Love in a Time of Schooling

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Bud Hunt

You ever have one of those days where you’re in a hurry to get out the door? Maybe you’re eager to take your son or daughter out on an amazing adventure. You’ve got zoo tickets, or there’s a baseball game, or a carnival or a new museum’s opening. And you’re tight on time, so you’ve got to get out the door? And someone can’t find their shoes?

So in your rush to get to the amazing thing you’ve got planned, what you actually have ended up communicating to your child – the person you’re doing this amazing thing for and with – is that they’re slow and forgetful and not so good at leaving the house on time? Because you’ve just got so much to do?¹

Yeah. I think we do that at school, too, both literally and figuratively. In our race to the top to make sure that we leave no child behind with our innovative instruction, we sometimes forget the children are partners in the work – not folks to be acted upon. We make them feel small. We forget to be with them, and we end up doing some pretty mean things to them.

With the best, unfortunately, of intentions.

I mention that tonight because tomorrow I’ll be facilitating a workshop I’m calling “Love in a Time of Schooling.” Here’s the description of the session:

In a time when school often feels like it is being done to our students, rather than for and with them, there is value in considering some of the emotional aspects of the learning environments we are creating for our students. In classrooms and schools, looking after each other is an essential element of good teaching and learning. In short, we need to consider love and its place in our classrooms and lessons, our infrastructures and physical spaces. In this session, we will explore different ways of thinking about care for our fellow teachers and students, as well as consider ways to love, share love, and bring love in to modern schooling.

See, I think we mean very well as we’re working to impart important knowledge to our students, but we’re losing the true reason for all that knowledge work – we care for our students, and want them to be good and thoughtful people – and we’re in such a hurry to do that right, that we forget to build relationships.

This isn’t, by the way, something that we mean to do. Or that we just do to students, but I think that it’s certainly a problem. And some of what freaks me out about the latest and greatest from our ed-tech innovators and entrepreneurs is that they believe that they can further automate and teacher-proof the learning process. When exactly what we need to be doing instead is to be caring better for our students. And you don’t care with software. Or with an assessment. You care through being in a caring relationship with your students. If you’re an administrator, you care through being in a caring relationship with your staff. You model care, you demonstrate care, you engage in dialogue that suggests you care. And you help to point out the caring you see in and from others.

And so tomorrow, that’s what I want to explore. How, in a time of intense pressures, do we help to build schools and classrooms and departments of caring while helping to instill caring in our students? Seems to me that’s worth wondering about. As I’ve been prepping for the workshop, I’ve dug deep into The Challenge to Care in Schools by Nel Noddings. If you’ve not read it, it’s worth your time. Here’s a collection of quotes, if you’d like to get the flavor of the book.

I’m not an expert at care or caring or love. But I’m a student of plenty of folks who are, and I enjoy spending time with the ideas because they help me to be a better carer. These are lessons that resonate at work, at home, and in my interactions with the world. And they’re hard lessons to learn. But so worth the time. Caring isn’t content so much as it is stance. Relationship. Frame.

One of the best things about this workshop is that we’ll be at Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, using their space as a mirror and a lens to explore how a space might be designed in a caring way. We’ll then turn our eyes to our own classrooms and organizations to consider how we promote caring relationships in our work.

I hope you’re finding ways to care and to instill love and care in your work. Would love to hear about your efforts in the comments.

I am certainly guilty of this. I suspect I’m not the only one. [↩]

Thank Someone – Writing from the 2012 NWP Annual Meeting #nwpam12

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Bud Hunt

This morning, Tanya Baker asked us to use the writing time we shared together¹ during the plenary session to write a note of thanks to a writing, teaching, or other kind of mentor. Below is what I wrote. Not edited or polished, but worth sharing. I hope you’ll take five minutes soon to write about someone you’re thankful for. Better yet – send that writing to those folks.

Being thankful. I have so many people I could thank in these seven minutes of writing together, seven minutes of 1,000 writers writing in a quiet hotel ballroom. Throats clearing. Keyboards clacking. Error blips blipping from unsilenced machines. But I’ll stick to these NWP people for right now.

I thank Cindy, who brought me to the party. And Richard Sterling, for helping to make it the place it was when I arrived. And Jim Gray, for wondering about doing learning differently, who built the ship in the first place. And Sharon Washington, who inherited a tricky gig, and seems to be rocking right on.

But Cindy again, who made me make the thing happen for other people, made me a part of the best experience of my professional life. She made me work to build those experiences for others. Which shaped everything that came after.

I thank Paul Oh for believing in a young geek and wondering if I might could help build other experiences. And Christina Cantrill, who helped me realize that the most frustrating questions were likely the best ones, the most important ones to be asking. I thank the NWP Tech Liaisons who showed me the ropes, who were taking their risks in their classrooms and sharing them in public. Another Paul. And Chris, and Gail and Patrick, and Andrea and Chad and Kevin and Peter and Meenoo and so many others who learned on purpose in public together. And then there was Troy, who took a chance on presenting with me at my first NWP Annual Meeting.

I thank all the program associates who made sure there were snacks, and rooms, and paper and sticky notes and crayons and scissors and whatever else I needed to do the work – both as participant and as facilitator. And coffee. They made sure there was always coffee. Nicole and Izzy and Kate and Bob and all the others. That’s essential, and probably no one ever says thank you. I thank whoever helped me juggle a cancelled flight into a 90 minute van ride from one airport to another to make sure that I arrived on time.

I thank the office peeps, folks like Tanya and Elyse, who continue to build exciting opportunities and keep inviting folks like me to participate in them. And people like Grant and those folks who published work I and others did.

I thank the NWP who, at a time when so many are closing doors and shutting out teachers and saying no, continue to say, “Yes. We’re here. You matter. Let’s do this thing. Together.”

But I have to thank Cindy again, because she brought me here. She extended the hand of the NWP on behalf gf the NWP, and changed my professional life, and the lives of all the teachers I’ve been privileged to work with.

So many other names that didn’t emerge in this text, but who make me better.

I still don’t know how to do this work well. But I know that I know how to get better at it. I know how to ask good questions, and struggle with them. I know that the struggle won’t end, but that it’s worth doing. And that’s the National Writing Project.

So, thanks, NWP. Let’s keep those invitations going. There’s plenty more to do, and plenty of room here to do it.

Writing Project teachers always write together. Before we do anything. I mean anything. It’s important. [↩]

Writing in Public

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Bud Hunt

It happened to me again last week, as it does from time to time. I wrote something that I felt needed to write, to say something I felt needed to be said, and as a result, some people’s feelings were hurt.

I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. I suspect you don’t either. But it’s tricky to move in directions that always result in happiness for all. In fact, when it comes to issues of change and reform and fiddling with the essential elements of a system built by people, it’s likely that suggesting that something change results in someone taking it personally.

I try not to do that when the change suggested is directed at me. That said, I feel like we collectively are too nice to one another in our public discourse, or we are completely monstrous. The middle ground is narrow and slippery and tricky to navigate.

It’s always easier to talk about big problems at a global level, to suggest change for all, but not change for a specific system, like our own. But I find that the global comments directed at everyone are also too often directed at no one, and that’s no good, either.

I am reminded as I write this of the Four Agreements, a text that my friend and colleague often reminds me of. Those agreements are:

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

I suspect we all struggle to live up to those in all that we do. And I try to always expect that folks are living by some version of them. But I fail to not take things as personally as I’d like all the time, and I know others struggle with that. I also know that I do make assumptions about the folks that I work with – I try to always, in the words of Adaptive Schools language, presume positive intentions in others, even when I’m not sure. Especially when I am not sure.

But change breaks eggs. And can hurt feelings. And it’d be easier to not act for fear of causing harm. I’ve always been a big fan of the Society for Professional Journalists’ code of ethics, specifically their call to those seeking truth to work, as they aim to tell that truth, to minimize harm. They advocate that this looks like this:

Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.

Journalists should:
— Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
— Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
— Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.
— Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.
— Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
— Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects or victims of sex crimes.
— Be judicious about naming criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.
— Balance a criminal suspect’s fair trial rights with the public’s right to be informed.

And they recognize that, while you might cause some harm, there’s often a greater good at work. Tread carefully, but don’t not tread.

There’s paralysis in the moments after words I’ve written cause someone harm, and that paralysis is poisonous. It sends my stomach on every roller coaster I’ve yet experienced, costs me sleep, and incites a healthy pile of self-doubt.¹ But I realize there’s work to be done, and things to explore and wonder out loud in public about. Many times in the almost eight years I’ve been blogging, something I’ve written has led someone to question my motives, or to suggest that it’d be better if I didn’t share in public. Maybe, I’m often told, it’d be safer to not say anything.

And I think that’s wrong. We don’t share in public enough. We avoid action too often because we want to play safe and nice and not bother anyone. That’s not the world I want to live in. That’s not the person I want to be. That’s not the world I want my children to enter into. I want them to be agents for something, rather than passive participants in their lives.

And that’ll cause hurt sometimes. Okay. I can live with that. Right now, at least. At just this second of understanding. Which I’ll do my best to preserve and protect.

How do you work to minimize harm while you also work to advocate for the change you believe in? And what do you do when you cause harm, unintentionally or otherwise?

I’m in the middle of doubting myself right now. I’m writing right now to try to free myself a bit from that. [↩]

It’s Good to Be Curious

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Bud Hunt

Found this today via Dave Cormier. Worth your time. Possibly multiple times¹.

I watched it twice. And I can’t stop smiling. [↩]

#DML2012 – On Love and Infrastructure

Posted on March 3, 2012 by Bud Hunt

I’ve been continually struck at DML with the notions of connectedness and participation. It makes sense that these would be sticky ideas here, and dominant ones. The conference opened with the announcement of the Connected Learning Research Network and a talk from John Seely Brown that dealt heavily with notions of participatory culture.

But in our rush to make and play and tinker and connect and engage in learning that matters in institutions that might not, I feel like I’m missing the love.

No, that’s not quite right. Actually, I’m finding notions of love everywhere I look. But perhaps that’s because I’m focused on looking for it, and you know how it goes – when you look for something, when you look really hard, you can find it anywhere.

I keep coming back to this interview that Fred Rogers gave to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. You should watch the entire series, but here, at 5 minutes and 17 seconds into this particular segment, Mr. Rogers give his definition of teaching and talks about what he was trying to do with his television show:

His words here stick hard with me – I cannot divorce his concept of love and teaching from my way of thinking about teaching now. And the Internet, or a school, or a community center, or a museum, or any institution of and about learning, can and should provide examples of teachers in love with what they love in front of others as a way of communicating that love, and helping students to find and communicate their own.

And I see resonance with that in the talk of the new DML Connected Learning Research Network, especially in Mimi Ito’s description:

In a nutshell, connected learning is learning that is socially connected, interest-driven, and oriented towards educational and economic opportunity. Connected learning is when you’re pursuing knowledge and expertise around something you care deeply about, and you’re supported by friends and institutions who share and recognize this common passion or purpose.

In talking with her briefly the other night about some mentoring work she’s hoping to do, work to connect passionate mentors to interested learners, I wondered more about issues of scale that have been raised at the conference, about what can scale, and what cannot.

And while I’m not sure that love, itself, can scale, I wonder if finding love maybe can. Certainly people have limited capacity, and can only love so many so deeply, but computers can help us to find each other. Networks can help us to find each other. Institutions can help us to find each other. Then we can do the human pieces better.

And finding each other, then looking after each other, is well worth doing¹.

In this morning’s panel on technical and social innovation, I saw too much emphasis on systems designed around outputs. I think that’s a large problem in education – we look heavily at what comes out of a system, but not so much on what we put into it. I’d argue quite strongly, with anyone who’ll listen, that we need to look quite closely and intentionally on what goes into a system, and on what sorts of inputs are privileged in our infrastructures. And how we inject love and care and compassion and concern into infrastructure is very, very important. It’s not considered enough, if at all, and these things rarely show up on measures of output.

So how do you build love and care into your systems and infrastructures and learning environments and experiences? How are you doing so in a way that doesn’t over simplify the complex backgrounds of the people and communities you’re learning from and with? How are you looking for ways to increase the love and care in your systems?

What are you loving in front of your students and colleagues? What would they say gets loved in your spaces?

Certainly, too, it’s worth wondering about people who aren’t getting found, or served, or looked after, by institutions of love and learning. How do we make sure that we focus on entry points so that those who wish to be found can be, and those who don’t want to be found can do that, too. I’ll say more on entry points, infrastructure and inputs in a future post. [↩]

Play Is Hard Work, Part 1

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Bud Hunt

In a series of posts, of which this is the first, I’d like to try to write my way through my thinking about play and love and culture and how I’ve been exploring those concepts lately. In this post, I will attempt to give some background. Future posts in this series will attempt to move from that background into how that thinking, or at least my awareness of it, is coming to life in my work and experiences.

I had the opportunity to facilitate a workshop at this year’s ITSC event in Portland that feels to me like an important shift in my work. The session, which I wrote a description of in a hurry several months ago, but knew could be important, was an attempt to capture some of my thinking about the use of play to build culture. I’m calling it “Play is Hard Work.” Here’s how I described it when I hastily wrote that description:

Play should be the cornerstone of much of what we do with technology for teaching and learning. Heck, play should comprise a considerable chunk of all of our learning time. But what does play look like in a digital environment? How can we create playful spaces around serious topics? And are play and fun the same things?
In this session, we’ll privilege habits over tools and explore play and playfulness with whatever gadgets, gizmos and whatnots we have in our classrooms.

That description was just about right – but it missed something. I realized as I was trying to build the session that I didn’t have the language, or the framework, to talk about what I meant by “play” and “playfulness.”

The dictionary helped. Some. Many online dictionaries have more than twenty different definitions of play, but this one, from the Definr definition, is most certainly the closest to what I was trying to get at:

Play, then, is finding freedom in the face of constraint. Yes. That’s getting towards the essence of what I find important in the term¹.

Those definitions helped, but they weren’t enough. I wanted to help folks have some experiences like the ones that we are having every week in our school district IT department – but I also wanted to connect what I saw/see happening in that culture to what I want to see happening in school culture in general. I’d like folks to be more playful in most areas of their work and not work. I’d like to play more as a parent, as a teacher, as a person.

And I think other people should be more playful, too.

But I don’t mean that everything is “fun.” I think assuming that play must be fun is a bad, and likely dangerous, assumption. I think you can play with really serious ideas and concepts. I think you can play with hurt, in an attempt to restore community. And it took months of reading and wondering and asking for me to find the language I needed to structure the workshop – I needed Michelle to hand me a book that has been her go to for a long time on the subject². Thankfully, she did.

I needed some of the language of improv. My friend Zac has been living this language for a while in his teaching and his theater work, but I didn’t see it until I really started to look.

At school, or at least at teacher school, I remember that many folks told me that it was essential to build community in my classroom. But it was always described in such a way that the idea was that you built it, and then you moved on to whatever it was you really wanted to do with your class – teach them English, or science, or whatever.

I’m more and more certain that you’re never actually done building community. Community and culture are not just peripheral to teaching and learning – they’re how the teaching and the learning actually happen. Some call this rhizomatic learning, or connectivism, but whatever you call it, teaching and learning are about building community. Community of people, of ideas, of experience and activity. Icky-feeling places, places we’d rather not be, don’t tend to be spaces where much learning happens³. Maslow comes to mind – we can’t learn until we’re safe. Playful cultures have to be safe cultures. And safe cultures can be playful ones.

And the cultures and communities that you build around classroom cultures matter, too. That’s something that I’ve been learning as a participant observer in my school district’s IT department. Over the last two years, we’ve been going through a major culture shift, masterfully facilitated by my boss, Joe McBreen.

He came to a place where everyone worked really hard and mostly alone.⁴ He recognized that we needed to know each other to be better at our work.

Through a process of huddles, short weekly meetings centered on us as people and learners together, and not on our work, and creating learning opportunities for our department to be and to learn together, he began to shape our culture into more than it was, and to create for us a need to do our work together. We are more playful as a unit, and it’s showing it the work we are doing elsewhere.

That story, and how I tried to create something similar in a room full of strangers, and why that matters, are the subjects of future posts in this series.

Oddly, other definitions contradict that one that I find so essential. And others still add flavor to the word. It’s amazing, or troubling, that such a small word has so much baggage. [↩]
You should buy the book. It’s a quick read – I read it in an hour – but it gave me the language I needed to talk about play and playfulness. [↩]
Of course, I think I’ve known this for a long time, but I’m at a place where I’m seeing implications beyond classrooms, and it’s never a bad idea to try to sketch this stuff out. [↩]
I don’t say this to knock the department as it was – it was good in lots of ways. There was room to grow, though, which is one reason I went there almost five years ago now. [↩]

Three Things I’m Thinking About Right Now

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Bud Hunt

1. Looking forward to attending my first #DML2012 conference. Should be a fascinating opportunity to learn from and with folks who are thinking about learning. Also, as I’m mostly facilitating others’ learning lately, it’s nice to attend an event in a primarily learning role¹.

2. I’m honored to be a participant/facilitator for a session at this conference. It’s called “Tapping into the Mutiplicity of Composition” and is a panel featuring several teachers who are making interesting things with students in the service of teaching writing and composition. That should be a fascinating conversation. And, of course, we’ll be writing together. Never a bad thing to do.

To support the conversation, we’ve built a couple of Pinterest boards as ways of creating galleries that show some of the texts that students are making in the panelists’ classrooms. A second board focuses on the testimonies of the panelists as a way of providing some background that might not surface during our conversations. The agenda for that session is taking shape and will be finally finalized soon. At a time when so much of the “interesting learning” that is taking place for students is taking place beyond the classroom, and sometimes in spite of it, I wonder about the role of schools moving forward into new learning landscapes. I hope that schools see the potential in other ways of learning that haven’t been privileged in our classrooms. I wonder how to bring the fringe learning into those spaces. I know that the National Writing Project has a role to play in these conversations².

3. I’m struggling to write about some of my adventures in building cultures of play and love both in my school district as well as in my classroom. I hope to get chunks of that thinking out here on the blog over the next few days. My lens for this conference is basically “How do we promote cultures of learning and playfulness and care and concern for each other?” Important.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t approach teaching as a learning opportunity – but that sometimes the logistics of facilitation interfere with my ability to process what I’m learning as it’s happening. [↩]
Disclosure – the NWP has supported my attendance at this event. I’m grateful for that. [↩]

On Quinn’s Second Birthday

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Bud Hunt

Earlier today, we celebrated Quinn’s second birthday. My youngest daugher is officially less young than she used to be.

And while she’s sleeping off a cupcake-induced late afternoon nap, I had the chance to catch up on today’s paper¹. And read this.

And, yes, I watched the video. It was painful. On multiple levels.

This is just to say, mostly as a reminder to me, that when a father resorts to a public airing of grievances concerning his concerns over his daughter’s behavior, using the behavior he claims to despise, then he doesn’t win.

Or help.

And while it’s certainly not my place, nor am I able, to judge the father/daughter relationship here, I feel certain that this video, or the actions it captures, will not do much to improve the general state of relations between fathers and daughters.

There are people on both sides of a relationship. Even if the people are children. Still people. And all people should be treated a little better than that video represents.

And perhaps children sometimes are harder on their parents than the parents deserve. As the world flies to a place of ever-publicness, and the perpetual ease of slinging shots at each other through the public sphere will only grow, let’s be careful with what we’re slinging.

Teagan, isolated from the birthday party, feverish and lethargic, down with a cold and quarantined upstairs with an iPad and TV, reminded me today that she, not quite five, like all of my daughters, will never live in a world where the world isn’t ever-pulsing in a device a finger’s touch away. Part of my job, as a parent, is to create for them moments of boredom in a world of Everything-All-The-Time.

Boredom just happened in my youth. Connections were harder. The reverse is true for her. Her world will happen faster than mine. Time for sitting still and wondering will be something we will have to fight for more and more.

I wish that father and his daughter had some more of that time. I think it might’ve made a difference. I hope they find some soon away from the Facebooks and the YouTubes.

So, Quinn, and Ani, and Teagan, whatever is coming for us as father and daughters, let’s work very hard, all of us, to make sure it isn’t that. Let’s take time to talk and pause and be sure to honor each other, and to keep what might be better said offline offline.

Okay?

That I only ever read electronically, so it won’t be “the paper” for much longer, I’m guessing. [↩]

September 12th, 2001. A Wednesday.

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Bud Hunt

September 12th. That’s the day everything changed.¹

A few weeks previously, I had begun my teaching career as a graduate student teaching freshman composition in room 110 of the Natural Resources Building at Colorado State University. I remember room 110 very well because it was where, six years previously, I took my first English class as an undergraduate at the school. Introduction to Literature. ²

As an undergraduate, it was my job, I thought, to unpack the secrets of the stories and novels and plays that we read together. And I wrote. Lots. Every week, I produced two typed pages of thinking and reflection and wondering about what I was reading and why it mattered. This was college. It was important.

And back in room 110, with my class of college freshfolk, I was in charge of helping them to unlock the mysteries of the College Essay, the texts that they were expected to produce early and often in their college careers. These 18 and 19 year olds were looking to me, a 23 year old grad student, to provide them with the keys to college literacy. Or, they had to take the class, and I was in their way. Either way, there we were, from 10:00 to 10:50 every MWF.

September 11th was a Tuesday. I remember because that made September 12th a Wednesday. At 10:00am, I was supposed to “teach.” And no one said otherwise.

I made one of the most important discoveries of my teaching career that day³, when I decided that class would be optional. It made sense to go. People, I thought, were counting on me to make sense of this. And that couldn’t be done.

But there was something I could do.

I emailed the class that no one had to be there, but that I would be there. Attendance, for a change, would not be taken.

I didn’t expect anyone to show up. But they came. Not all, but most.

And I started class. Sitting on a table in the front of the room, I reminded folks that no one had to stay that morning. I would not advance the syllabus. Instead, we were together, and something monumental had happened. What, I wondered, did folks want to talk about?

And I don’t actually remember the specifics. I remember that there was lots of misinformation and rumor in the air that morning, and that mostly, as someone who had read several articles, watched some CNN, and had spent the previous afternoon in the newsroom of the student paper, where I had worked as an undergraduate, and would work again that Spring, and pulled everything I could off the AP wire as it was released, I was likely the “expert” in the room.

Like that makes any sense.

But I dispelled rumor where I could, suggested sources for folks to explore if they wanted to know more. I mentioned the school’s counseling program for students. And it was quiet. Not silent, but much quieter than a usual day of argument and conversation. We were together, but we weren’t really talking all that much.

I guess it was just normal, or whatever on September 12th could approximate normalcy in the wake of the events of the day before, and normal, on September 12th, 2001, felt pretty good. It was enough.

On Friday, September 14th, we resumed talk of what makes good summary, and how to use others’ ideas in the services of our own, and all the things that you talk about in a college writing class.

We kept going.

And now, as we look back and consider all that’s happened in the world in the last ten years, and how that day changed this country, and me, and most other folks I know in some way, I get the feeling that keeping going is a pretty good way to honor that day.

By all means, take a deep breath and a look back. Think about what happened and what that changed or what that didn’t change. Reach out if you need or want an ear. Look after yourself. Consider what’s worth doing and what’s worth remembering and what’s worth working to restore. But then, one last deep breath.

There’s much to do.

Let’s keep going.

Sure. September 11th. I woke to the phone ringing and was told to turn on the news. I’d been married for all of three months and what I saw on TV didn’t make sense. Still doesn’t sometimes. [↩]
I sat next to What’s Her Name, who took good notes and who, three years later, I would date. Once. And screw that up royally by inviting a friend over to watch television with us. As I drove her home, I backed into a car in the street behind my apartment. It did not go well. A second date was dodged. By her. Repeatedly. I didn’t understand what happened there, either, until much later. [↩]
The discovery, for me, was in two parts – first, that the world doesn’t stop when you start your class. Be of the world and in the world as often as you’re about and/or removed from the world. The second part is about modeling and how teachers, in some sense, are always on. We are always being seen as teachers. So might was well act like one, even if, at 23 then, and 33 now, I don’t always have a clue as to what that means or should look like. ”What would a teacher do?” is a question I approach as I prepare for any class or learning experience. And it’s one I’ll always struggle with. But in this case, a teacher would dig in. Check facts. Explore sources. A teacher would seek to be sure his students were okay. A teacher would pause and reflect. So that’s what we did. [↩]

On Skinned Knees & Lessons Learned

Posted on August 27, 2011 by Bud Hunt

It’s skinned knee season in our home, with two girls riding bikes of the two and four-wheeled variety, and a third toddling along just behind – ready for far more than she’s capable of.

And I’m not one to stop someone who’s trying to make progress, even if that progress might be dangerous.

So we’ve been through lots and lots of boxes of Band-Aids for hurts both real and imagined. And we’re quick to wash out wounds and make sure that we keep them looked after.

But no matter how well we wash and watch, some of them are going to leave permanent marks. Like the time Ani discovered that you can’t make a ninety-degree turn on a bike. Or the time that Teagan realized, in a most unfortunate way, that you cannot stop a tricycle like Fred Flintstone could stop his car.¹ Quinn forgets, sometimes, about “down.” She’s still kind of new.

Each of those moments hurts. But hurt can have an upside. In fact, some would tell you that hurt, or pain, has an evolutionary advantage. It tells us when we hit a limit of some kind.

And those marks will help them remember the stories of the injuries one day. They’ll proudly show the little scars and blemishes that never quite go back to normal and explain that they rode a bike early, or took a chance on a curb or wrestled with a cat or went head over handlebars in a moment of panic.

But hurt, like fear, well, it just hurts. And to know someone you love is hurting is the worst kind of pain, a pain of helplessness and empathy and doubt.

Oh, how I wish I had a suit of Nerf and armor that I could force my children to wear when they go out into the world, or want to wrestle that cat. To be able to ensure the safety of my children, be they walking to school or traversing a steep hiking trail along the edge of a narrow cliff, would make my sleep come much easier.

But I don’t. And the marks and memories would be hard to accumulate from inside an impenetrable shell of foam. I also suspect it’d be mighty difficult to hear with all that Nerf so close to one’s ears.

There are plenty of days I want to say “Today, let’s stay here, where cars and cats and cliffs and sticks and stones and words can’t hurt us.” But I can’t. Because that’d be parental malpractice. As a dad, it’s my job to listen and bandage and help my children to be brave, to not stop when it’d be a whole lot easier and may well hurt a great deal less and be more safe to just stay still. Being brave? It’s important. And I hate it. Oh, there are days I very much dislike that job.

As a teacher, that’s my job, too.

I hope you’ve got a kit full of peroxide and Band-Aids with you as you take your charges out into the world. I hope you, and they, are being very brave.

Of course, Teagan would have no clue who Fred Flintstone is. Or was. Whatever. But I do find it interesting that “Flintstone” is in my Web browser’s dictionary. [↩]

Bud the Teacher

Inquiry & Reflection for Better Learning

Category Archives: Love