Turns Out It's the Anti Zen Again

Well this IS the post about 2011.

Just my 2011.
In a tiny underperforming CA school that went to safe harbor after a mysterious 40 or 50 point rise in 4th grade.

This is a year in review post that should be insightful and hopeful.
And I am hoping.
In teaching all these 30 years I do generally take a moment in December to think about where my class is, and what I need to improve, and then I try to do a better job in the months I know remain. For me this year that will focus on better math and writing daily. And figuring out how to take my class and make them better at requiring more of what they do for themselves.
Moving towards an internal self directed sense of purpose. I have a few too many that work entirely asking me repeatedly if I approve and most certainly most of the time the work lacks any sense of self=direction.
I think this is what the school "taught them" frankly.
(It may be not worth noting these goals of mine are 100% in opposition to the last ten years of demands and training heaped on me by my "work" setting and defines the last possible thing that most of the adults running the place are planning to do themselves)

I'm not especially good at articulating the year's lessons for me because I'm pretty much at a point of loss of all voice.
I started the 2011 school year trying to take a day at a time after a cousin died, then I'm looking back at a summer where I couldn't go to a March On Washington for teachers that I thought was important to attend. It was the year of standing up nationally FOR something.
That absence of mine was largely due to lack of funds, for that matter, being unable to see my father again, not getting the presents for the holiday, missing times I wanted to get things for my children this year like a computer for my daughter, all had that same issue, one that has plagued my career in teaching. No money.
I've never met a teacher that missed that understanding.
Teaching is underpaid to the point I still struggle with my struggle-I am a mental slave to it, since I put a part of my income into the classroom as well, I then struggle even more- keeping up with things at home that get further thrown onto an impossible list- like getting phones, technology, overwhelming bills to prioritize, the impossibility of travel, better medical care, fresh foods, cleaning, new furniture, better looking shoes, access to plays, music, entertainment and so on. All are met with "no, not for you." No amount of planning seems ever to get around what I seem unable to do.

I didn't March with those that did, as I stated, and I failed to make enough of a case for stopping the relentless drive in test based education again both at the grade level, school level, District level, county level, state level, national level. Again. Not that anyone was listening.
The District and my staff are so good at marginalizing any voice contrary to the choices they make- you are marginalized until you begin to believe you really have nothing to offer.
I now have nothing to offer.

And maybe if you sought, changed, bought in, gave over, sold out, caught on, climbed aboard, or just "saw the light" then everyone would be so much happier and then I'm told, you would be too. And yet I can't figure out how to champion Dibel's, state tests, value-added, the tying of all kids do to lame assessments as their curriculum, the narrowing that is now accepted as the all of "what we can do" and the privatization of a public system. Especially for those "without."
Step one in that for me appears to be the embrace that anyone else, even some annoying Skinnerian in Oregon named Randy Sprick, knows more than you do about what you are doing.
And the path to success is to lie and say they are "teaching you so much."
And thank you.

The first precept that was foisted on me this year again is the hardest for me.

Their first precept-
Be them now.

That I cannot seem to get done.

But 2011 certainly presented numerous opportunities to be them.

And the first thing I'll do as a teacher in 2012 will be to be dragged into a training having been assigned on my time "homework" unpaid, to enforce a behavioral plan Mr. Sprick and CHAMPS will require of us in a couple year "implementation" to control every aspect of social interaction within my classroom. Rigidly. Same page in EVERY room.
That is SO Critical.
But we never ask why.

My compliance will, of course, be required.
So will posters, cheers and a "look" that will unite us all again in the "same page."
My duty as the employee will be the same as it was years ago when we got "Ruby Payne'd" and I was told that poverty is a state we can "explicitly" shake out of kids with lots of good basic skill drills, rooted in their understanding the real pathology of it all and catching onto the "middle class values" that "all good children" need to be regularly tested and exposed to in our "academics." Thus my entire family for the generations was reduced to something like a bad case of class dysentery.

Their Precept Number two-

There are "them" and there are "us"

So I'll be involved in a behavioral program Tuesday that resembles a straight jacket for me, that teaches them how to be "us." And I seriously doubt Mr. Sprick CAN entertain what role he is playing. But he can sell. And that is real value apparently.
It will start with making sure I'm on the "us" bus.
Because anything less that -100% "buy in"- is intolerable, fire-able maybe, and at no time will critical comment, thinking, discussion or anything from that world of education be tolerated. Learning has a "look" we will learn, and we will all "look" the part. With a damn smile and a positive attitude.
That "look" and the code of behavior, the undercurrent, the message of a dominant culture, the notion that poverty is way more than a state of lack of funds will be reinforced in the gentlest and most immediately apparent ways one can. Or else.
Depriving anyone with a thought of their own their individual's voice.
Skinner was famous for this.
Rock on Randy, and great name btw.

I recall that Skinner stuff best in my days of early training. When I had to do a multiple choice test a thousand times because I would not choose another answer than "I go to school to earn a degree. " That was not allowed. Ultimately I was placed in a graduate level class to overcome my failure to pass for my failure to change that one answer. This was Skinner's daughter and I remember it all.
When you won't concede another point of view, only talk within your context, and don't allow anyone else to challenge you -it gets the "results" you are seeking. You are either a mirror or a stooge of some sort.

their Precept number three-

"we know your own good"


I'm not going to speak at the training Tuesday no I am not, but that will not be enough. We will be required in exercises, groups, and activities to do more than speak, we will be required to speak their words. As if they were our own.
So I'll see and hear myself thumbing the manual, digging out the ways students have to conform, rewriting a set of cheer-leading things to be pasted in every room on among other things acceptable vocal level, ways to be in "here," and that won't be enough either.
Anything I say in their voice, will be out voted, discouraged, democratically and ever so politely rejected. As I am shown that "the group" has better ideas. And all of them will be stepping right from that manual word for word.
Having gone through this already, and seen it enough times, I see where this is headed.
Silence is not enough. What is required is I fully reject myself.

their Precept four

whomever you are- if you have a sense of who you are "it's wrong" unless it is about the acquisition of wealth and power-in that case -it has to adhere to where we are with that now


Oh well. This last year taught those lessons again. Oh yes.

I went into my room and tried to do my job as quietly and as voicelessly and as lowly as I can.
I'm very pleased about book making with the kids, art projects, our social dynamics, their kindness. I'm trying to hold onto this as value.
I'm sorry that the math program is so poor. Everyday Math It Spirals Downward.
It seldom really teaches, it leaves kids behind, it moves through complex operations without the children, it is very hard to prep for, it seems to not prepare for the state test and in general it requires I teach other than the program "secretly" because it isn't designed for children. Umm...that's all top of the head reaction not the analysis I need to do.
I dislike the way it avoids time for acquiring the basic skills the children need, the games often seem to be ungame-like, it feels like this......Suppose that teaching art required someone that could make art, had a feel for the reasons for art, someone self driven, someone inventive. Suppose that to have good product the teacher had to have a working knowledge of making things, an eye daily for picking up ideas, clues to how this connected to the bigger picture of living. An aesthetic. Imagine a math program where there is a failure to communicate THAT to the instructor.
This is Everyday Math,.
You were evidentially "too stupid to know," so follow the cookbook.
But oddly the recipes keep flopping.

But you lack the skill sets to tune and polish in their odd formats. Because you are moving daily "to the next thing."
That's all off the table where I work.
There will be no discussion.
No voice. Remember?

their Precept number five

Everything is always great


So in this last year, no matter what, I plodded along.
I kept my voice quiet. I kept my own counsel.
I shared as little as possible, I worked in reading groups, math groups, tried to see how humor worked withing the children, tried to lighten their load over make it more difficult, looked at poverty, looked at motivation, looked at the effort.

I noticed that humor can create a way to establish social rank or hierarchy. I saw kids with really difficult lives that diffused tense situations with humor. I saw children specifically use humor to bully. I saw how if I started the day with a little funny theme or observation, say in the form of an idiom, I could return to it through the day- and they enjoyed that. I saw that the element of humor had positive and negative- like all else -and we could talk about and observe that to become more aware. I saw humor required intelligence, plays on meaning, and ultimately it could be a defense or offense.

In my classroom this year I saw the effects of poverty.
My school has 100% of the kids eating the crappiest free meals on the planet.
I don't know how else to put it politely. It's so bad I think people should lose their jobs for fouling up one of the easiest things and best things public school should do.
Yes, lose their positions of power.

Please understand these are randomly recalled thoughts on poverty.

Interestingly I saw children who valued what we had.
An experience like using a computer meant something.
I saw children hungry.
I saw times where a family crafted, made, created, in response to poverty and passed this to their child.
I saw families completely ungrateful, and those completely grateful for the classroom and not always connected to what it means to their child.
I interacted with children "unaware" of aspects of the world, but so intrigued.
Poverty while limiting things like museums, orchestras, access to art supplies did not limit desire, innovation, memory, enthusiasm and a desire to know and do.
Ennui was never our issue.

My heart has been bleeding about a homeless child. He's in a truly difficult situation because his parent is difficult. Not able to fully put this in words, as much as the having nothing is hard the crazy behavior of his parent-that seems the major issue. The truth is even in that I find it remarkable the way they utilize a library, get services, cope and care. Keep going.
It's a kind of thing where watching, free of judging, leads me to conclude they are active, dynamic, just as strange as the rest of us and not unpleasant at all to me despite the fact hygiene is low on the list.While those that fail them counselor, school nurse, services make me want to puke with their low expectations, condescension, incompetence, laziness and general shiftlessness. I find I'm not over the hurdle yet of judging them.
As much as I want to say I abhor poverty, until they are just in good housing and able to easily get food and someone cares- I do see them as talented-my student is such a good one and an artist-and resourceful. One day I'll write what I know of their story.
So in my heartbreak there is something else. The yang to the yin.

So I have my own precepts learned or reinforced or extracted this year to share. It took me awhile to get to this and it comes in fact from all the rigidity, absurdity, pain and healing I've been doing. Working in a public setting overtaken by what NCLB wrought us.


My Precept 1
Empathy is only possible when you can, in fact "be them now."

That done, it is a skill that can be applied anywhere, turned around on itself.
If I learned nothing else this year I re-learned that those kids we are fixing, or those children we are training, or those we are rising above, or that "culture of poverty," is really just us in another point of existence.
There is no us, there is no them.

There is only the capacity to become you when I lose me.



My Precept number two-

When a system is built on a duality-some having-others not-then it creates structures to support that perpetuating and calls it change, reform, vision.
It lies.
It makes the opposite.
It cements it into being.
Catch-22

We need look no further than Gates.
Look at this ridiculous set of things attributed to him circulating n the net that starts with something like "Life ain't fair." And goes on to blast life into an ugly exercise in excusing his having more.

It has happened throughout time, is not surprising, that artists transcended this, commented on this, revealed this to us, what is amazing is they often did so- tolerated or supported by these systems. The message got out.
Study Shakespeare I think.


A sorry set of Gate-isms so you will leave him in his place and you in yours is particularly in need of our artists and writers. But the control of technology and word is at a critical juncture.


And so the elimination of the arts and literature in classrooms is no surprise really, nor is the corporate take over of the arts.

My Precept Number three-

Make something everyday with children, art, music,
active learning (so popular in reform) it can easily be addressed in origami, weaving, drawing, illustrating and all the things the materials to do have been eliminate for. It was no surprise to me that knot tying was the hardest part of making the God's Eyes for my students. Just the connection of two strings.
They didn't know "how."
How is largely lacking now.

Nor was it that odd to hear them ask longingly to have yarn to take home.

I seldom see this reform described as crafting, making, designing "in things," in time, space, reality.
Because, I personally suspect, it is an anti-zen movement. But if children are taught the skills of the arts they can invent from there.

Make things.

My Precept Number Four

Try to inhabit your own body and truths.


When you get to precepting, proscribing, value adding, testing, assessing, for others, it's kind of a sacred trust sort of set up. Few of us are really cognizant enough of our own shadow, weakness, drives, errors and all that unwritten stuff to be very good at mandating all over everyone else. I'm sure Randy Sprick is a nice guy, ok, but I'm not sure he's a guy that should be setting up the entire context for ANY school systems to rigidly put in place to "prove" they look like they are in control and teaching.
After all he doesn't seem to have a single thing he's made, done, written, drawn, invented, created, designed, innovated, connected, flown, farmed, jarred, jammed, toasted, cooked, loved, laughed at, no literature from Randy in that CHAMPS lunking volume, no life, nothing but a canned control vehicle that he's sold. It might be best to look to him to do a presentation on "how to control special ed children" over "how to design the context for all interaction in the complex dynamics of schools sending kids out into life."

try to inhabit your own body randy


I'll do the same in my classroom.

Precept number Five

Critical thinking is not necessarily critical
asking a question is not necessarily anarchy
Seeking out truth is not necessarily easy

It might best work if we admitted that things aren't so great now
And worked out the idea that we can come together to work on both why and what and how.
Experimented, looked at the results, reconfigured.
Over ordering adherence.


I had a lovely talk with my daughter last night.
She was talking about England and little kids, children under eight. She was amazed that parents in England can ask the state for a nanny that comes in to help you learn to take care of them. At any time. That the state is not "going under" with this. She also had tons of factual information about parenting classes, aid for the things necessary for parenting there. She went on to talk about how she saw WW2 and all of the incredible devastation, the horror of that, as having at the least provided the opportunity to design and consider what systems would be put in place.
To think of societal supports.

Which led to my wandering into talking to the dysfunction I see in that in neighborhood where I work.
Largely because teachers come from more affluent areas where they live, they are not a part of the neighborhood, there are different cultures, groups, there are underfunded, dysfunctional supports, people who are lazy, poor hiring, and a nation and system wide expectation they are "failing" or schools anyway are too expensive or that the poor are a nuisance that deserves what they get, gets too much, are entitled or whatever...no words about this could contain what I wanted to say to her...
Until of course we couldn't fill the night with that any longer and began looking at the lovely lights that were up shining.

So I suppose as I sort of say goodbye to the year I'll end with my last personal precept-

value those you love.


This last year my cousin killed herself.
She was good, gentle, kind, caring and I think deeply hurt by living. Unable to see how much value she added to all our lives.
I think we're losing this skill set, but it might be my deep hurt.
I don't think we see and feel our value one to another and honor it with time, care and meaning, nor do we teach it.
I think we are losing our connection one to another.

Maria was all that we ought to try to be, yet I guess too troubled, depressed, she could barely allow herself something like a "mistake"- the thing that we are supposed to most value- because it teaches us who we are and what we can choose to be.
She could not hold her human frailty.


At times I know that as well.

I darn near lost another cousin. I am just learning.
And I'm still not sure what is happening for him.
I know years ago these same threads were his.

I realize my cousin would rather kill off herself than face in herself that she could disappoint a parent, think a negative thought, fail a marriage, be in a car wreck, choose to go to school for all the wrong reasons. That in her wanting to please- she could lose connection to what she most wanted to do herself- but this teaches me once again something I think school teachers can do for children.
We can see their capacities, we can recognize them as having choices, we can allow them the right to explore their interests, we can introduce them to structures, ways, plans and foundations but this is just as a starting place, we can admire their being inspired or being active, we can loosen our control as we increase their agency.
We can accept their mistakes.
We can teach them to cope OUTSIDE of rigid organizing and the illusion we are so sleek and mechanical.

And, gosh, though we can Randy Sprick them, we can also choose not to.

We can choose to close the door on BF Skinner.
Once and for all, and look to something else.




See my Mrs. Puglisi's 100 National Standards