on the connections between the static arts, the literary arts, and the performing arts . One of the highlights of every semester-long class was a trip to the Berman Museum of Art on the Ursinus College Campus in our district.

As exhibits changed with each semester, my class curriculum was largely based around the topics and genres of the artwork on exhibition. During one of our first trips back in 2005 or so, I taught myself to use iMovie and we created a video documenting the work students did during their trips to the museum.

Music: “Buried at Sea” by MC 900 Ft. Jesus from the album, One Step Ahead of the Spider 1994, and “Dream (All I Have to Do)” by R.E.M. from In the Attic – Alternative Recordings 1985 – 1989

These forays into different modes of expression utterly changed me as an English teacher. The focus on multimodal means of storytelling and expressions allowed us to find pathways between visual means of expression and the literary and bodily means of expression. These trips to the museum required constant preparation and learning and kept me fresh and curious as an aging teacher.

And while I now have NOVA Lab and the unique and original projects students develop therein to keep me active and curious, I’m reminded of Emily Dickinson’s line “always at my back I hear/ time’s wing’ed chariot drawing near”, and I feel like there’s something more I need to be doing. And perhaps this points to another way for us to stay engaged and engaging as we age: Starting new things.

In my career, I’ve started or helped start three different classes, a robotics team, and now an e-sports team. I’ve also initiated a school-wide poetry cafe, partnerships with businesses in the community, and I’ve had a hand in helping students start numerous clubs. I find that the new perspectives these projects bring with them is accompanied by an anticipation and rejuvenation that is uplifting.

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I imagine this must, in some sense, be the same energy accompanying the work done by teachers of the performing arts. Always searching for new compositions, working on producing a new play or musical in new ways. Or perhaps its the same drive associated with the work of the technology and engineering educator whose students are taking on different projects each year. Whatever it is…wherever it is, it is undeniable that new ideas embolden and enliven us.

So in this latest post I’m announcing something new. I’d originally thought these blog posts would end after I hosted the conversation on Staying Hungry, Stayin Foolish at Educon 2024. But what I discovered there, as well as in prepping for the conversation,is that so many teachers are searching for the same thing. In the face of accelerated change in both the profession and the human beings we work with, I’ve found that teachers want to discuss not only the future of their engagement with the profession, but they also seek a forum that might help them reconnect to the joy that brought the to and held them within the profession for so long.

Perhaps that’s what this space can offer, and so I’ll be exploring the ways I might build this out and offer insight and hope and fellowship to others. Below, once more, is a list of potential topics for blog posts (at least that’s the medium for the space right now) that speak to the topic of staying engaged and engaging as we age. If readers have more ideas or would like to offer guest posts on topics, I’d be more than willing to entertain such. Please just offer a comment and let me know.

Finally, here’s a link to the first post in the series, which ends with a table of contents.

Still Hungry, Still Foolish: On teaching at 30+ Years

Stay Collegial: The Cures of Conversations & Community

I am now penning the 10th of the posts in this series on staying engaged and engaging as an aging teacher. For the first nine, I’d pulled ideas from my head and from a list that I’ve been keeping. All of this ruminant communication was in preparation for a conversation I was hosting at Educon 2024 at Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy; which is, for those of you in teaching, perhaps the best conference you will ever attend if you’re looking for deep conversation instead of being a passive audience to the proselytes of pedagogy that show up at most conferences looking to convert you to the latest denomination of their particular church of education.

In this post I simply want to reflect on the conversation I helped facilitate among 16 fellow educators. The topic is in the photo above, and the conversation followed the pattern in the pdf linked below. (Click the caption for the full presentation as a pdf)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R7zdlTjV-nG6br_lWvZr4rjm5avpzT-U/view?

Truth be told, I wasn’t sure how this conversatioun would go. I’d never run it before, but from what I’d gathered from peers, the internet, and my own existential rumblings, this was something people wanted to discuss. 

And while the attendance based upon those who had signed up was small, I was hoping people would gravitate my way as they realized, “Hey…this is actually something I’ve thought about” regardless of whether they were 30 years in, like me, or 10 years in (16 joined us!). In fact, teachers just starting out would have been perfect for this session as one of the issues we broached was how many of us, back when we were barely 10 years in, had realized, “I don’t know how I can keep this up.” 

Let’s face it. Teaching requires a level of emotional commitment that is unheard of in most occupations. Indeed, if you were to go back to the previous post in this series and look at the recommendations from current students on what they feel keeps an older teacher engaging and engaged, you’d realize that “establishing close relationships with students/connecting with students” is the number one response.

And sure, we know this. But there’s a toll to that. When we invest ourselves in the lives of others, we expend a psychic energy that requires more of us than we realize. Connecting with and investing in the lives and well being of others as teachers do is not just one of the most rewarding parts of the job…it is one of the most taxing. 

And while “Balance” seems such a cliche, it is the main requirement if we are to remain engaging and engaged at advanced age. Color me stupid. But this is the hardest part of the job and the most rewarding. How to balance our personal and professional lives. Is it even possible? I don’t know. Hence these posts…after 30 years.

But here’s what I do know. The teachers at Educon and the conversations we had made me hopeful. Knowing that others, long ago, felt the same way I did, that they thought the way I did…this gave me hope.  Hope for the students we have now and for the students to come. Just looking at some of their responses to our design challenge is encouraging, as is looking at the “Rooting in Joy” activity (see the trees), where we offered something in the classroom that brings us joy–joy being a source of sustaining energy and vitality.

Perhaps I’m overstating things and what I’m feeling is overblown. Or perhaps it is the fallout of “a calling.” We are who we are. And this…beautiful and flawed and tragic as it is, because it is all about the human… this is the life we are called to. 

Stay(ing) Alive: Awaken Your Genius(es)

When it comes to seminal texts I turn to when I feel disengaged and the classroom somewhat alien to who I thought I was as a teacher, I pick up an 80 page tome from Dr. Thomas Armstrong called, Awakening Genius in the Classroom.

I first read AGITC after it was the book our superintendent had recommended as a “district read.” 

For the next 10 years, I read that book every August to make sure I was in the right frame of mind for the kind of classroom I wanted to have. But when I moved to the High School in 2014, I broke that habit. It seems to me now that I’ve missed that book more than I knew…that it had become part of my identity and abandoning it as I had was, in some sense, self-destructive. 

What is most striking about Armstrong’s book, written in the mid 1990s, is that in just under 80 pages he manages to not only call into question our staid notion of “Genius;” take on issues that deaden the student experience like grading practices, tracking, and standardized testing; and he finishes with a call to the reader to awaken the genius inside themselves. 

That such a small book has had such an outsized impact on my teaching is due to a confluence of events: My young age when first reading it, the more qualitative angle the book takes on what happens in the classroom, Apple Computer’s “Think Different” Ad campaign, a huge amount of bravado and hubris on my part, and an insufferable belief that every child I encountered had the potential for genius.

Armstong notes that of his 12 qualities of genius, Creativity might be closest to the core of genius, for both nouns, etymologically, trace back to a sense of “giving birth to.” For creativity, that might be “giving birth to new ways of seeing/doing things.” and for genius itself, that’s “giving birth to joy in learning.” 

Author’s conception of a brain displaying Armstrong’s 12 qualities of Genius

And in that definition we find, yet again, a word that has come up in at least two other posts: ”Joy.” It is, as well, one of Armstrong’s 12 qualities of genius. Armstrong defines it as a sort of “Heavenly happiness.” But one of my own students was a bit more memorable when he blurted out one day in a joyous epiphany, “It’s like all ‘WOW’ inside.” 

Only recently has Joy been studied in any serious way for its impact on the classroom and learning. What much of that recent research reveals is that without joy, engagement in the classroom suffers for both teacher and student. 

I find it heartening that my search for answers to how we might remain engaging and engaged after so many years in the classroom has lead me back to my own beginnings and this book that has had such an outsized impact on my career.

Of course, just recommending a book is cold comfort for those of us in the throes of a school year. So I did what any good human-centered designer would do: I asked for input from the humans at the center of everything I design. Not surprisingly, their responses bear an uncanny similarity to Armstrong’s qualities of genius.

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Of all these helpful notes from students, perhaps this is the most empathetic and connected to where I sit currently. 

These things??? These things I can do. Pairing these with the perspective of Armstrong’s (re)definition of “Genius” puts me back in a place where I was most comfortable, where I smiled and laughed, and played German Neuroscientists and German Designers. A place where I could actually sleep through the night without waking and wondering who I was. 

And so, perhaps this is it, then…the end of this blog series. For like any good Hero’s Journey, I’ve returned to the beginning and maybe discovered that what I needed was already there…it just fell asleep, my senses went numb. 

With these exercises in writing and my students’ help, I’m wide awake and dreaming of the genius that is this life.

Stay Fresh Stay Learning: Start Something New

In this, the 8th post in the month long series on how to stay engaging and engaged as a teacher with 30+ years, I’m reminiscing on the things that have kept me motivated in a job that can so easily sap our energy…regardless of our years of experience. 

My trajectory as a teacher is rather unique. I graduated college with a degree in English, spent a few years as an editor for a medical publisher, and then did a summer program in Pennsylvania that allowed me to get an intern certificate to teach so long as I took the next three years to complete my graduate work. Landing a job as a middle school English teacher, I did just that. Along the way I took an opportunity to create a new class that linked the performing arts, the static arts, and the literary arts and helped students see the connections between them.

I spent the better part of the next 17 years developing that class, and every year presented me with new opportunities. Creating project based units around photography, working with a local art museum, reaching out to design firms, running poetry cafes, and more. I counted myself blessed and each year tried to teach myself more about the benefits of creative thinking. 

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Then, after 20 years in middle school, I was asked to start something new at our HS–an English class for gifted students. This required a huge adjustment. High school is a much different culture. Achievement was the name of the game for my students. Getting the A was de rigor. Homework till 2AM seemed an almost daily occurrence. And this was unhealthy…for my students and me.

Thus, I started something new. I built a curricular unit around purpose driven projects and opened the classroom to inquiry.  Next, I removed the focus on grades and built the classroom discourse around learning. But it was clear that a single unit of learner-centered work wasn’t enough. So, four years ago, I created a year-long class in social entrepreneurship called NOVA Lab. 

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Now, 30 years in, I realize that what’s kept me going all this time is not merely my desire to help students discover the highest measure of their own talents, but also my own love of learning. I recall the question I was asked by the administrator who hired me in 1993: “Why do you think you’ll be a great teacher?”

My reply? ”Because I love learning.”

For 30+ years I’ve tried to make sure that my own learning trajectory matches that of my students–to always be growing, always trying to be better for ourselves and our communities. I want my students to realize they, I…all of us, we are all human beings in the becoming, which opens the classroom to the infinite potential, and potential for failure, that comes with all authentic learning. 

I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’m learning all the time.

Stay Connected: Finding Our Way

In this, the 7th post in the month long series on how to stay engaging and engaged as a teacher with 30+ years, I’m thinking about how easy it can be at 30+ to lose direction. With so many ideas and so much information in our heads, we can often lose the vision for who we want to be that has driven us for so many years, not only in the classroom, but also in our lives.

I’ve written before about the need for our students to experience programs that help them understand themselves, their communities, and in doing so to find meaning and purpose in their lives (See here, and here, and here with student voices). But experiencing this myself, at 55 years old, has been eye-opening.

I know I’m not alone. Many of us come to this place, wandering aimlessly, at the whim of the wind and currents,. But we need not abandon our journey. There are aides and resources to turn to. Seeking their help takes but two things: The humility to ask, and the courage to be vulnerable

Some of these aides are in our own buildings or social networks. And some of them are far younger than we are. Watch them, turn to them, ask them for advice, but do not seek to emulate them. They are not you. However, their experiences offer perspective, and if they are young, their verve and energy can help you forge a path through the areas where you may be lost.

Some of these aides are resources, projects born of the creators own journey through confusion and fear. Find one that speaks to you, one whose metaphors capture the essence of your own experience and help you reframe it…whose exercises and activities engage you with others bound by your own desires to seek clarity and build a community of solace and purpose. For me, that resource is Project Wayfinder.

Finally, some of these aides are in our own classrooms. Our students. After all, if we are lost, our students will know. And letting them know that you, even after all these years, are still on a journey…a journey to continue to understand and to be understood…. Your story, your hero’s journey, is no different from theirs. You are simply further along in the endless cycles. 

While the final piece of advice may sound risky, it is not without evidence. When I was moved after 20 years from my position in a middle school humanities classroom to create a HS Gifted English program, I was utterly lost. I’d not been an English teacher in 15 years. I had to come to know myself again, but not lose the person I had become in the process. My students knew this. Many had made the journey from middle school to high school with me. Their insights, their suggestions, and their compassion created a classroom like none I’d ever encountered. I do not want to return to it except in beauty and light of reflection, but I cannot escape it. 

We cannot find our way by ourselves. The answer, ever and always, is to “Only Connect.”