It’s Inservice Time again!

That means it is back to work for me.

It is Icebreaker time.

It is time to travel to Phoenix, 120 miles away and approximately 120° Fahrenheit, because my school district wants to pretend that we are all one community — even one family.

This is the time of year when a professional pedagogist who makes ten, twenty times my annual salary (sometimes for each appearance) comes to my school, and tells me why everything I’ve ever even thought about doing in a classroom is wrong, and therefore, if I don’t want my students to fail utterly at everything in life, and if I want to even dream about maybe keeping my job, I will need to change every single thing that I do: because all of it is wrong.

Essentially, this is the time of year when I get mad. Frequently. Vociferously.

And my wife is now tired of listening to me rant about this issue.

So now, Dear Reader, it is your turn.

So this year, when we drove from Tucson to Phoenix to spend time with our beloved school family (Which, if that were the case, seems like icebreakers wouldn’t really be necessary? You have icebreakers at family reunions? Or Thanksgiving?), after we had the icebreaker, we listened to a motivational-speaker-sort-of-pedagogist who wanted us to think of teaching in a new way.

She said that our minds are wired to consider certain weighty moments in our lives as what she called “temporal markers” (Or was it milestones? I didn’t listen too closely.), and said we take these moments — milestone birthdays, the start of a new year, the anniversary of some important occasion — as signals to move away from the past and orient towards the future. She said we give ourselves a chance, at these times, to start over with a blank slate: and that our minds actually promote this, by taking a new perspective, examining what has gone before, and then considering new aspirations. We see ourselves as having closed a chapter, and started a new one; and this gives us new energy, it clears away old thoughts and feelings and gives us room for new ones. She talked about this like it was a very positive thing.

She asked us, as pegagogists and motivational speakers are wont to do, to share with our table partners (Oh — we were assigned tables with random teachers from the other schools, so that nobody was sitting with anyone they knew well, because Lord knows the last thing teachers need to be at an inservice is “comfortable.”) how we marked these moments of change, from past to future, in our classes, in our daily lives. And I thought about it, and I realized: I don’t really do this. I mean, okay, sure, when I had my birthday three weeks ago, I thought, “I’d like to spend today doing the things I want to do for this whole year, so I can start a trend or a habit right now and continue it all the way until my next birthday.” But I didn’t follow through with it. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions — I quit smoking on December 28th, as I recall, five months after I turned 35. I started going to the gym more regularly last May, and stopped around November, and picked it up again in February. I don’t celebrate things happening in multiples of 5 and 10; in fact, the two numbers I think I notice most (Other than 420 and 69, which I always have to notice because I am a high school teacher and I know those are going to get a response) are 42, because of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and 37, because that’s how old Dennis is.

And in terms of my teaching, I don’t have any kind of clean breaks: when one class ends, I almost always have students who stay after the bell to talk to me for a couple of minutes, which leads directly to students in the next class coming in a couple of minutes early to talk to me. They stay into lunch, they stay after school; some of them contact me outside of school hours. I frequently give extra time for tests, letting them run into the next day’s class; I have been known, even, to continue reading a novel even after the end of the semester when we started reading it.

I don’t tend to break my time up: I tend to blend it together.

This also represents my teaching style: because I think my primary purpose, as a higher-level literature teacher, is to connect things: I want to connect my students to other people, and to the feelings of other people as well as their own. I want them to recognize that historical events and epochs are connected to the lives of people, and also connected to the present, and to our own lives. I want them to see the web of relationships that spans all of our world, and all of our history. I want them to connect art to life, and life to art, themselves to the greatest authors of all time, who were, after all, only human, and were once themselves depressed and horny teenagers.

Nobody more so than William Shakespeare.

So then, when the motivational pedagogist told us that we should create this sort of temporal mind marker with EVERY SINGLE CLASS, so that EVERY SINGLE CLASS was an opportunity for a fresh start, for a clean slate, for a new beginning with new hope and new energy, a chance to CHANGE THE WORLD, I felt — well, a little sad. Obviously I was doing this wrong. Here I am, thinking of every class as connected to every other class, and wanting to get deeper into longer learning experiences, that bleed from day into day, from week into week, from month into month. I like that I have students for multiple years — though I also think they should get a chance to have different teachers, too; I did actually teach one student for all four years of high school, so that essentially everything that young person gained from high school ELA instruction was all from me, but I think that is definitely not the ideal. But I like connecting year to year, idea to idea. I think that’s much of what is missing in our culture and society — connection — and I want to promote it.

But that’s wrong, I guess.

I should be starting every new class fresh, completely discarding what happened in the past and looking only to the future. I guess.

I also thought: My god, how much energy do you have to have to infuse that much new optimism into EVERY SINGLE CLASS?? I work hard enough trying to keep my bad moods from bleeding into the next class, and to change from one specific topic into a new one for the new class; I’m not sure I can close my eyes, ball my fists, and think, “Okay, Dusty: here we go READY TO CHANGE THE WORLD AGAIN!”

But I should be doing that, I guess. Just like I should be at the door greeting every new student who comes into my room with their own special signature handshake, so they know that they are special and individual to me. (Though, for someone to be special to you, doesn’t that mean you have to build a relationship? And remember it, from one day to the next? Would it be better to discard the past every day and treat every day as a new chance to succeed?) I guess.

So then, after a brief break for a brain wake-up call (We played Rock-Paper-Scissors! With our non-dominant hand! Which was way better than just sitting quietly by myself for a few minutes!), the motivational pedagogist moved on to her next topic: direction. And destination.

Where before the center of the analogy had been milestone birthdays — her husband had just turned 50, and I bet you’ll NEVER GUESS what he did for his 50th birthday! (And if you guessed this, you were right!) — this time the metaphor was flying airplanes. And she talked about compass headings, and how if you were off even one degree, out of 360 degrees on the compass, it would, over time, take you quite far away from your destination — in fact, her example was of an airplane that was two degrees off on their heading, and they CRASHED INTO A MOUNTAIN.

SO OKAY.

THAT’S COMFORTABLE.

I’M FEELING GREAT RIGHT NOW.

And how did she analogize this back to teaching and education? Well you see, if you — or rather I, since I was the target here — I focus in my planning and curriculum design too much on what I am teaching, rather than on what students are learning — that’s a bad compass heading. It may be close, it may only be off by a couple of degrees — but over time, those few degrees’ worth of difference will — well, you know.

Okay: so now, not only am I failing my students because I am not treating every single class like it’s New Year’s Eve and I only get one wish AND IT’S FOR YOU KIDS TO LEARN THIS SONNET!, but also, I am failing because, it’s true, I do often think first, “Okay, what am I doing next class/tomorrow/next week?” I do often think about what I am teaching, rather than what my students are learning.

And my failure? It’s right here:

But here’s the thing.

I don’t buy this.

Not only do I not believe that starting fresh every single period is the best relationship to have with students, or the best perspective to have of school, or the best way to CHANGE THE WORLD; but I also don’t believe that student learning has to be the center — the course heading — for every single lesson I teach. I don’t believe, at all, that there is a single destination in education that can only be reached by adhering to a specific course heading. Partly that’s because I think of my lesson objectives in a similar way to how I think of classes ending and starting: I like to make connections. Or more precisely, I like the students to make connections. So there is never a single destination for me, it is always connected to other destinations — and since I want the students to do that part of the thinking, rather than having me prescribe exactly what connection they should make and what it should mean to them, I don’t think my lessons have only one possible (connected) destination.

For instance:

I teach this poem sometimes. Mostly as a joke, but also, because it has a useful point in it that I can make about poetry.

This is actually a poem titled “Reflections on Icebreaking,” by the comedic poet Ogden Nash, one of my favorite poets. When I teach this, most of my students connect it to Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp says it, too, in the remake), and they chortle and chuckle over the scandalous idea of their English teacher promoting drinking! Alcohol! The very idea!

We’ll leave out the facts about how steeped our society is in alcohol, and the fact that I teach high school students who have very little innocence left and certainly none about the existence of intoxicating beverages: and just look at the poem. It’s very short, obviously; Nash’s original only has four lines (Candy/Is Dandy/But liquor/Is quicker), but in those four lines, there are two rhymes, and one of them — liquor/quicker — is really quite clever.

But beyond that, between the title, which in this case provides vital information about the message of the poem, and the specific word choice that Nash gives us, there actually is an interesting point to be made by this poem. First, while my students always think the point is that liquor will get you wasted faster than candy will, I only have to challenge them once on whether or not they think of candy as a way to get wasted before they realize that probably isn’t what the poem is about. Then I focus them on the title, ask what ice breaking is (Most of them don’t really know, those sweet, sweet summer children), and get them to recognize that these are two ways to “break the ice,” to loosen up awkward social occasions. I ask them how candy can do this, and when it is used; they always think of Halloween parties and such, where candy is put out in dishes — but nobody thinks of the doctor’s office, where the child is given a lollipop to ameliorate the pain of the injection; or smokers who chew gum to alleviate their cravings for nicotine. There are countless places where candy is offered, or consumed, in order to help people relax: but Nash has, most likely, a specific social situation in mind, which we can tell because of the second ice breaker he names: liquor. Now, liquor is used to ease awkwardness and uncomfortable politeness in many situations, as well (Though hopefully not the doctor’s office); when I met my new boss this past summer, I made sure to go out with him for tacos and margaritas, even though I didn’t feel like being social, because I wanted him to get to know me better, because he’s my new boss. But there is only one social situation, traditionally, where both candy and liquor are frequently used to reduce awkwardness: it’s dating. For breaking the ice on a first date, a gift of candy is dandy — but liquor is quicker.

And that’s when I make what I think is the real point here: Nash does not say that liquor is better. He simply says it breaks the ice quicker. And it does: it lowers inhibitions, which obviously would reduce awkward tension. But because it does this fast, probably too fast, it can also lead to regret: which might be why your better choice would be candy. Which is dandy. Everybody likes candy.

So okay, that’s a lesson I teach. I think it shows the importance of specific word choice, and of important phrases like titles, and that every poem can have something genuine to say, even if it isn’t anything terribly deep.

So am I off target here?

Have I got the wrong compass heading? Will I miss my destination?

Am I headed for the mountainside?

See, I don’t think so. I think there are, in truth, many possible destinations. If I can get a student to understand that poems have messages, that’s a victory — that’s a destination I want to reach, and which is worth reaching. If I can get a student to appreciate that poetry uses specific words to create specific meanings, that’s a destination worth reaching. If I can get a student to recognize that references in movies and TV shows can have much more depth and meaning than you would think, that’s a destination worth reaching. And if I can get a student to laugh, and enjoy either English class or poetry or both, just a little more, that’s the best destination of all.

So which course heading is that?

If I’m off by one or two degrees – will I miss my destination?

Do I need, as the pedagogical motivationist went on to say, a sharp focus on every tiny detail of the lesson, always keeping the destination in mind, because a mistake of only one degree would mean that I miss the destination and crash into the mountainside?

No. No to all of it. It’s not true, and in fact it is dangerous and damaging to what education should be.

The purpose of the metaphor, and of the pedavational motigogist in general, was to get us to focus on standards. On learning objectives. On SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound – because that’s how you aim at a specific target, and hit it every time: when the target is tiny, and close by, and simple to recognize, to name, to teach, and to assess whether or not it was hit. And when education focuses, as education so often does, on students reaching the standards, and nothing else, then sure, the only way to teach is to focus exclusively on those tiny little learning targets. And I guess taking your eyes off the next inch you need to crawl might make it harder to reach that target in a timely manner. 

But honestly: if you are flying a plane, shouldn’t you look a little higher up, a little farther out, than the next inch? You may want to keep the compass heading locked on specifically – but don’t you also want to watch the horizon? Don’t you want to keep an eye out for, I dunno, MOUNTAINS YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO CRASH INTO???

Wouldn’t it be a better metaphor to think of teaching and learning as flying a plane, and looking around, observing the situation around you, considering what might be a good place to land – gauging, judging, using experience to guide your assessment of the circumstances based on observations – and then bringing the plane in safely? Or flying wherever the hell you want to go, following your dreams to anywhere in the world they might lead you? Wouldn’t those be good ways to think of the school-plane we’re flying?

I think so. Though I guess it wouldn’t be proper pedamotive gogyvation.

So here’s my new plan. I’ve thought for a long time that I would be an excellent inservice presenter. I’m good in front of a group of people, I speak well, I have a good sense of humor; and I think I know a fair amount about teaching, and could have some useful things to say to help make people improve as teachers and educators. 

But I would never get hired. Because no administration would want to buy my inservice program of “Let The Teachers Teach Whatever The Hell They Want To Because They Know Better Than You.” That system is not guaranteed to raise test scores, which is really the only reason why administrators bring in inservice presenters.

So this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to make the slickest presentation imaginable, about how I’m going to strip teachers of every shred they are clinging to of self-esteem or confidence, so that they will only do what they are told, and will never, ever, argue with their administrators ever again, no matter how inane or nonsensical are the programs and innovations those administrators come up with. And when I get hired to train a staff, I will get the administrators to leave me alone with the teachers – and then I will do nothing but praise those teachers, and honor them for the work they do and the dedication they put into it. I will thank them for everything they sacrifice to try to help their students. I will point out – because I think it’s important to remember – that students are the ones actually doing the work of learning, and that it is goddamn hard work; they deserve praise and honor as well, for every one of their victories large or small. I will help my audience of teachers see that the job of a teacher is to help students find the strength and the courage to keep working, even though the potential rewards of all of their very hard work are very far away and very abstract – and not always guaranteed, or even likely. I would encourage those teachers to talk to each other, and to their students, before they talk to any administrator, or any damn pedagogical expert, when looking for inspiration and guidance about how to create a new and better lesson for helping students get what they need. I would try to give the teachers the self-confidence to try new things, and to experiment, and to be honest with themselves and their students when they don’t know what the right answer is, or if the new thing they’re trying is the best thing: but they should try it anyway, and let students see them trying it, and thus encourage innovation and creativity and problem solving, along with honest reflection and assessment of one’s success. And I will tell those teachers to ignore every single test result, and every administrator who focuses on test results; and I will say that, if they do use standards, to remember that standards are only one small piece of a whole system of education, and they cannot ever be the most important one: because standards are not people. And education is people. Really, it is nothing but people.

And then, I will ask all of those teachers to go on Yelp or Google Reviews or whatever is the Google Pedagogy website (PedaGooglogy? We’ll workshop it.), and give me a five-star review, and lie and say that I helped them realize that they need to focus on nothing but standards in order to raise test scores, and they’ve never been so excited to do just that. 

And then I’ll use those reviews, and my slick sales pitch of a presentation, to go to another school, and do the same thing over again. 

Until I crash into the mountainside.