Third Eye Education
  • Read
  • Listen
    • Season 2 | 2022
    • Season 1 | 2021
  • Meet
    • writing team
    • podcasting team
    • origin & founders
  • Collaborate
    • connect with us
    • mission & vision
  • Share

Education: The Free Market

3/27/2022

 
​by Julie Brock
I do not protest to understand the stock market. Even though Bloomberg runs in the background while my partner in this life checks Robinhood, I am happily ill equipped to invest your money. However, I do like metaphors. Lately I have found myself saying two phrases ad nauseum as they pertain to education:

  1. We must account for the University of Youtube, TikTok, and other social media platforms in credit for prior learning, and
  2. Education does not hold the corner market on knowledge and information
Picture

University of YouTube

Is there an actual YouTube University? No. There is a channel named YouTube University, but no, there is not an actual YouTube University. However, think about how many times you have used YouTube to figure out how to change a headlight, remove a stripped screw, or build a retaining wall.
Related read: 'Skill-Based' & 'Data-Driven' - Education Buzz Words No Longer
There is valuable information on social media platforms that people are using and gaining knowledge for free and it isn’t just for hobbies. As a college first-year, my son found his way into a physics class that was harder than any class he had previously experienced. He went to office hours, met with the graduate assistants, asked for resources, and at the end of the day, he found an educator on YouTube that explained the material in a way that worked with his learning style. In addition, he learned how to build a chicken coop to code, how to replace his graphics card, and numerous other helpful learnings that he continues to build up in his learning portfolio.
 
And I ask my higher ed colleagues:
  • How are we accounting for this learning?
  • How are we helping students figure out exactly what they know?
  • How do we know if their learning it is up to standard and give them credit for it?​
Related read: Why Does the Frame We Use Matter? Embracing Curiosity Over Judgment.
This matters because students are opting out of higher education. According to the Minnesota Student Longitudinal Data Set (SLEDS), roughly 70% of Minnesota high school graduates who enroll in college settings persist in earning a Bachelor’s degree. The number drops for 2017 high school graduates, which makes sense: their 3rd year is the 2019-2020 academic year.
Picture
A disruption as large as a global pandemic will have serious consequences on college persistence, however, the trend was holding prior to COVID-19.
 
There are many variables playing into this scenario that were barriers to higher education well before COVID-19:
  • The rising cost of tuition versus low wages in early careers
  • The inability to find positions in degree fields
  • The ability to learn information through online platforms at no cost
 
Internet learning is disrupting traditional education, and unless higher education institutions find a way to compete, their relevance is waning for rising generations. According to NPR, more students are opting to stay out of higher education because of rising costs of tuition and life. Without a clear return on investment, it is hard for people to see the value of attending college when, perhaps, they can learn the skills on the job or online. 

Corner Market, no longer

Offering credit for prior learning is one way higher education can stay relevant in this ever-changing education market, in addition to helping students understand the importance of accredited programs as a solid investment of time and money. And both these are good return on investment arguments. Thinking that higher education has the corner market on knowledge and information is no longer relevant or real.
Related podcast episode: Giving Students a Say with Myron Dueck
Crowdsourcing is not just for restaurant recommendations. People have eye witnesses across the globe at their fingertips. There is no need to rely on an educational institution for information or knowledge. Operating as such only perpetuates an antiquated system of learning. What higher education institutions do have to offer, if accredited, is the verification of learning for employers. However, with a 3% unemployment rate and more employers offering livable wages, it is tough to compete with going straight into the workforce.
 
Instead, how can higher education institutions create experiences that pull in the technological advances that students cannot get elsewhere? How about simulators, AI, and accredited degrees that can transfer and pay-off over time? How do we transform higher education as a conduit of information and knowledge that accentuates and builds on the skills students are learning elsewhere?
Related podcast episode: Project Based, Data Driven Education with Anna Tavis

What can higher education do?

  • Shift educators as partners in an individual’s education journey versus deliverers of education
  • Remember that we are preparing people for their career path, not ours
  • Partner with business and the community to understand the current and future needs
 
Overall, if higher education promotes themselves as a collaborative partner in the success and growth of individuals and the community, then higher education can find their place in this open and free education market. 

​Juile Brock has worked in the world of education for a few decades now and currently is the Assistant Director of licensure, accreditation, & assessment  for WSU's College of Education. Find our more about her on her website.

'Skill-Based' & 'Data-Driven': Education Buzz Words No Longer

2/6/2022

 
by Nick Truxal
​Recently, I took a break from my years as an educator to get new training on better leading and applying evidence: specifically, data driven evidence.  The focus of my program is the corporate world, and as such, I am having a number of revelations. 
 
The one that I want to focus on today is that the corporate world is transforming in many of the same ways that we have been doing in education.  There is an enormous focus on skills: building new skills in employees, breaking jobs down by associated skills, understanding the skills needed to perform well in teams, as well as assessing and reporting based on skills.
 
Since our inception, Third Eye Education has been speaking about skill-based reporting. Just a few examples: 
  • This podcast episode with Myron Dueck:  "Airport Stories: Piloting Students Beyond Silos" (February 2021)
  • This article inspired by the work of Dessa: "Inspiration for Transdisciplinarity Innovation and Application" (March 2021)
  • These podcast episodes "A Hip Hop Education" with Ian P. Levy (May 2021) and "A Rich Process of Creation" with Lazerbeak and Ilan (August 2021)
  • This article inspired by the work of Sarah Zerwin: "Focusing on Feedback: Reassessing Letter Grades" (June 2021)

I personally love feedback only, skill-based instruction and reporting.  The remarkable thing is that the entire world seems to be making a pivot in this direction as well. There are a few key reasons driving this transformation, and a few key takeaways for educators.  ​
Related read: Beyond Making the Grade -- Motivating Jagged Learners with ClassROWEs

What's driving this transformation?

These reasons may sound familiar, but the slant on them I find unique:
  • There seems to be universal agreement that employee evaluations have been poor
  • There has increasingly been a need to make assessments and evaluations more valuable
  • The options most organizations explored were (and I love these):
    • Become skill-based in their assessments
    • Create an algorithm that takes into account the performance of those surrounding the person being evaluated, the culture they are a part of, the audience they are working with, etc.
    • There was an understanding that staying with the current system was simply not an option (though, of course, not everyone has the resources to pivot)
Picture

What may educators pull from this?

​I see these as being parallel to the conversations we’ve been having in education.  Of course, each can be applied to how we, as teachers, are assessed as well as how we assess our students.  I do wish that I had considered the third bullet point above, which is offering options to better our practices, before jumping into the work, myself. 

​Ultimately, this means a few things for educators:
  1. The concern that we are shifting the conversation to skills when colleges and workplaces are not is a misplaced concern.  Colleges are, again, as I can attest by being in a masters program at the moment.  Moreover, those programs that are not will certainly be under pressure to become more skill focused as resumes become more skill focused (again, as I can attest - I had to update my resume for my internship, and was advised to move from work experience to skill based).  As employers hire based on skills demonstrated through the resume, the employee portfolio (again, becoming more important), and the placement assessments being taken.
  2. These efforts can teach us how to better implement skill based feedback in our educator evaluation systems as well as in classrooms.  We can learn from efforts to break down discrete skills and competencies.  We can see new technologies that can help us to do so, to track skills, and to help students understand the root skills needed for employment they may ultimately find attractive.
  3. As we are making a shift as a society towards skills rather than experiences, this should be something we see at all ages, not simply the end of high school.  When kindergartners are on a nature hike, the experience is fantastic.  What skill are we hoping they take from that experience?  There are certainly a plethora of options, from critical observation skills to rudimentary understanding of biological systems.  Knowing our purpose before planning our experiences can help ground our practices.
Related podcast episode: Project Based, Data Driven Education
A small disclaimer as I conclude:  I’ve always hated the idea that education should take anything from business.  We are not a business.  We are here to help young people to grow.  I’ve often found it difficult to accept the best practices emerging in the workplace.  I think I found it easier this time because it so closely mimics what we’ve been working on for a long while. 

Further, it does show a fundamental shift in the way our society is thinking, and having advanced knowledge of such a shift can indeed help us better prepare our young people to grow.  

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

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.
Picture
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.

Picture
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.
Picture
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.
Related listening: Airport Stories - Piloting Students Beyond the Silos
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!
Related read: Embracing the Beauty of Constraints

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.**)
Related read: Meandering Through the Messy Middle, Searching for Solid Ground
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. 

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.  
Related read: Finding Our Portals to Transcendence
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. ​
Related read: Rethinking Education - Using the Pandemic as Inspiration for Innovation
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.  
Picture

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
Related read: We Are the Leaders We Seek
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.
Related read: Rethinking Education - Using the Pandemic as Inspiration for Innovation
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.
Related listening: Giving Students a Say with Myron Dueck
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. ​
Picture
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.
Related Read: Beyond Making the Grade - Motivating Jagged Learners with ClassROWEs
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:
Picture
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. 

Learning from Our Students

12/19/2021

 
by Jean Prokott
Picture
The sophomores have spent December writing creative nonfiction, short vignettes that allow them to rummage around for the metaphors hiding in their lives. I’ve been teaching personal essay for the last decade, so I often predict the topics students will choose (failing a test, church mission trip, sports injury) and the symbols they will find (butterflies, water, clouds) and preemptively direct them away from those clichés. The best part is to tell them what not to write. They have to keep rummaging.

Every once in a while, a kid finds a perfect peach of a topic and writes about it in a way that unties me. I want to share with you the story of “nonnie” so you see what I mean.* ​

​nonnie
​

When I found nonnie she was lying on her side, her stomach bloated, legs straight out, stiff, eyes wide open. The flies had already found her; they swarmed around her mouth, entered and exited as they pleased. She never let anyone as close as I was to her, she should have been running, putting a comfortable distance between us, keeping an eye on me as I fed the other cows. Yet there at my feet she lay motionless, off guard, vulnerable. Her fur coat fluffy, white and grey splotches with black running through like ink in water. Swirling, twisting, winding its way down her back and along her sides, creating an elegant contrast. This beautiful creature one foot away who should be running but is still as a rock. This beautiful creature with fluid creeping out of her mouth forming a puddle at my feet. The same fluid that built up in her lungs and drowned her, all because she faced an incline and couldn't get up. Such a simple action. There were visible imprints on the ground like a marred snow angel, made while she fought for life.
 
nonnie wasn't a tame cow, never one to crowd for food. She found out how to get under a fence in the far paddock and went for a couple joy runs. She ate grass in the pasture. She liked potatoes. I watched her birth, the first time I had ever seen a cow born. 3 days late, quick labor, the placenta covered her nose and I helped cut it away. Her mom tiredly cleaned her. She nursed the first milk, the most important for the calf, the colostrum containing antibodies necessary for immunity.  I remembered those things as I looked at her lifeless body. I saw this cow as a fresh little calf and I now see her as a bloated, lifeless, mound.
  
When Bill got there he told me what happened to nonnie. He got the skid loader and moved her to a grove of trees far from the house. I asked if he buried her, he said the coyotes would find her.​
That comma splice in the last line alone.

That structure with time, to start and end with death, to bring nonnie to life in the middle.

Her metaphor is one we all know. There's a defining moment in our lives when we learn about death. nonnie represents the literal of this coming-of-age, but also her struggle up the hill represents how my student felt when she lost nonnie.
Related read: On the Joy of Discomfort
It was a gift to read this piece. I wrote tomes of feedback in purple pen—mostly stars and wut and this is powerful over and over to the point where she probably thought I’d been living as a recluse for the last decade with only episodes of trash TV to keep me company. (Although to be fair, I think I just described last year and most of this one.)

One would have to be a callous car crash of a person if they didn’t feel their heart explode when they learned about nonnie’s fate and the effect she'd had on my student, and the day I read this, the time of year I read this, that this had been the 80th out of 95 essays I’d read—nonnie’s story was literally the saddest thing I’d ever heard in my whole sad life and I would spend the rest of my days mourning nonnie and my student’s loss.
​
After I read about nonnie, I had a flashback to an experience I’d had on my grandparents’ dairy farm and a cow named Flopsy, who’d been born with a messed-up leg. The end of that story is predictable: while eating hamburgers one evening, my father brought it up.

​​​That wasn’t the impetus of my response, however.
Picture
I sent a few lines of the essay to a few teacher friends with the note:

Picture
​And they wrote back: 

Because it is quite clear we are all nonnie. 
Related read: Our Stories are Data, Too
Her tragedy was that she’d wanted to climb a hill. There are so many hills this year. nonnie drowned “all because she faced an incline and couldn't get up. Such a simple action.” nonnie had spent her life free and sassy and getting under fences. She “liked potatoes.”  I like potatoes, too, I’d thought. I like potatoes, too.
​
Since the assignment was not one short scene, but three, when I conferenced with my student this week, I reviewed more rough drafts. One was about a horse named Iago (and I’m sorry, but find a more perfect name for a horse). An excerpt:
He broke through the fence the first day we had him […] Iago became my favorite horse. First I was brushing him, that soon turned into riding him, performing tricks like standing on him, spending hours in the barnyard making different ¨5 star meals¨ out of oats, potatoes, and grass (sushi was the favorite).
Is Iago still alive? I asked. Yes, Ms. Prokott, Iago is still alive.
​

The third scene was about a chicken.
the chicken I refuse to name

​Just two weeks after we got the chicks they had doubled in size. Besse chickens, white, fat, feathers missing, they were meat birds. As chicks they were cute but the chick phase quickly disappeared, lasting only two weeks. This type of chicken is bred to grow fast as most meat birds are. It's easier that way, the stressed heart, weak legs, achy joints, and poor quality of life are a small setback. So small in fact that it gets skipped over, we don't care about the living chicken, we care about the meat. The fact that it grows fast and is ready to butcher in about a month and a half outweighs the chicken's life experience.
 
The chicken I refuse to name was probably three weeks old, it was in a really ugly period where the feathers were patchy, bare pink skin showed through, like a red stain on white. The chicken's feathers were dusty, making her look cream. She was probably two pounds, not fully grown but not a chick. I found her laying down in the chick coop, her breath irregular, heavy, all the energy she had quickly depleted as she tried to prolong her life. Slow, sickly, inhale, shaky, lacking, exhale. Her eyes tired, head heavy, dropped like a weight to the hard ground. She was suffering. I brought over a bowl of water and a small handful of food, like that was going to help. She didn't even seem to notice me, eyes lazily fixed ahead of her, hanging on to all the energy she had left. When she didn't eat or drink I sat there for a while, I knew what was going to happen next. Though it was selfish I wasn't ready for her to die, maybe she would get better. As I sat there though, I knew I was kidding myself, she wasn't going to get any better. I looked at her one last time, in all her frailty and weakness. Then I told Bill.
 
As he walked toward the chickens I walked slowly the other way. I came back to the chickens, shovel in hand, gloves on. With a hole, about a foot deep, dug under the cover of a large maple, I picked up her small, delicate, body and buried her.
I read this, I looked up, I said: Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to kill me?
Related read: Creating Space for Student Empowerment
What also kills me is how humble she is. I think I might spend the rest of the year convincing her that, yes, it is that good. I know I will spend the next decade using her essay as a model for the assignment. And I just now realize this random IKEA print of a cow I have hanging in my classroom will never look the same.
Picture
My reaction to this powerful piece was not only reader-response, of course—this student has mastered empathy and control of language and voice and happy accidents and every possible technique to make me react the way I did. But I don’t want to talk about how she got there, don’t care to list which activities we did in the classroom, don’t want to get my nails dirty in pedagogy. This was all her. I simply want to share this victory. Her victory to write such a heart wrenching piece, to have the maturity to revisit grief and make it beautiful.

While we’re all nonnies this year, struggling up the hill (and praying we don’t meet her fate) maybe we can also be my student. It’s been a year of loss, so let’s talk about it. Maybe find the metaphors. Learn from our students. 
​
And the next time you have a glass of milk, please pour one out for nonnie.

​* The student has given me permission to share. 

Picture
​Jean Prokott is an English teacher in the Rochester Public Schools. She is also the author of the book The Second Longest Day of the Year which won the Howling Bird Press Book Prize, author of the chapbook The Birthday Effect, a recipient of the AWP Intro Journals Award, and has both poetry and nonfiction published in numerous journals.  Learn more about Prokott online or connect via ​email.


<<Previous
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    ​Third Eye Education posts weekly articles focusing on education and innovation. 

    Archives

    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021

    Categories

    All
    Adaptability
    Autonomy
    Belonging
    Change
    Classroom Culture
    Collaboration
    Communication
    Community
    Creativity
    Cross Curricular
    Discomfort
    Empathy
    Engagement
    Feedback
    Flexibility
    Impact
    Initiative
    Intentionality
    Mindfulness
    Perspective

    RSS Feed

    Tweet to @thirdeyeed
Picture
Articles
Podcast Episodes

​Third Eye Education is supported by Dover-Eyota Public Schools
  • Read
  • Listen
    • Season 2 | 2022
    • Season 1 | 2021
  • Meet
    • writing team
    • podcasting team
    • origin & founders
  • Collaborate
    • connect with us
    • mission & vision
  • Share