One time I got into an argument with a coworker about something an administrator of ours had said. I maintained that this person was a good leader, in fact a very good leader. My coworker said, “No, I know what inspiring leadership is. I worked for Dennis Littky.”
Author: alden110
The Challenges (and Joys) of Parenting Your One Year-Old
As a high school teacher, occasionally I have snow days when I don’t have to work. Usually on those days my son’s daycare is closed, too. But today is different. Today I am off and he is at daycare, giving me some valuable time to reflect on some of my favorite — and most challenging — parts of being the parent of a one year-old son.
There are certain aspects of parenting that you just take to naturally. For me, cutting my son’s hair is not one of them. I think it’s pretty hard to cut someone’s hair under the best of circumstances, such as when they are paying you and just really, really hoping you don’t bring up politics. My former barber, a noted political pundit, used to cut hair wearing a pistol on his hip. You can be assured that when he said, “Tilt your head for me,” I didn’t mess around. But it’s a little harder when your “customer” is actively trying to grab your scissors and put them in his mouth.
Continue reading “The Challenges (and Joys) of Parenting Your One Year-Old”Herbert Spencer: John Dewey before John Dewey?
Just read a fascinating book about ed history: Getting it Wrong from the Beginning, by Kieran Egan. “Ah, an autobiographical work!” one of Egan’s colleagues quipped on hearing the title. I found this book online somewhere, and quickly ordered it as part of my ongoing quest to understand the thinkers and the thoughts that have shaped modern education. With Egan’s book, I wasn’t disappointed.
Continue reading “Herbert Spencer: John Dewey before John Dewey?”Vermont: Leading the Nation in Proficiency
Here’s a new piece that’s been going around the Vermont ed community. It’s an article by two Vermont educators (both of whom I know casually) about the future of proficiency-based learning.
My first thought was — it’s refreshing that someone’s actually talking about proficiency based learning (PBL) again. This was the — no joke — revolution in teaching and learning we spent four years trying to wrap our minds around and sell our communities and ourselves on but for the last two years, it’s felt like everyone collectively moved on.
Continue reading “Vermont: Leading the Nation in Proficiency”On Being Back in Harness
I read this phrase once: to be “back in harness.” I liked it — even if it sounded as though it was missing a “the” — and now that I’m back full-time teaching again this year, I find the phrase fits me.
Last year I wasn’t “in harness” — or at least, I was in a different kind of harness — and it was surprisingly uncomfortable. We always talk about how we’d love to make our own schedules, come and go as we please. But would we really?
Continue reading “On Being Back in Harness”Talk Learning, Not Logistics
Here’s my newest teaching mantra: Talk learning, not logistics.
That means when you’re talking with students, don’t talk just about what questions they need to do, how much time they have, or how they need to quit watching car videos on their computer. Sure, you need to tell them that too sometimes. But try to minimize it. Instead, try to talk to students about more important stuff — what they’re learning, what they’re not learning, what sense they’re making of the material, what information they need to move forward.
Talk learning, not logistics.
On Receiving Feedback from my Students
One thing that I’m proud about coming out of my fellowship last year is the newfound confidence that I have as a teacher. Perhaps it’s related to the validation associated with receiving such a prestigious honor as a Rowland Fellowship, but I believe it’s more likely that this new confidence is more a matter of learning to see my job, and my role as a teacher, in a completely new way than before.
Let It Rain is Sold Out
The other day I went down to the basement to retrieve three boxes of guidebooks to ship out to a supplier. As I was rummaging around in the dark corners searching for the once-ubiquitous cardboard boxes bearing the name “Malbaie Press” (my invented publishing company), it began to dawn on me: there aren’t anymore left. Aside from a few boxes I’d set in my office to keep for posterity, that’s it. Twelve years after publishing my whitewater guidebook, Let It Rain, I’m finally sold out.
Continue reading “Let It Rain is Sold Out”The best book about schools ever written
It took a year of being a school reformer, tasked with making change in my profession, to turn me into an incrementalist.
The most fascinating book ever written about education, to me, is 1995’s Tinkering Toward Utopia. Written by Larry Cuban and David Tyack, two Stanford education professors, this book — from the first chapter — hell, the first page — smacked me, a would-be school “reformer,” right between the eyes.
Parenting Your Seven Month-Old
Over the past few months, my wife and I have been embarking on what I’m sure is the most important battle we’ll face in parenting: regaining our sanity. I’m talking about sleep training. The principal technique I employed was “being an awful person.”
Of course, we started by trying the most humane method: “co-sleeping.” This is where you share a room or even a bed with your child. It didn’t work. Babies are loud. Co-sleeping would be like if you had a broken alarm clock that went off every 20 minutes and you said to yourself, “You know what, maybe the place to put this thing is in the bed right next to me?”
Soon we opted for the other extreme: the “cry it out” method. If co-sleeping is compassion, cry-it-out is tough love. You set your baby in a crib in a different room, close the door, and hope for the best. It’s hard. Your baby is all alone in a dark room, screaming like he’s being attacked by geese. He needs you. He needs someone to comfort him and feed him every 11 seconds and mumble soothing words, such as, “Why can’t you go the f to sleep?” But you can’t. If he learns that crying makes an adult appear, he’ll never sleep alone. You have to let him “cry it out.” But you feel like an awful person.
My wife, who possesses traits such as compassion and empathy, struggled to resist. Only a series of textbook open-field tackles by me kept her hand from the nursery doorknob.
I, on the other hand, had no trouble being the bad guy. Apparently my parenting style is modeled on the evil prison warden Samuel Norton in “The Shawshank Redemption”: “Oh, he’s crying, is he? Put him in solitary, in the nursery! Eight hours!”
But it worked. Hours of screaming shrank to minutes. Then, magically, he was asleep. Now, he barely grazes the crib and he’s passed out like it’s a NyQuil commercial.
Sometimes a little tough love goes a long way.
***
It’s not unusual for my wife and me to have lengthy conversations entirely dedicated to describing bodily fluids. There’s probably a day coming soon when we accidentally forget, and — sitting at a dinner party, sipping wine and making polite conversation about Elizabeth Warren’s immigration proposals — blurt out, “Well, I’m all for migrants’ rights, but right now I need to migrate to the toilet. The last time I pooped was six hours ago, and if I wait any longer, we’re going to need to do an outfit change, if you know what I mean.”
“Don’t worry, honey, I packed you a spare onesie.”
Even if we don’t slip up in public, at home in private, we find ourselves talking a lot about bodily functions. But what words to use? Poop and pee are little kid words. I feel like one of those kindergarten teachers who gets home and forgets she’s not still at work: “Sweetie, before we go out to the club, do you need to make a doody?”
So what other words to use? For starters, you can’t use bro-ish euphemisms. Your baby doesn’t have to “take a leak.” He’s not pledging Alpha Delta Phi. You can’t call out across a roomful of in-laws, “Hey, can you check his diaper and tell me if he took a dump?” Clearly, no.
Of course you’ve got your polite euphemisms, but new parents don’t have time to be polite. We need specificity. Six month-olds don’t “go to the bathroom” or “visit the restroom.” (Chances are he has already “visited” his diaper.)
I suppose you could go with comic pop-culture phrases. “Son, do you need to take the Browns to the Super Bowl?” But let’s face it: the Browns will never go to the Super Bowl.
So I have taken to using fancy Latin words instead. They’re polite, but specific (and make you sound like you’ve been reading Norman Mailer). Someday my son is going to be in preschool, telling the teacher, “I have to micturate. Don’t worry, already defecated.”
***
Here’s another parenting decision I’ve had to make.
With my son riding in the car with me now, I have tried to cut back on cursing at other drivers. Just what we need on his first day of kindergarten. Some nervous five year-old walks in front of my son on the way over to the carpet for circle time, when suddenly: “Hey, did you just cut me off, you f—ing s—head? Where’d you learn to drive? Trump University?”
***
Speaking of which, can you imagine the pressure on kindergarten teachers? My wife and I are going to be a mess in our first parent conference: “Alright, what’s our ceiling, here? Are we talking off-the-charts genius? Or that weird kid who makes bird noises during math? You’re not saying anything. Should we be thinking Berkley, or low-level TSA? What about mid-level?”
Being a high school teacher is much easier. By the time kids get to me, their parents have pretty much heard it all.
“Uh, hi, Mrs. Smith, just wanted to let you know that your son Johnnie . . .”
“I know, I know, he’s a little shit. We’re literally counting the days until we turn his bedroom into an office.”
Hopefully my wife and I will have some idea before we go to that first conference, but I have a feeling we’ll still be sweating.
***
Last point.
It is hard for me, an introvert, not to hope my son turns out to be an extrovert. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the gifts introverts possess — inner fire, reflectiveness, an affinity for deep conversation and intense friendships. I do. But life is unmistakably easier for extroverts. It’s our culture. Garrulousness is currency. Introspection is suspect; “reserved” is a pejorative term. The need to escape people (to recharge) is usually confused with disliking them.
Better to be uncomplicated, an extrovert. An optimist, too, if possible.
***
Those are my hopes now at seven months. Now if you’ll excuse me, some f—ing jerk just cut me off . . .