education

Body of Work

**This entry is a departure for me, and I hope my intention will be understood.  In coming to terms with my own body of work, I hope to connect more, and have others consider what limits are imposed on us from physical, psychological, and cultural circumstances. I have never been comfortable discussing my limitations, but I hope that others will relate to whatever limits them and engage in how we can expand the possibilities for productivity and living creatively.

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UNCLE!  I have been wrestling with my physical difficulties for over fifteen years.  Of course I must keep wrestling, as autoimmune disease flares can be so difficult to withstand, much less manage. Even in between violent flares, (or even less violent flares) during supposed remissions, I don’t feel well—just less bad– and can medicate to be vibrant for a few hours at a time. If I am very careful, and exclude certain activities and include hours of rest, I can participate in limited activities and celebratory events, and no one would know anything. It is always carefully orchestrated. To complicate matters, I have had (and continue to struggle with) excruciating and debilitating spine problems, that have made normal activities anything but normal. I have preferred chairs, and shoes and bed and pillows, and have tried so many therapies and remedies (and surgeries). I have always done modest exercise and eaten organically. I do all the right things, and every day is such a struggle. I have had to acknowledge my limitations, as they have interfered with home and work and my abilities to participate, especially because I take every effort to not look compromised. I am blessed to have great support, and my spouse’s insurance, and I put myself together every single day. That’s the big accomplishment. I don’t want to look (or sound) like I feel. Often, I can’t even answer the phone, because I don’t have the energy. Usually, I have to get myself together, have some caffeine before conversations, so that I can fully engage. Then I am spent.

My work history has been challenging. I have only been able to work part-time, and often I have had to stop to recalibrate, as daily routines for most people are just too much for me. For well over a decade, I doubted myself.  After so many years, I saw that when I have the “normal” ailments that plague people, I am better able to deal with those, than with my default body. The hardest part, though, has been feeling unproductive and having to ask for help. That is a source of shame for me.  I confess all of this because I know that there are so many people who struggle with an array of difficulties that may or may not fit our conventional categories of ability or disability. There are so many people with more seriously challenging circumstances than mine, and with more serious conditions than mine, and that has always made me question my own capabilities. We work to live, and many people live to work. I have just been working on living and have tried to maximize my unspectacular life’s work.

Thus far, my life’s work has not been published or patented, and probably not even downloaded. I have sought to share my education and appreciation for the arts with others, especially with adolescents, who even in the best of circumstances, must navigate tumult and difficult terrain . I have taught various subjects and students in a variety of educational settings, all along the spectrum of learning abilities. It’s not sexy work, (nor status work), and has often been fraught with frustration, as adolescents are intuitively gifted at frustrating adults, but I have gotten to learn and improve along the way. There are many, many bodies whose work I have supported and guided, and I hope illuminated, at least from time to time. As for my body of work….even with all the compromises and interruptions, I have worked to expand myself and others. At this point, my body is an awful lot of work. But there are still ways to participate, expand, and contribute; perhaps remotely.

I hope you are reminded that there is much joy and struggle that we often do not see when meeting others. Looks can indeed be deceiving. I am fortunate in so many ways, but I long to contribute more; to continue educating myself and others; to create connections and strengthen my community, and to support creative living and learning, even with this body of work.

Get Smart

One of my favorite old  television shows was “Get Smart”. It was a hilarious send up of James Bond and other spy shows, that tapped into the zeitgeist of the mid Sixties and the Cold War attitude that prevailed. While the show was a satire of the secret agent genre, it was loaded with physical comedy, sight gags, and funny catch phrases alongside action and romantic chemistry. Although the show was amusing in it’s silliness, it was also brilliant in its use of satire. CONTROL was the name of the U.S. government counter- intelligence agency based in Washington, D.C.  Maxwell Smart, aka Agent 86, the bumbling, nasal voiced, comedic version of the James Bond type (or Man from U.N.C.L.E. or many other suave spies of the era) inexplicably saved the U.S. (and presumably the world and all that is good) from the evil doers, particularly  his arch nemesis, Siegfried, head of the rival organization, KAOS. With a colorful cast of characters, including Agent 99 and The Chief, who was the head of Control, Larrabee, 44, 13, and other number secret agents, Siegfried’s right hand man, Shtarker, as well as the robot Hymie, each episode was essentially Smart and his malfunctioning gadgets (including the original Smart phone) in his attempts to bring down KAOS and save the day. So… in order to keep control, we must be smart against chaos. Oh, and the Cone of Silence never worked properly. 

In light of Edward Snowden’s recent leaks regarding U.S. data-mining programs, I am concerned about control and chaos, and the cone of silence that has pervaded both the government and our culture. We have known since 2001 when The Patriot Act was signed and took effect, that we are living in a new age with curtailed civil liberties while being hyper-connected through various gadgets. Some of us were quite apprehensive about the law then.  Also during the last decade, the business sector, with the aid of the tech industry as well as internet companies, have been mining personal data and phishing with hardly any protest from consumers/citizens. I feel as though these recent leaks have sparked a response like Maxwell Smart’s, “I asked you not to tell me that.” Perhaps there are truths to all sides of this story, not merely one of control versus chaos. Are people reacting based on political party affiliation? In this age of immediacy, the habits of mind that encourage intelligence seem to take a back seat to instantaneousness. Depth, reflection, willingness to challenge perceptions, and examining ramifications are practices that seem to be almost forgotten. To me, the data mining does not seem particularly revelatory, but it does seem to have struck a chord.

I have always found that the names The Patriot Act and Citizens United were rather ironic names. The terms Patriot and Citizen are used to name laws that favor government data mining and corporate anonymity.  I think most good citizens are concerned about privacy and security. There is a fine line between tragedy and comedy. Sometimes the art of comedy allows us to think differently and with some reflection without the emotional weight of tragedy. With the Snowden leak, we have an opportunity to re-examine our notions of liberty and security, and maybe some of our laws. But this is serious stuff that needs serious thought, not knee-jerk party-line reactions. It’s time to seriously get smart!

reality shows

Reality shows us unimaginable forces. Tornados violently devastating towns, leveling neighborhoods for miles; teachers sheltering children from savage storms and at other times, from deranged  murderers; first responders rushing to save and assist victims; caregivers everywhere attending to needs great and small; love among family members and friends…..These are the images of reality that are continuously shown on our screens in the aftermath of dramatic events. They may be gripping events, and often seem unprecedented, yet it is the reality of the human responses that grips us. We may not know or understand all the facts that contribute to such absorbing incidents, but we have immediate and visceral responses to them. Sometimes those experiences are overwhelming or maddening, but often they are invitations to examine ourselves.

These events become the stuff of history, and therefore lessons. The truths of these events– the forces preceding the events and the forces of the events, as well as the aftermath, become the stuff of art.  In the meantime, we watch and listen to images of reality that force us to imagine what we would be; what we could be; what we should be.

On days like today, reality shows us the art of living.

Change of Address

Complete. Progress. Calibrate.

Like any rite de passage, a graduation ceremony is a cultural construct that briefly freezes time –acknowledging an individual’s completion of the requirements for being a student and transitioning the student to a new status. The movement from one status to another is conferred in a diploma, but the process is addressed in the ritual commencement speech. The commencement address, whose banality is kept in check by the celebrity addressing the graduating class, is usually an appeal to the truths that we tend to discard until the next graduation. Still, they are usually the truths that are most necessary,and most necessary to bear in mind during the more mundane moments of life, not merely at  ritual celebrations.

Graduation/commencement…endings/beginnings….all in the same moment. Most students are thrilled to complete their grueling academic work and to be rightfully acknowledged for it. Commencing the often overwhelming march into adulthood without the supportive peer world of the college or university (or high school) can sometimes feel like a step backward. After mastering one environment and work, students must start over. (Hence, the commencement addresses that remind students of the excitement of beginnings and possibilities.)

While the noun (the) graduate has long been associated with Dustin Hoffman in 1967,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3lKbMBab18

the verb (to) graduate really can inspire us as much as the possibilities implied by commencing. To graduate means to complete something. Completion is accomplishment, realization, fulfillment. We need not graduate from college to experience completion. When we complete we are whole. We may be constantly completing, but that is movement toward wholeness, which may be an ever expanding experience. Regularly completing in small and great ways, adds to our sense of fulfillment. We continue to graduate/complete throughout our lives.

To graduate means to progress. As we complete something we progress to the next something. It is optimistic and expansive, broadening and possibly deepening our opportunities and our lives. Sometimes the lousy jobs and difficult living experiences may also allow us to graduate to create a circumstance we may never have previously considered. All experiences may not be positive, but graduating is progressing. It is a forward motion and growth.

To graduate also means to calibrate. As we move toward completion, we measure, correct, adjust, and reset. We are always moving toward the next completion and always recalibrating. When we stop graduating and feel like we have already graduated, we get stuck in status-thinking. It is more like static thinking.  So, during this graduation season, whether you are finishing school or not, consider the verb to graduate–to complete, to progress, and to calibrate. Congrats, grads! Keep graduating!

 

Mother Culture/Mother Nature

Are you a mother-to-be? A new mom? An older mom? A working mom? A SAHM (Stay-at-home-mom)? A single mom? A teen mom? A soccer mom? A dance mom? A stage mother? A yoga mom? A mommy blogger? An activist mom? Do you wear Mom jeans? Are you the Mom In Chief? (Unless you are Michelle Obama, the answer is no.)

At home, are you Nurse Mom? Dr. Mom? Chauffeur Mom? Coach Mom? Cheerleader Mom? Teacher Mom? Event planner Mom? Administrative Assistant Mom? Human Resources Mom? Chef Mom? Housekeeper Mom? Librarian Mom? Accountant Mom? Shopper Mom? Nutritionist Mom? Stylist Mom? Police Mom? Detective Mom? Artist Mom? Singing Mom? President Mom? Dictator Mom? Queen Mom?

Are you joyful? Adoring? Content? Anxious? Cautious? Zealous? Spirited? Exhausted? Loving? Open? Comforting? Proud? Curious? Concerned? Careful? Bold? Kind? Protective? Discerning? Demonstrative? Caring? Nurturing? Guiding? Pedantic? Receptive? Clumsy? Consumed? Graceful? Grateful? Tender? Connected? Learning? Strong? Weak? Adapting? Evolving? Lifting? Creative? Delighted?

This Mothers’ Day, as we embrace our mothers and their nature, let’s use this cultural ritual to transform the culture of mothers (and others). Mothers, especially in the last generation, have been defined as a something-mom. The mom part is a bit self-deprecating. Is it because mothers feel like mothers first and then something else? Or do mothers still feel like they are not quite something else? Traditionally, mothers have not only played the role of domestic goddess and liaison to schools, but have been involved in civic and community projects (usually without recognition of being the ones who do the volunteer work, beyond donating and sitting on boards). Good schools and workplaces, as well as healthcare and nutritional, clean food must be more available and accessible for all.  Schools and workplaces must transform (not merely evolve to accommodate those with the most choices) to support the entirety of our lives. We must move beyond the 19th century industrialization model to a more fluid model of work and school, so that our mother culture supports and enhances mothers’ nature (and mother nature).

So Happy Mothers’ Day! Give your mother the love she needs! And check out Moms Rising.org. I’m going to make a gift right now! Join me in making a happy mothers’ day today and tomorrow.

http://www.momsrising.org/

Appreciation

It’s almost 7:00 pm; almost the end of the day. Soon Teacher Appreciation Day will be over. It’s not that the shout outs and appreciations are not appreciated. Teachers welcome appreciation. Who wouldn’t? Unfortunately, the appreciation seems limited. If we truly appreciated teachers, we wouldn’t set aside a day to appreciate us.

Perhaps teacher appreciation starts with appreciating learning; appreciating knowledge; appreciating studying; appreciating organizing; appreciating nurturing; appreciating culture; appreciating performance; appreciating patience; appreciating guidance; appreciating caring; appreciating growth; appreciating limits; appreciating work; appreciating differences; appreciating individuality; appreciating creativity; appreciating roles; appreciating responsibility….

Acknowledging qualities that we all need to appreciate will certainly be appreciated. Every day.

 

 

Script

Cursive!… Foiled again!

Among the seemingly perennial issues in education, there is a resurgence in the concern over no longer teaching handwriting (i.e.cursive English). Given that education is one of those paradoxical institutions that on the one hand has as its aim to prepare for the future, it is also, more often than not, conserving the past. The present state of education is one that generally feels like it is behind the present moment in the rest of our culture. K-12 education tends to play catch-up, rather than lead the culture. As schools across the country are debating and implementing the new Common Core Standards, many teachers have suggested that something’s got to go, and that something will be handwriting, as keyboarding has more  cultural relevance.

Many lament the notion that students may no longer learn cursive. For some, it is a cultural  loss for the next generation(s). In some scientific and educational communities, some point to studies suggesting an academic advantage for elementary students who learn cursive over those who don’t. Is learning cursive a necessity today?

With limited time and money,and mandated testing, many teachers have suggested dropping handwriting lessons from the curriculum. Certainly keyboarding is a necessity in everyday life in ways that handwriting is no longer requisite. Of course there are people who never mastered penmanship and were/are quite intelligent and high achieving. Physicians are not the only ones who can’t write a legible script in script. For those  who are dysgraphic, or perhaps less severely, just not good at handwriting, keyboarding is a gift, and can transform their written communication and ability to achieve. However, one of the more interesting arguments for teaching cursive, is that in practicing the smooth movements connecting letters, mental connections are also made, that are not replicated in keyboarding. The argument continues that even learning to read cursive writing advances certain mental capacities for making connections, as we see and interpret connected symbols.

What may have begun as picking up a twig or a rock and etching symbols in dirt or on caves, progressed into handwriting. With the quill and ink, cursive became more developed as the writing method was employed to limit spills and breakage. Of course, in our age, the keyboard is the most expedient form of non-vocal communication. The most obvious sacrifice in abandoning learning cursive is the individuality–the signature.Even learning the uniformity of the cursive alphabet, handwriting is a uniquely individual enterprise. It can be honed, but handwriting is still not quite anonymous. It’s personalized.

Many cling to teaching handwriting as part of a cultural heritage. Some regard penmanship as an art form. Others tout the importance of fine motor skill development as well as it’s connection to brain development. The detractors focus on the imperative of teaching the most necessary skills for the moment, and handwriting seems like a cultural remnant–irrelevant to the tasks of the future.

It seems to me that the arguments for and against teaching cursive are essentially from a tired script. Many debates in education seem to be either/or in nature. Teaching cursive is slow, and there are so many other things to test. But if teaching cursive can help develop both left and right hemispheres of the brain and their connectivity, then maybe we need to look at other ways to teach and practice writing script. We don’t need to teach cursive just because it was our script. Handwriting may never be used the way it was prior to this moment in history. However, like science, math, history, language, physical education and art, it is a way of seeing and doing that creates connections, and making connections is essential to creativity. Perhaps rethinking our script about teaching script as a remnant of the past, to a practice of creativity, makes handwriting the future.

Let’s Dance!

If our kids don’t replicate our suggestions, have they learned? Have we taught? As parents and educators, we attempt to nourish, protect, guide, acculturate, civilize, enrich and encourage. As Andrew Solomon writes in his masterful work Far From The Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search For Identity, “ There is no such thing as reproduction.” Parents produce offspring. The idea is that the product of the parents is a new organism. Even when the children resemble the adults, they always grow away from us. Andrew Solomon’s book is devoted to children who don’t resemble their parents, but the lessons are true for all. Teaching and parenting is not a matter of replication.

In many ways education (whether parent or teacher) is dance. We choreograph, composing a sequence of steps and moves. We design a form and motions. Educators/choreographers direct movement. Our kids are dancers. As learners, they (and we) employ codified movements in various contexts. Dance is a form of social interaction, emotional expression, and performance. Most importantly it is movement. If we consider  educating as guiding our kids’ (and our) movement  in the domains of social interaction, emotional expression and performance, rather than as a sculpture (or worse, a reproduction of a sculpture), then we can experience individual human rhythms and energies, and appreciate their distinctions and likenesses through their gestures.  We can move along with them.

Education is movement!  Let’s Dance!

Super Duper

Yesterday was a Super Duper Wednesday.  It was not a good day; certainly not in the news world. It was a day full of news and un-news and more bad news, and then punctuated news. By now we are all too familiar with the news media too eager to report, despite serious mistakes (and possibly serious ramifications from those mistakes). It does seem, however, that there is forensic evidence of a pressure cooker used for the bomb(s) that killed and maimed brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, at the Boston Marathon on Monday. A pressure cooker. It’s almost too obvious. The literal and figurative remains of a pressure cooker were what we were left with yesterday. By the time I went to bed, though, I felt duped.

On a day when media outlets rushed to report that a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was arrested, and then that report was retracted, the “pressure cooker” that is the news media revealed its limits. Then there was the discovery of a  potentially poisonous letter sent to President Obama, just after one was discovered sent to a senator (maybe more than one senator). At least those letters were initialed by the sender, so as to avoid any confusion. By the end of the day, when most of the news revolved around the aftermath of the horror in Boston, and attempts to get attention for poisoning senators and the President, a bi-partisan bill that would expand background checks to purchase a gun was defeated. President Obama responded,” The American people are trying to figure out, how can something have 90 percent support and yet not happen?”  I think many of us felt Super Duped.

We live in Super times. Supermodels and Supermajorities; Super Bowls and Super Bugs; Super Moms and Superheroes; (Superman); Superhighways and Superconductors; Super Glue and Super Funds; Supersonic and Supernova; Superstars and Superpowers; Superego and Superficial and Supernatural…….

So much seems to be heightened–super heightened– and we often find ourselves in our own pressure cookers. Then we have Super Duper days.

Horrorism

As of 6:00 pm on this Tax Day (and Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts), Monday,April 15, 2013, two explosions occurred near the finish line at The Boston Marathon, killing two and injuring scores. These are the early reports. Certainly there are more questions than answers at this moment, but already we are hunkering down, and fearful of more danger in the coming hours, days, and weeks.  News commentators have proclaimed that the terrorists have scored a win, as authorities have already admonished citizens to stay home. Pennsylvania Avenue in front of The White House has been closed to pedestrians this evening.

The Boston Marathon, one of the great annual events, is usually a joyful experience for spectators and runners alike. While the individuals compete against each other, there is also a sense of community–of spectators cheering on the runners and offering water to all. It’s about personal best and fellowship. It’s one of the least divisive sporting events. Until a bomb goes off.

The Boston Marathon is both a local event and a global one. It is viewed around the world as those competing hail from all over. Today’s blast is not only an act of terror, instilling fear through violence, but it is horrifying. Bostonians and those visiting this great city have been terrorized. The rest of us watching from afar may also feel fear (terror) that there are more imminent attacks, and that they may not be limited to Boston. But what we all should feel is horror.

Violence may be endemic to the human condition, but we have transformed many of humanity’s ills and diminished the prevalence of violence from time to time. As we consider laws to reduce gun violence, there are simultaneous calls to arm teachers in schools to protect students. Many see the answer to violence as being better armed. This was the proposition behind the Cold War. More nuclear arms would prevent war. So how do we reconcile the need for safety with the need to go about our lives, and to prevent horrifying accidents?

Of course, this was no accident. This was terror–whether it was homegrown or international. Chaos and fear ensued, and disrupted a magnificent day. And there were many horrific injuries as well as a couple of deaths. We need to not only be safe from harm, but teach our children that violence is not a solution. We now have a generation who have grown up since 9/11 who are more exposed to violence from our two wars, multimedia, popular culture, and more demands for guns as an expression of freedom, rather than freedom from guns and violence.

We won’t be able to control or eliminate all acts of violence, random or planned, but we can teach our children that violence is horror, not freedom.