The Depths of Many Marvelous Moments Seen all at One Time.

This is a long chapter.  I'll probably write two or three posts about it - I counted the pages.  It is nearly twice as long as the rest of the chapters and involved too - a lot going on.  It brought a lot of moments to my mind, took me to a lot of places in my timeline and so things to write about.  Here's Part 1. 

The opening paragraph caught my attention for a while - I just sat thinking about if it would be useful for students to ponder as future educators, or if I could work it into a lesson about seeing the classroom.  How do we see the classroom - we can't see everything at once, we are not able to see that fourth dimension like Tralfamadorians, but can we develop a critical eye that lets us see the past, future and present all within a larger sociocultural context?  At least an imagining of the future we want - again I return to the use of Currere.  Seeing the classroom as an active conversation, not a passive info dump - too often we are stuck focusing on the mechanical "clerking" of teaching, as Bill Ayers has called it, but that is such a small part.   Good teaching demands cognitive gymnastics to engage all students - care, awareness, reflection, attention - all in the praxis of the classroom.  It is not the delivery of a packaged pre set curriculum, its an exploration of life in the context of school.  If I had learned to participate in my own currere, I may have avoided the pitfall I describe next, explored through the four turns of the Currere Method.

Regression - Raised Roman Catholic, going to Catholic schools - I was insulated from a lot of "other" in the world, though I did have a World Religions class, and so I was open to other ideas and ways of faith.  I had at least a rudimentary level knowledge going into college and I thought it expanded further, but I did not have a course that challenged my assumptions about religion and the population.  My first year of teaching, I taught a Contemporary World Issues Course.  It was Christmas time, and so I thought for a project we could make ornaments- First Amendment Ornaments! Fun!  Maybe they would do the Five Freedoms, or Cruel and Unusual Punishment.  Brilliant.  My Jewish student and Muslim student came up to my podium and asked what I wanted them to do, laughing a bit.  I was aghast at my arrogant assumption, and apologized profusely, feeling as bad as one can feel.  They said it was okay, it happens.  It was not.   It should not.  There are 1000 things students can build as representative of a concept - so many different ways to show they understand something.  It did not have to be a Christmas Ornament.  It never was again. 

Progressive - I want a classroom that allows everyone to feel a part and belong - beyond the surface.  I want the classroom not just representative, but inclusive and actively engaging for students of all walks of life.  Everyone at the table, with a voice.  That's the future we need for all students - school should not conform students to a particular walk of life, but instead be the life journey students need to develop.  We are still struggling to break from the industrial mindset of schooling - we have yet to Catch the Knowledge Wave (Gilbert) and shift what we need to know - shift our purpose as educators from delivery to guidance - and dare to build a new social order (Counts). 

Analytical - In the current moment, I teach two courses where I draw on my own experiences and attempt to share them with students to drive different perspectives and ask different questions - I am working with what I have to engage change in schools through the conduit of the teacher.  Have you considered.  Did you think about.  Lets look at it like this.  I stay current on my readings - the literature of the day - aside form Slaughterhouse Five - I am reading Becoming from Michelle Obama (SO GOOD) and I have White Fragility on deck having just finished White Rage.  Good books for engaging students from historical perspectives and different points of view - and I encourage my students to read them.  I use the classroom as a laboratory for shifting perspectives on good teaching and learning, what is worth knowing.  Who is the educated person and what is the purpose of schools.  I recently re-read some of Bill Ayers essays on education - teachers have to keep in mind that "Teaching is spectacularly unlimited"(119) and "Good teaching requires most of all a thoughtful caring teacher committed to the lives of their students" (121).  While knowledge of standards is important, they, like technology, are always changing  It's more important to understand how to be in the classroom, regardless of standards - or technology- and how to think about teaching - not just "how" to teach - Maria Montessori would argue there is no actual method - there is only the child.  Teaching first, technology second.  Child first, content second.  Or something like that.  Construct the Deweyan environment and allow the students to think, explore and construct knowledge. 

Synthetic- What is it to be a multicultural educator the 21st century?  I am not sure I know, but I think I have a few ideas and I think Currere is a strong tool to use, as it allows students to think in four turns - its not all at once, we cant see it all at once - the classroom remains three dimensional.  However, it engages the mechanism and forces different perspectives.  My undergraduates are currently writing their cultural autobiographies - instructed to look back, look froward and look at the now, considering Race, Gender and SES to begin - before investigating sexual orientation, ethnicity, language and exceptionality.  You have to know the history of American from a different perspective.  Teachers have to know who they are to learn how to know who the students are- and teach them.  I need to assign A Different Mirror next year.  Placing myself and my students in the larger picture - the demographics of the United States continue to change at a rapid pace.  There is no stopping the kaleidoscope from being more different every year - and its amazing.  The longer schools stay stagnant, the more we will continue to fail students.  Vonnegut writes: "The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied luminous spaghetti" (87).   If only we could see in the fourth dimension, but would we still need schools if we already knew it all at once?  What would schools look like if we stopped trying to freeze students in a moment of time - in amber - forcing their individuality to be the focus- and instead allowed them to communicate, collaborate, critically think and create in ways and content interesting to their own sense of learning. 

I do my best work in the Regressive - I can imagine a nice Progressive.  The Analytical and Synthetic generally roll together for me - and I always struggle to truly tease the apart.  Ive been told thats okay - but this is just a blog so it does not have to be final.  It is just a drop in the bucket. 

Ale81 is the Best Ginger Ale - Don't @ Me

Billy gets knocked back into his childhood, taking a trip out west with his parents - though he hates the Grand Canyon for some reason, I quite enjoy traveling and I do prefer it with other people.  I believe life overall is meant to be experienced with others, humans are social creatures.  We seek out others to build memories with and through.  I mean, not always, there is a place for alone time, but there is something to experiencing new things together and making shared memories - it's better than a picture becuase you get to tell the story and build the understanding together.  This bleeds over into my philosophy of education - learning occurs with others, it's not independent, or competitive, its collaborative and communal.  It has to be, or we are going to blow the earth to hell, honestly.  It's the message of the Daisy commercial from the Johnson Campaign.  Love each other, or die. 

I do take my own personal daycations to nearby towns for coffee and a book, and I have gone on longer weekends away for an overnight - but while I can do this alone I think it is always better with a partner - or friends.  For example, this weekend I have a race coming up in North Carolina - also South Carolina, with 6 people.  6 people, running a relay, together - making memories and sharing stories - in the van, at the exchanges.  We are running from Ashville to Greenville, so aptly named the Ville to Ville.  Only 75 miles, it is a one day relay with 6 of us in a mini van jogging our way to the end.  The highlight will be the people - the running is fun - but the time in the van is the best.  Its where some of the best nicknames, and catchphrases are born, right Andrew?  "There he runs, like a Beast Machine."    It will be our second time - I have run races with three of these people - Chris, Trevor and Kevin - the other two are new and that just means friends I have not met yet.  Chris and I have spectacular stories of Eagles, Hugs, and Guy Love.   

A quality high five between two quality people.

One trip that I revisit often when I am unstuck in time, is one with my cousin Doug.  He needed to get away once.  I did too.  We went to Red River Gorge, and there are pictures - but once again pictures can never tell the full story - together we can tell the full story.

Always waiting for the other shoe to drop

The breath taking beauty of the green trees, the wet smell of the forest floor.  The chill of the rock against your back after a long hike up and down and all around - eating tuna and crackers and drinking just enough water to not use it all up.
MRE's for dinner - that macaroni and cheese was delightful, and a small campfire- just sitting in nature.  We wore full packs, tents, pads - we were staying the night.  We reached Chimney Rock, and camped out there - the second day we walked around and saw the natural bridge, and just explored.  Its time to go back.   Its been almost . . . 8 years?

All hikers recommend gym shorts and cotton shirts.

". . . the candles and the soap were made from the fat of rendered Jews and Gypsies and fairies and communists, and other enemies of the State.  So it goes."


I always forced the Holocaust into the curriculum.  I suppose you are not supposed too - I know I have read that you shouldn't force items into standards, if you don't teach the standards they students will not pass their tests - but I always felt I could find a way to connect it.  So I did.  I am not ashamed, they always did fine on their tests.  It is a lesson that has to be learned because as of today - in 2019 - we have yet to learn the damn lesson.  It's important.  My zeal is emergent from my college capstone - which was simply titled The Holocaust, HST 400.  The knowledge of the Holocaust has to be learned, and in depth, or we will continue to see misunderstandings and white nationalists who fail to grasp the story of humanity  It's knowledge worth knowing.  I saw it as my duty to engage students in learning details and understandings of the process from the early beginnings with the T4 program (involuntary euthanasia of German citizens - you may not even get ashes that were your family member, after they were gassed in a van) , to the man made pesticides used to exterminate elements of humanity - Zyklon B.  The failure to act/or secret public actions of "Hitlers Pope" - Pius XII (the same who would meet <grant?> my relative the title of Monsignor).  The mobile killing squads that followed the Blitzkrieg into Russia - the Eintsatzgruppen.  Everything I could get into the classroom and impress upon their minds, the evil that humans can perform on their own kind when they fail to see the ties that bind us.  Videos.  Readings.  Personal reflections.  This is the course where I read Survivor, as well as Hanna Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem about the banality of evil.  It had a profound impact on my thinking - following the trial of a man abducted from his home in Argentina, and brought to Israel - a war criminal according to Israel.  The man who made sure the trains ran on time.  Was he really a criminal motivated by anti-Jewish ideology or was he just doing his job to be a good worker.   He was put to death for his actions.  Regardless, the trains were not late - you can't be late to death.  You have to be on time, sorted, and your personal belongings catalogued and used for science.  They were often used for science. Was he to blame as well?  He "just" ran the trains.  The Millgram experiments come to mind too.

The Old Man was our professor.  Thats how he always signed his emails -The Old Man.  He ran the course as a true seminar, as seniors in college we read at least a book a week for his class - we presented on the books, asking our peers questions - he expected it and we achieved.  We all were in it together - and worked so everyone learned something of value.  We were gifted during the semester with a free trip to Washington D.C. to visit the Holocaust Museum from a secret benefactor.  I drove the van - it was a 16 passenger - I was licensed to do so because of student teaching methods placements.  We had no idea we were going when we signed up for it - but it was a trip of a lifetime - at that moment at least.

I've been to the Holocaust Museum twice- but the first trip was the one that made the mark because we had all day.  Not just an hour or three - but all day.  We got there when it opened and we spent as much time as we wanted making our way through the exhibits.  I read everything.  Watched everything.  The models of the shower rooms, with sculpted human bodies crawling on top of each other to reach the air vent - the model of the crematoria - everything in plain site and still way beyond comprehension. 

The smell of the shoe corridor still evokes dread, a sense of disbelief - an existential dread.  I am there now in between the two piles of shoes.  I am walking through, not around, the cattle car on display.  The confined space.  It most likely ran on time, thanks to Eichmann.  The wood smells.  I am receiving my passport of a real person, I carry it with me and find out at the end if they survived. 

I did not.  So it goes. 

I student taught in the fall of my senior year - I wanted that final semester back on campus to kind of prove myself.  A last trip around the university. The semester was awesome:  Constitutional Law, Native American History, Holocaust, Regional Analysis of China, Women in American History.  It was fun - I got all A's except for in Holocaust.  I got a C+ on a paper, and when I asked what I could do, he just said "... you could've done better. I feel - it just wasn't your best work ..." I didn't argue.  Who was I to disagree with the Old Man?  He was right - no rubrics, just the parameters- I could have done better.  Write a paper about the books assigned and make an argument, support with evidence.  No second try.  Just a one and done.  At the end of the semester we did not get to all of the books - so he had us sign a contract.  We swore to our chosen deity we would read the books.  Then we signed a piece of paper that said we would read the books.  I stayed up all Friday of finals week until I finished them.  I didn't want to be a liar.   Who does?

The class taught me the importance of reading with a purpose - others helped but this one course - it really helped to develop skills I would ultimately use in Masters and then Doc school.  Reflections on the reading, drawing out points - making sense of the material. 

I hope I pass some of this along to my graduate students - that amid the cussing and gnashing of teeth they do ultimately see a purpose.  So often in education - and I have said this to anyone that will listen for a very long time - we do not see an end result.  We never see that end of life - or end of a career or even the career in action.  Students rarely come back and say thanks - but they don't have to because thats not why we teach.  We teach because we believe in democracy and education as a way to sustain and rebirth that democracy year after year.  Citizenship is the focus of all content areas and grade levels.  It does not matter if you teach math, or science or art - your focus is on their development as well rounded citizens - it is all important but for me at least the educated person is a citizen.   

And social studies exists at the intersection of all content areas - school itself is the social studies, if we are being honest with ourselves.  :)