Bud the Teacher

Teagan has, since her birth, been known to all of us as the little sister. The baby sister. That changed the day that Quinn came. Teagan’s now wearing two hats in our family – little sister to Ani, and big sister to Quinn.¹

How we identify her is in large part via her relationships to others. How she identifies herself is tied up in those relationships, too. Rightly or wrongly.

And I’ve seen Teagan change her behavior to match the role that she’s filling at any one moment, alternately trying on the big and little sister roles to see which fit any given situation. She’s fiddling with expectation and agency. It’s fascinating to watch, particularly as the role of big sister is a new one for her. But she’s picking it up quite nicely.

All of the above to say this – I know that the people around us will rise to the level of expectation we have for them, which is why we should always set high expectations.²

But I’m re-realizing this morning that our expectations and relationships and even our identities are wrapped up in our relationships with others.

And I’m thinking about how I can honor existing relationships while building better ones in the context of high expectations.

How do we, I wonder, work to build, support and sustain roles and relationships that help us all to aim high and be better?

That’s a heavy question for a Monday, but a good reminder for the week.

1. There are several other hats or roles that she wears, but you get the idea. [↩]
2. One reason Teagan is a great big sister is that we believed that she would be and we told her so. Had we said that she wouldn’t be able to handle it, she probably wouldn’t have. Funny how that works, and how we so often tell people that they’ll be unsuccessful before we even let them try. [↩]

I’m looking very much forward to tomorrow’s 3rd annual Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation, taking place at Loveland High School, just one town over from my home.  I’m pumped about the event for several reasons.  For starters – I’m not an organizer of the event this year – the fine folks at Loveland HS and the Thompson School District have grabbed the reins and put together what looks to be a fine day of learning and conversation with folks around the region.  I always enjoy spending time in thoughtful conversation with folks in my own area.  And tomorrow, I get to be a participant.  (Global’s good – but local’s where the unexplored potential of the read/write web for teaching and learning lies.)  I’m hoping that next year’s event is handled as well as this year’s.

I’m also looking forward to facilitating a conversation on show & tell, and how purposeful transparency can be pretty darn good professional development.  If you want to join in, all the particulars of how to do so are available on the conference wiki.  I’ll be presenting at 10:45am Mountain time.  Would love to have you join us via the conference Livestream.

I tweeted a possible title for this post out earlier tonight, and hurt some feelings.  Understandably.  My apologies – that wasn’t my intention, and sometimes my mouth gets ahead of my brain.  I have nothing but the highest respect for the Science Leadership Academy and my friend and colleague Chris Lehmann.  I think he’d agree with me on what I’m about to say.  We’ll see, I guess.

This weekend, 500 or so folks will descend upon Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA for the third Educon conference.  It’s a wonderfully neat school, with a phenomenal staff and a fine bunch of students.  I’ve been to the school twice, and am in constant contact with teachers there.  They’re my teachers and colleagues and, in some cases, friends, and I think the community and educational opportunities offered there are nothing short of what I would hope for my own children and for all kids.  Simply outstanding.

That said, I guess I’d like to offer a suggestion or two to the folks who will be paying close attention to Educon this weekend, and who otherwise hold SLA up to high esteem. (And I’m one of those folks.)  Take it for what it’s worth.

The Science Leadership Academy is not The Promised Land.¹  No place is.²  The school is a place, a special place, that people made, and that is a response and a reaction to its contexts, geographical, political, social and otherwise.  It is not the only place where great things happen for and with kids, and it is not the only place or way that kids can learn.

You probably know some people who can make great things.  You might be one of those people.  Actually, let me say that again, and slightly differently – You most likely ARE one of those people.  But you have to act like it.  Simply fawning over the achievements of someone else and regretting that you live somewhere else isn’t a useful reaction.

So much of what I see right after a place like SLA is praised is a laundry list of reasons why the praiser’s school/community/whatever can’t be like SLA.   I don’t get that.  Of course your school won’t be like theirs.  You aren’t in downtown Philadelphia.  You don’t operate in the same space.  Your families are different.  So, for that matter, are you.  But that’s not a bad thing. It’s okay.  I live and work in Colorado.  There is opportunity here, too.

Chris and his staff built a place that made sense as a combination of the places they came from, the places they were, and the places and ideas that they wanted to build with.  They made the place.  Together.  With their students.  And you can make a place, too.  But it’ll be different, deliciously, brilliantly different, from SLA.  Not because they’re better than you, or you them, but because good schools are about context and environment and about taking what you have and what you want and striking a balance and working very, very hard. Good schools are about people honestly and intentionally working together very purposefully.

Good schools are not about taking another’s model and applying it without serious consideration to your own local environment, or about lamenting that you are not someone else. That’s irresponsible, and doesn’t honor a fine example.

So as you’re enjoying the school culture of SLA, a place that I would like to be visiting and learning from/with/in this weekend (and I kind of will be), I hope you’ll move past the “Wow,” and towards the critical eyes of “Huh.  Why does this work?  How might I make something work in my own context(s)?”

Because, we all know, imitation, and not worship, is the highest form of flattery.  Imitation without serious thought as to how to make and sustain change in one’s own situation is not useful.  And doesn’t actually honor the fine model that SLA might be for you.

You, too, can make special places.  In fact, you may already have.  Good on you.  Talk about them.  Tell us how you did it.  Help us, as Chris and SLA do, to figure out that there isn’t one way to do school well.  There are many.  And we need them all.

1. I don’t believe that the folks at SLA say such things.  But I see and hear them from admirers. [↩]
2. Again, plenty of folks seem to believe otherwise. [↩]

Earlier this morning, I tweeted this:

Do you ever want to say to folks who scream they don’t want their private lives online: “Maybe you should just try to be a better person.” ?

And I realized that I didn’t quite say what I meant there.
I believe that pivacy is important and special, and that there are plenty of moments in my life that are my business and perhaps my family’s or close friends’ or colleagues’ business. That said, I think anything public is fair game for public. And I think my public persona, the person I am at work and in the world, be it the store, or church, or at the park or anywhere else, should be the same public persona online.

Because that’s who I am. Or who I’m becoming, at least.

I made a choice when I went online in 2005 that I was going to be the same grown up online as I was in the physical public. For the most part, I’ve kept to that. If I’d say it in a classroom, I’ll post it to the web. If I wouldn’t, I tend to keep it to myself. Sure, I’ve stumbled and posted in anger or frustration, but not as a habit. (Maybe. You’re certainly welcome to disagree with me here.) And I’ve made a trade – I don’t say everything that I might wish to say.

Modeling is perhaps the greatest teaching tool that we have. The actions that we engage in say as much and more about us than our directions to students ever will. I’ve never asked a student in one of my classes to do something that I wasn’t willing to do myself. And I’ve constantly sought out ways to show my students that I am engaged in the world in the ways that I want them to be – my students caught me reading and writing and thinking about things all the time, just as I asked them to read and write and think. I went to math class and struggled through geometry tests. I participated in science experiments. I got excited about things.

I tried to model for them what learning looked like. And I try to do that in my online public persona as well. So when people say to me “I don’t think I want my students to see my [insert online profile], I wonder what it is that they’re uncomfortable about.

We all stumble as people and don’t quite do the things we’d like to do, or behave perfectly. That’s human. And there are boundaries between personal and professional, between public and private. But those boundaries are far from hard and fast lines.

I’m sure that I’m not anywhere close to where I’d like to be in my actions. But I think it’s worth it to struggle to be a better person. And I think that struggle is human and worth sharing. We can all be better people, and education is a big piece of how that happens. And modeling is a big piece of education.

These ideas are still developing for me; I wonder what you think about them. What stays private? Public? What do you do online that you wouldn’t want your students to know about? Why not? As more of ourselves finds its way online, will these conversations stop being binary in nature?