So, everybody's talking about school lately.
I almost hashtagged school.
#school
And I verbed a noun. Hashtagged.
I've been thinking about school and thinking about my students and about their parents, and about all of my nieces, and the children of my friends, and I wonder how you guys let them walk up and down stairs without worrying about them, much less actually let them get on big yellow buses in the morning to spend whole days out of your sight.
I'm serious-- there was a period of days a while back when I would lie in bed at night and pray for my nieces and I kept having this recurring image of them walking carefully down the stairs in their homes (whatever happened to ranch homes, Nathan and Lucy, and Diane and Duke?? You guys couldn't get sprawling compounds somewhere?). I prayed for those girls about those steps for days.
Anyway, school.
I've been thinking, as teachers do, about how to help my students become more successful. But the way I'm thinking about their success has more to do with how to help THEM become more successful rather than how successful *I* do as a teacher. Always, there are things I can do to improve my practice, but part of this season's improvement on my part is figuring out how to help them improve their part. Maybe it springs from my teacher's heart as a believer, but I don't think it helps my students to tell them everything. I think that the things they will remember the longest and the purest are the things that they discover on their own.
Like page numbers.
I kid you not-- I need to ask my old English teachers, but these guys refuse to look up chapters in a book. They also tend to want someone to call out dictionary pages. If someone asks, "Swaney, what page is this story on?" I will tell them without fail to look it up. Well, unless I'm in a hurry. Okay, sometimes I tell them the page number, but you know what I'm saying.
So they're here and they look at us with these eyes and they trust us. Man, it levels me when I think of all of the unmerited trust these guys have for us when they first meet us-- first day of school and they don't even know me, but they look at me with hands folded and eyes open and listening for where I want them to write their names and the date and do I want them to write the name of the assignment? Trust. I'm the expert. I could tell them virtually anything and they give me the benefit of the doubt.
Like, once I told my kids that back in the day, we used to have stationary bikes in ISS (in school suspension) and if you were sent to ISS you had to take a shift on the bike. I told them that this was how we powered the school until they (who is "they"??) finally hooked us into the grid from Atlanta.
Anyway, I've been thinking about how to help them become more proactive. They come equipped with brains to learn. They are born with them and they show up in my classroom with them. They are hard-wired for it. Learning makes you feel good. There are all kinds of factors (learning disabilities, etc.) that get in the way sometimes, but their brains still respond to learning in a positive way-- it's science, I tell them.
Sometimes, we have to get past the quarterback in their minds that stands at the door and threatens to throat punch any new attempts at information. This guy stands on their noses and yells back at them "YOU CAN'T DO THIS!!! IT HURTS!!!! IT'S HARD!!!! LET'S EAT ICE CREAM!!!"
That same guy plays on a couple of teams in my own brain, too.
So here's where I'm at-- there's a verse that says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Proverbs 29: 17). Without a purpose, without a direction (a vision-- a plan), people aren't sure which direction to start walking, or which book to read first, or which choice to make in regard to...almost anything.
And now we're talking about purpose.
Telling a student that he'll be glad he has a diploma one day isn't inspiring. Even discussing his game plan for [insert name of Ivy League school here] doesn't present enough of a sense of "YAHOOOOO" to really make anyone work consistently for their goal.
Purpose "is closely linked to ‘flow’ - the state of intense absorption in which we forget our surroundings and ourselves. If you have a strong sense of purpose, you’re likely to experience flow more frequently. And as Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi has shown, flow is a powerful source of well-being. The more flow we experience, the happier we feel" (Psychology Today).
So, today is March 20 and I have been thinking about the brain and happiness and purpose and vision and flow in an intentional way for about six months now.
And suddenly, because of school shootings (another this morning in Maryland), the world is starting to notice that our students are unhappy. And scared. And lonely. And being mean as crud to each other. Welcome to what teachers and parents and students already know.
For me, I think I'm on the brink of finding a solution. And it has everything to do with the way the Creator made our brains.
First, they gotta have vision.
