Blog Archives

Seeking Certainty in This Absurd Existence

1/30/2022

by Julie Brock

February is the longest month in Minnesota. The snow and cold have settled in. Cold has nestled deep into marrow and snow is a welcomed relief to cover the dirt and sludge covering the roads and—if we’re honest—our hearts.

On the wind in February
snowflakes float still.
Half inclined to turn to rain,
nipping, dripping, chill.”

--Christina Rossetti, "A Year's Windfalls"

It is the same routine. Start the car, scrape the windshield, drive to your destination seeing your breath hang around your head the entire way, and maybe--if you are lucky--the car warmed up by the time you get there. It's a grind, even for the most optimistic.

Add “the beginning of the end” for high school seniors and it is fertile soil for teaching absurdism and existentialism. Welcome, young friends, to the existential crisis season for 12th graders. Although many have pronounced their plans for all their peers to hear, the confidence behind the bravado is small, infinitesimal, in fact. And the questions seep in as they hear the choir around them sing of their collective, positive plans. Some are questioning their early action to college. Others are digging their heels in and fighting against the idea of any more school. Others are looking abroad at a gap year and others are gearing for military. All are trying to have conviction about their choices, but the Ides of March are near, and the tides start to turn in February.

Absurdism results from the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning and the inability to do so with certainty. Albert Camus, a French absurdist philosopher, believed individuals should embrace the absurd condition of human existence and then gave characters to challenge our inability to do so.

Absurdism? It is a literary genre? Are you serious? All great questions I’d greet with a smirk.

I’d start class with a series of questions:

Isn’t it absurd that we are just tiny beings living on a rock hanging in space?
Isn’t it absurd that the only thing keeping us alive are the conditions created by the exact distance and orbit from the sun?
Isn’t absurd that the sun is a dying star?
Isn’t it absurd that the universe is infinite and there is no way for us to know what else is out there?

Small blinks from eyes followed by silent contemplation, then discomfort.

Camus’s The Stranger was the cornerstone to the Existentialism Unit I used to teach. Meursault became the unsettling presence for many students. They were confronted with a character who planned nothing, who was connected to nothing, and had no cares for what others thought about him. He had needs, and he filled them. That’s it. No more, no less. When he shoots the man on the beach the prosecution asks him for his motive, and he says the sun was in his eyes.

This outraged every class. How can that be? No one shoots someone because the sun was in his eyes. There must be more!

But there isn’t.

The acceptance of life as a series of choices is one that is hard for my February friends to grasp during their own crackling façade of identity. Who am I really? What am I really? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?

42.

Pushed in class to consider the idea that there is no one answer to any of these probing questions, and that the truest answer is in the recesses of their DNA, happy in the shadows of self is one thing; contemplating it in the second year of a global pandemic is another.

Transition from high school into what comes next is a big milestone in one’s journey. Doing that under the shifting sands of COVID-19 is exhausting at best and damaging at worst. Conscious or not, these young adults have built up expectations and stories following the close of their high school chapter. To do that without any true knowns pushes them off their axis and the world cannot turn without glitching. It doesn’t feel stable.

Absurdism pushes on the construct of certainty. How can we be certain of anything other than the breath that enters in and out of our lungs? And even that is not a guarantee. Existentialism asks the questions, “What else is there than existence?” and “What else is there to existence than the choice we make now, now, or now?”

Recommendations: Reflections on Student Learning Reflect on Teacher Practices

1/23/2022

by Phil Olson

Each fall, former students, seniors who are a week or a month into their last year of high school, show up at my door. They try for some small talk, while their eyes communicate that they know I know about the Ask that’s coming. It’s awkward and sweet, and I say yes, telling them it will be my pleasure. And it is.

In recent years, college recommendations are increasingly accomplished via one platform, the Common App, a non-profit organization that represents 900 institutions of higher education.

The application’s commonness allows students to complete one application for undergraduate college admission, instead of completing separate applications for each school. The platform also manages teacher recommendations, which consists primarily of letters of recommendation and a series of comparative ratings.

As far as an unpaid, part-time jobs go, completing college application recommendations is a good one. Let me explain.

First, I enjoy writing recommendation letters because I must pause to reflect on my experiences with students who are about to be done with high school. I think about the work we did together (in fact, I like to revisit and quote their essays!), the things I learned about their personal stories, and I marvel at the truly remarkable process of maturation that unfolds in dramatic, double-time fashion during high school.

Because I teach the spectrum of grade levels, I get to know my students first as kids and later as young adults. I like how the recommendation process caps our time together, and I find it meaningful to have played a positive role, sometimes small and sometimes substantial, in helping students prepare for and take next steps. I also get earnest thank you notes whose words do their intended job of making me feel useful and appreciated, and sometimes students show up to tell me when they’ve been accepted to schools and to talk through plans--often including the fact that they need additional recommendation letters for this scholarship and that. I get to help with those too.

A second, meaningful feature of the recommendation dynamic has made me a better educator, an improvement fueled by the ratings chart below. Give it a close read before we move on.

I have mixed feelings about rating recommendees in relation to student peers, but I continue to appreciate almost all of the categories, as they capture attributes that really matter—for success in high school, college, and life. The thing is that, years back, I realized I was rating students with regard to categories they were not aware of. Sure, these are things that matter to educators, but I can confirm they are not obvious to students who have absorbed messages about the defining nature of GPAs and standardized test scores. To be more blunt, students are confused about what matters, as evidenced by how surprised mine are when I share the chart with them.

Since teachers are evaluating students on the criteria above, it makes sense for us to establish them as "studenting" targets in our classrooms—targets that need to be discussed early and often.

A couple of criticisms:

Okay, “academic achievement” is challengingly broad and inclusive, and rating “intellectual promise” is a toughie, but I like to ponder the promise I see in my students. The student who writes poetry or plays chess beautifully? That’s promising. The student who is passionate about saving the planet, dismantling patriarchy, or understanding physics . . . promising!

The five criteria, with some overlap, that I find most meaningful:

I am convinced that quality writing reflects quality thinking. Writing is a way of knowing--a better, more thorough way than talking, working an equation, or taking a multiple choice test. Students need to embrace writing, not as a series of unpleasant episodes, but as a consistent practice that improves with every sentence.
Students who are engaged in class learn more, and participation in classroom discussions is also an excellent way to demonstrate leadership. Students who can pose tough questions, and build on others’ ideas make content their own while also inspiring classmates and animating the classroom dynamic. Active listening, too, is part of this skill.
Students need to express themselves creatively and take intellectual risks. Capturing a complex idea with a metaphor or channeling a concept into an original piece of art reflects synthesis, which is toward the top of Bloom’s for a reason.
Students who are disciplined in their approach to work get things done well. This overlaps with initiative and independence. Time management is the key to juggling a full course load and a busy life, and the slippery slope of procrastination must be avoided again and again. Students who embrace their roles as learners, those who genuinely value learning for learning’s sake (as opposed to laboring for points) nurture intellectual curiosity--the fuel needed to make the most of opportunities.
Students, like all people, need to earn respect from others, including their teachers, who are eager to bounce it back. Teachers do school with students, not to them, and mutual respect makes that possible. The quickest way to lose that respect is dishonesty. Cheating, excuse making, cutting corners to game the system all undermine learning.

Like many area teachers I am in the midst of ultra-busy weeks as I bring first semester classes to a close, while simultaneously preparing to transition to the second half of the year. This time in the academic calendar is always fraught, with extra helpings of grading (and some grade-grubbing) and planning, as well as a never-quiet Outlook inbox. This year, though, it’s fraught² (An exponent because many of us must wrap and restart in distance-learning mode. **Deep breath, focusing on a long exhale with healing self-talk: Phew... Everything will be okay.**)

As my students and I start second semester, we’ll wait on talk about percentages or papers; instead we’ll use the ratings chart to discuss authentic, effective studenting, which is even more important in distance-learning mode. Then they’ll reflect, in writing, on how they rate themselves for semester 1 before specifying targets for where they want to grow in semester 2.

They will write recommendations for themselves.

Phil Olson is an English teacher at Century High School in Rochester, Minnesota. He prefers to keep things simple.

Meandering Through the Messy Middle, Searching for Solid Ground

1/16/2022

by Stefanie Whitney

I hear myself using the phrase “messy middle” quite frequently of late. This meander seeks to make sense of what the term “messy middle” even means.

In my mind’s eye, I imagine the messy middle as a place where one is suspended in an ocean between two shores–both shores well beyond reach. Solid ground no longer underfoot, it’s incumbent upon me to make decisions that will, once again, lead me to a steady, grounded place.

Some moments I have experienced this uncomfortable feeling in the classroom and community have been when I have turned over the reins of control and held my breath in wonder about what my fellow humans will do with them. What will they do with the foundation I have built? What will my role look like now? Will they need me? What if a mess is made of the beautiful ground I crafted? What holds? What falls apart? And what was my role in both outcomes?

We cannot possibly know how all of this (envision widespread hands, palms up, gesturing at our world) is going to turn out, which is a bone chilling reality for anyone who appreciates a semblance of control. A reality that seems all the more staggering as each month passes in this extended twilight zone in which we all exist. (Though, I’d argue that messy middles occur whether we are in the middle of a global pandemic or not.)

From here, my mind wanders to William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” particularly this stanza:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

I am always admittedly stalled by Yeats' use of the word “loosed” twice, placed so closely together. In a little search for an improvement that I’m certain Yeats would appreciate, I arrived at Merriam Webster’s definition of loosed:

Loosed: (1) to cause a projectile to be driven forward with force (2) to find emotional release for (3) to set free as from slavery or confinement

Misters Merriam and Webster are speaking my language. For the purposes of this essay, please focus on the latter two definitions. Because of them, I will leave Yeats’ word choices alone. Also, if I may continue being so bold, it seems clear to me that Yeats was stuck in the messy middle of something, and he leaned on language to help make sense of it. The messy middle. Here we are. The middle of the school year, in the middle of a global pandemic, in the middle of hope for progress.

“...fantasy of control….” – “...the centre cannot hold….”

If we are finding that our old norms, our old systems are not working right now, then perhaps we need to investigate what those systems are built upon. If our souls are unsettled and we feel the bottom dropping out, then maybe our old systems are crashing head-on into our developing values; we are trying to hold our old systems up against an evolving human experience. It’s uncomfortable because that system felt safe and I knew my role, but I see more clearly all those not meant for that old system. They do not belong in it. So we don’t belong here, either. Change is crucial, and hard.

A bit about belonging

Brene Brown’s latest work, Atlas of the Heart, aims to help us identify and name experiences and emotions in order to gain power of “understanding, meaning, and choice.” While delving into the experience of belonging, Brown interviewed 8th graders about what it feels like to belong in a place. In their words:

Belonging is being somewhere where you want to be, and they want you.

Brown juxtaposes the definition of “belonging” against the definition of “fitting in,” which they describe as:

Being somewhere where you want to be, but they don’t care one way or the other.

Brown further explains,

Because we can feel belonging only if we have the courage to share our most authentic selves with people, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our self-acceptance.

Which begs the questions:

Shouldn’t we seek to build a community upon a center?
One where everyone can authentically root themselves?
One Where everyone feels like they are wanted and belong?

Heart is sea,
Language is shore.
Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore.

-Rumi

Brown’s explanation of belonging and Safir and Dugan’s description of a change process take us back to Yeats’ work; this time through the writing of Joan Didion, who borrows from Yeats’ poem for the titles of both a book of essays and a 1976 essay in the Saturday Evening Post. Didion acknowledges that,

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.

Didion, in exploring the upheaval and disruption of the 1970s, writes about the critical nature of thinking for one’s self. Belonging to one’s self. In “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” Didion states:

I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.

The words of both Didion and Rumi make me wonder:

Are we guiding students toward mastery of the language–so they are able to know themselves and think for themselves?
Are we giving them language that explains more than that which a system has determined is necessary to be successful?
Or are we also guiding them to master a language that helps them describe themselves? Language that helps them accurately describe how they feel and how they belong? Do we know this language? And are we willing to speak it?

It seems fitting to acknowledge the great loss of Joan Didion with her passing on December 23, 2021.

Again, Safir and Dugan address belonging when considering what a school district chooses to place value upon:

If we accept that success can be defined by a metric -- if we hold true that a child’s test scores or grade point average are determinants of her future -- we will find ourselves forever suspended in a hamster wheel, chasing external solutions, curricula, and validation. But if we believe that every student is more than a number (or a “trauma” story) -- is in fact a complex, layered human being with endless potential, brilliance, and access to community cultural wealth -- we can choose a pedagogy of voice that transforms everything from our classrooms to our adult cultures to our policies. Such a pedagogy says, “I see you. I believe in you. You are safe to grow and thrive here. I want to hear your voice.”

Untethered Moments

During last week’s bone-chilling, sunlit days, while driving through slush and refreeze, a whisper encouraged me to keep driving. Drive past the chain restaurants, the organized meetings, the weight of expectations. Drive until nothing familiar surrounds me, expectations are impossible to meet, and there are no commitments on the horizon. Even now, I’m staring out the window–eyes focusing on everything beyond reach and nothing at all. Maybe my retina and optic nerve are having an argument? Silent treatment is the worst. In all of my efforts to live in the moment–the only moment we can actually count on–here I am, daydreaming about a four-wheeled mode of escape. And it’s funny, because I’m not actually trying to escape this very moment. I am good. I am warm. I have coffee. I’m mostly not hungry.

It’s likely I am trying to escape the foreboding feeling that unsavory moments from my past will repeat themselves -or- maybe I am trying to sidestep future moments that I cannot clearly control in the here and now. Futility at its finest, right?

Nonetheless, I’m untethered right now, but I’m learning what tethers me. Perhaps these two things are the same for others:

(1) Belonging to myself–getting square with my values (for me, compassion and curiosity).

For an exercise on isolating your core values, check out Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead value activity.

(2) A sense of belonging within my communities.

When I’m feeling untethered, is it because the system and structures within which I’m trying to function no longer align with my values -or- because those systems and structures no longer feel like home to me? If I can answer this question, I tend to gather a bit more agency in my own experiences.

It’s not lost on me that I have the privilege to seek out agency in most of my experiences. Do our students have this same privilege? All of our students, I mean? Social and emotional learning is an educational hot button right now, and rightfully so. The more language I have as an adult to work through my discomfort, my emotions, and get clear on my values, the more agency I have when working for equilibrium. As an educator, how can I build systems in my spaces that allow all of us to get grounded in our values, to belong in this community?

The Students’ Take

Recently, I seized an opportunity to talk with students about their experiences with feedback. The questions that guided my work were: What type of feedback feels most actionable to you? What types or approaches to feedback can hinder your growth?
Inevitably, the responses of all 43 students, grades 8-12, revealed themes surrounding relationships, trust, and belonging. Feedback is an action, often a system at play. As an English teacher with limited time, logic centered my feedback, even if emotions (pride, frustration, excitement, passion) bolstered my feedback process. Students also acknowledged the existence of emotions at the heart of their feedback experience. All of the students spoke of how feedback, their teacher, or the classroom environment, made them feel.

Rarely did students talk about grades as the sole reason feedback is helpful, but all students discussed the need to have a relationship with the teacher or person giving feedback and a need to feel a sense of identity and belonging in the class. Some even spoke of the need for passion–from the teacher regarding their quest for students to learn and within the student for the subject area or topic. In short, students want to feel like they belong, like they are seen, and that their voices matter.

I’m struck by how students spoke of values and emotions, yet as adults we often find ourselves rumbling about external systems.

Treading Water

The messy middle can also be explained as a feeling of great discomfort. We have been in this sustained discomfort for months, years even. When I’m uncomfortable, I seek to ease that discomfort as quickly and painlessly as possible. However, I’m learning that, for me, the answer is to slow down, take stock, feel the intensity of and seek to better understand my emotions. Get grounded in my values.

Of course, in this sustained discomfort, we are apt to fight harder to reach one shore or the other; some form of solid ground. But what are we hoping to accomplish with all the splashing, thrashing, and death grips on past systems that don’t serve everyone? What if we normalize the kind of discomfort that bends toward progress, inclusion, and shared humanity?

Maybe the next best step is to calmly look inside at what is causing the turbulence, ground ourselves in our values, and then confidently and slowly start moving in a direction that aligns our value systems with the external systems that demand our attention? In that slow motion, one shore starts to loom larger. We can belong to our messy selves, and we can move with those folk who want us among them exactly as we are.

Stefanie Whitney, EdD, works with the Curriculum and Instruction team in Rochester Public Schools (RPS). She's also been an English teacher, an AVID instructor, and both a high school and a middle school instructional coach in RPS.

Finding the Collaboration Balance

1/9/2022

by Nick Truxal

The move to teaching online, even if it may be over for you, dear reader, does seem to have pushed some new practices into place that prove dangerous for teachers and students in the long-term. In particular, I’d like to focus on the new modes of communication and collaboration that have been implemented in the wake of Zooming to class.

Being more accessible to our colleagues, students, and parents certainly has its advantages. We can instantly help a student with a question, quickly let a parent know the status of the classroom, or have a great professional learning community with colleagues across the district, city, state, or nation. Of course, that student may want an answer at 11:00 pm, that parent may be trying to send an instant message during class and wonder why they don’t hear back, and “just one quick ten-minute meeting with administration over Zoom” may happen twice an hour.

Rob Cross, Adam Grant, and Reb Rebele wrote a fascinating piece on “Collaboration Overload” in 2016 (which Rob Cross continued into the book Beyond Collaboration Overload). In the article, they cite some interesting (pre-pandemic) trends. Trends such as:

the number of meetings employees are expected to attend have ballooned dramatically over the last ten years
“3% to 5% of employees” make up “20%-35% of the value-add” of meetings
the more “in-demand” an individual employee was as a collaborator, the more damaging the situation became for that employee, and in-turn for those they were trying to help

Of course, in a school, the most in-demand employees are teachers, administrators, counselors, psychologists…all of whom are finding that the world of instant communication has opened up certain flood-gates.

Interestingly, Adam Grant offered a solution to this issue three years before he helped to identify it. He spoke of a certain Fortune 500 company that implemented “Quiet time.” Three mornings a week, employees would not be exposed to superfluous e-mails (or any e-mails), “Just one quick thing” situations, “stand-up meetings,” nor anything else. The interesting part of this: when the company successfully implemented these quiet times, productivity increased an enormous 65%. However, even having employees self-impose (to the extent they were able) a similar policy, resulted in a 47% increase in productivity.

To me, this led to an interesting tension.

In my own practice, and in my own data, I can tell you that communication is important (I am sure you’re shocked). I have long been in the habit of sending FERPA safe emails to every parent with updates every Friday via a mail-merge setup. When communication was personalized and consistent, I found a 20% positive change in the grades and skill attainment that my students had in my classes. Just from communicating with their parents. I did a similar experiment in sending e-mails to my students, and found similar results.

So, communication is vital—and detrimental—to the surprise of no-one.

The Break Down of Implications...

FOR EDUCATORS

Hold some time as sacred.

This can be the time you are teaching, so you don’t have to constantly be worried about missing a communication that just popped in
This can be during your preparation time
As an administrator, this can be something that is purposefully managed for the benefit of all

Communicate with parents and students at a rate they are also comfortable with.

Asking parents or students what that rate of communication might be is always a great place to start
Finding out what you can safely communicate, and making sure that parents and students want that communication, is also a great idea
Personalization of communication is one way that we can make sure that our parents and students feel that they are being seen and heard as a human and by a human

FOR CLASSROOMS

Giving students uninterrupted time to work: increase productivity.

Uninterrupted doesn’t mean that you can’t rotate around, offer rapid feedback, or spur imagination
Uninterrupted also doesn’t mean a quiet, claustrophobic room
Uninterrupted means that no new demands for time or attention are placed upon the student during that time, which may be a luxury not afforded at home

I am sure there are many implications to these studies that I haven’t had time to parse, yet. If you have further insights, please feel free to share them with us.

Nick Truxal is currently a student in NYU's HCAT program and the bass player for a number of Minnesota-based bands.

Making it Meaningful: Reimagining Credit Recovery

1/2/2022

by Sweta Patel

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that, in 2019, two million students dropped out of high school. There are a number of reasons why students choose to drop out, but at the end of the day, as an educator, I want to focus on effecting change for the reasons that are in my control.

At our alternative school, students often report low motivation because they’re already so behind in credits. At a certain point, many assume a ‘why should I even bother’ mentality. To help create hope, while also maintaining the integrity of our academic standards, we are currently experimenting with an in-school, non-computer-based credit recovery system.

This year, we squeezed in an extra period into our school day (a 7th hour). During this time, we are offering “credit recovery labs” in the four core areas—English, math, science, and social studies. Students who had failed a previous English class, for example, can enroll in the English Lab.

When they first enter a lab:

students learn about the process they will follow to recover credit in that content area
the lab teachers identify the class the student failed, at what percentage, and then read through feedback and recommendations provided by the original classroom teacher
The lab teacher and the student, together, form a credit recovery plan based on the students’ interests and missed standards.

Once the plan is fulfilled, students can move into another needed lab. Students do not have to remain in the lab the entire quarter: they only have to remain long enough to accomplish mutually agreed upon goals.

This process is very different from what we typically see in the educational system. Students who have failed a course are usually required to retake the entire course (despite having completed some work and meeting some standards during the first attempt). With this system, we are acknowledging the learning that was accomplished and are only trying to fill in the gaps. Within this system, students are able to meaningfully and efficiently recover credit in failed classes with a classroom teacher.

When speaking with students in my English Lab this year, they feel the labs have given them hope again. Looking around my classroom, you might see one student reading a self-selected book and working on close reading strategies. Another student might be working on creating a Google Slides presentation around toxic relationships, preparing to deliver it to the health class. And yet another might have a Chromebook in hand, drafting a short story for feedback.

My role is to identify students’ interests, learning gaps, and help create a personalized learning plan. When students complete the plan, I ask the counselor to identify the next lab or class the student can go to—and this might be three weeks into the quarter or six—there is no one start/end time for every student because every student’s plan is different; it’s a fluid and flexible system. Many of our lab students are able to recover a half credit in one quarter… And that is hope.

As we move forward with this experiment, we’re hoping to develop a more efficient system to identify missed standards. This will require that all content area teachers come together and identify prioritized learning standards for each class, quarter by quarter. If a student were to fail a course during a certain quarter, with established learning standards, lab teachers would be able to more quickly work with the original classroom teacher to identify the gaps.

Our math department is already very strong in this area. Here is an example of the Math Lab teacher’s personalized plan for a student to recover Geometry credit:

We hope to continue to shape our in-person, teacher-led credit recovery system at our school through collaboration among the lab teachers, content area classroom teachers, students, and our counselor. We will refine the processes for identifying students who need a lab, tracking students who move from lab to lab, and the communication between lab teachers and the original classroom teachers.

This is our shared mission: to help students recover credit in a meaningful, purposeful way (with academic integrity) that creates hope and lowers our dropout rate.

Sweta Patel is an English teacher at the Rochester Alternative Learning Center in Southern, Minnesota. She also teaches Cell Phone Photography, Personal Finance, and a motivational class for seniors (co-taught with a community college). She feels lucky to work at a small, alternative school that encourages creativity and innovation.