New discoveries for our own personal star maps

There are days when something so simple makes all the difference. And makes you remember why you teach. This was one of those days.



I've been feeling seriously burned out on the job, frankly. All the various legal requirements and outside bureaucracy that persistently get in the way of me - and most of my colleagues, honestly, if you ask them and, perhaps, care or give some thought what they might think on the matter - bringing a commitment of excellence in education and not just the mandated "free and adequate public education" that so often encourages and enforces diminishing expectations in public education - "a rising tide of mediocrity," as one man spoke of it - in my field have really been weighing heavy on me, this semester.

So much time that could be spent preparing really meaningful lessons eaten up by requirements, many of which are dedicated to explaining away failure with kids who have failed far more than most, rather than committing ourselves to their success. And the ways it distorts more honest understandings of what is going on with kids and adults and schools and ways to create the best opportunities for all of them.

A class I have at the local university, in particular, has been eating at me, given the professor's more conventional commitment to making excuses for failure rather than facing it honestly, learning about its honest sources and committing kids and adults to success and more meaningful understandings of the world around them.

The strongest liberal education, in other words. The kind that matters. To those who believe that it matters. People like me, at least.

The prospect of resigning myself to this nonsense and all of the ways that its mandated variations are out of my control was getting too much, as of late. Given opportunities to leave the field and mark a path for greatness, or at least an independent working existence, elsewhere.

And, last night, in my mental and emotional exhaustion and my lack of inspiration for original lesson ideas for the week, I decided to do something very simple that made all the difference, today.

I decided to have a conversation with the kids.

The question that got the ball rolling was very straightforward and at the heart of all of my anguishing about the distance between why I became a teacher and what education had devolved into, in an age when government fiat too often trumps the commitment of liberal education to develop conscience, freely and honestly. What that liberal in "liberal education" stands for. Liberty, namely. And the commitment to the development of a free and independent conscience that it implies.

The question I asked the kids was, "Does it matter to learn something, to know something, about this world?"

Outside of the assessments - the DBQ's, or Document-Based Questions, as the kids, with half-hearted inspiration and dread, simultaneously, know them - outside of the requirement to take history classes, outside even of the legal compulsion to be at school. Outside of parents and teachers and other adults and all the people who tell them that they should get an education and that education is their future and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And out of that question, the kids and I had really remarkably profound conversations, today. About the nature of learning and knowing and education. Every class had lively and, at times, passionate opinions on the matter (except for a few in 2nd hour, where a couple of kids opted for napping, all efforts to engage them to the contrary). Even the one girl who argued in 6th hour that education did not matter did so thoughtfully and thoroughly immersed in the discussion (the most involved in that class, ironically).

So many interesting directions with this conversation. The nature of success and education's role in that journey and destination. The nature of education and learning and all those places it shows up. The relationship between street smarts and book smarts and which mattered most in life. Whether learning mattered independent of whether it advances our ambitions or wealth or opportunities.

And my favorite insight from Noah in 4th hour. That so much of school and life gets bogged down in ways peoples' various insecurities - smart people and not-so-smart people, good folks and not-so-good folks, good-looking and the not-terribly-pretty, the more and less talented, the petty-minded and the bigger-minded folks of the world, and down the line - how all of this is constantly getting in the way of people being able to keep focus on this much more fundamental question.

Does it matter to learn, to grow, to develop, to mature, for it's own sake? No matter from where in life we come from. And no matter what stations in life we aspire to.



It was really extraordinary, actually. A bunch of fairly terribly behaved teenage kids, almost all of whom have been in more serious trouble with the law or with school, in one form or another. Many of whose ability to read and reason have been, otherwise, cast in more serious doubt. Many of whom adults have variously given up on. All having a very serious and well-reasoned and, often enough, passionate conversation about whether education matters for its own sake. Completely independent of what it does for each of us tangibly.

It was really insightful for me because it got me much more square with my own insecurities. The same insecurities I work with the kids on. Whether I'm smart enough. Or good enough. Or successful enough. Or whatever enough to warrant peoples' love and respect. And the ways that my own insecurities play out in the classroom, as much as my relationships, or my life, or anywhere else.

We talked about Jack Johnson, of course. Since he's my musical hero, and all.

What was so profound about it, for me, was that in a world that is consumed in those insecurities - in its politics, in the world of high finance and average everyday work-a-day business, in its sports and entertainment industries, especially the world of popular music, and most certainly in its press and media and in its universities and think tanks, in almost every facet of life in America and in the world - these kids, generally thought of as intellectually incapable, even by many of their own teachers, and often thought beyond the pale, even by many of their own parents and family members, were getting underneath some of the more profound truths of human nature and life on this third planet from the sun. And I was learning with them, too. About the world and people. About myself, as much as anything else.

And, to boot, they were enjoying it. I don't know if I had ever seen them appreciate a abstract classroom conversation nearly as well before. And I don't know if I've ever learned so much from kids in one day, from the whole experience. I don't know if I've learned so much from anyone in one day, nevertheless these kids.

It was all really pretty profound for me. A fundamental conversation about the nature of education. And a reminder of why I got into this work, in the first place.

The only and best therapy for my eduction blues.

If this becomes a regular feature of my life as a teacher, I don't know how I can quit, is the truth. It almost felt like I was getting through, today. I'm sure that will fade, tomorrow. But, maybe, like the tide, it will return and perhaps, with it, bring the promise of something else over that moonlit horizon.

I don't want kids who will settle for good or smart after being thought delinquent or retarded and otherwise incapable.

I expect greatness. And genius.

And today we got a little closer to constellations never conceived before on these kids' sky maps.



And that, if you're wondering, is why I do this work.