Results of Ruminations

In terms of pedagogy, I follow Socrates in weird ways. If you've heard of the chap, you know Socrates is known for asking questions. We always think of Socrates and his method as being question-based. While that isn't necessarily wrong, it's important to note how Socrates uses questions. Think of the beginning of  Book IV of Plato's The Republic . There, we see Socrates being asked a question by Adeimantus, but most of the first major section of text is Socrates' answer (after having asked a clarifying question of his interlocutor). He doesn't necessarily spend a lot of time asking questions and listening to others.* In fact, he often posits his own ideas at great length, occasionally asking for input from the others. It's important to note that he sets up his arguments with large, important questions. Book I of The Republic  starts off with this question: "Is life harder toward the end, or what report do you give of it?" (11). That launches th...

At the time of this writing, Hurricane Irma is venting its fury on Florida . The hurricane pummeled Key West, then swung up, smashing into Florida's Gulf coast. With Hurricane Harvey hardly in the rear view mirror, and Hurricane Jose on the way, it's pretty clear that there's some catastrophic weather happening at the time. Florida--southeast Florida, to be exact--has a special place in my heart: I served my two-year long mission in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. While I never personally went farther south than the Kendall/Hammocks area, my mission boundaries included everyone in Key West up to West Palm Beach, with the Everglades on the east and the Bahamas out in the west. So though the hurricane is currently pummeling the western part of the peninsula, the areas where I served thirteen to fifteen years ago are in rough shape. So, even though Hurricane Harvey's deluge of Houston was in my country, and my heart, thoughts, and prayers went out to them, seeing my o...

I'm reading a book about Reconstructivists, a particular brand of fundamentalist Christianity that is better known for their effects than for their name. The book, Building God's Kingdom , looks closely at the manifestations of Reconstructivism within the purview of education. It's the backbone of the homeschooling movement, as well as school choice and other cultural and political reverberations of similar ilk. Julie Ingersoll explores this mostly through a close reading and careful history of a fellow named Rousas John Rushdoony and the manifold ways in which his vision of education in America ought to be constrained by biblical teachings and interpretations. He and his followers (even those who disagree with some of his points and modify them to fit their own means--as followers often do) have cast the world in a binary: Theism and humanism. Now, I'm a sectarian humanist, which may sound like a contradiction in terms, but that's because "secular hum...

Our school has always had a "mentoring" period that ended up being, at best, a glorified home room. This year, we're having a shift in the mentoring program that's making me excited. I'm looking at the act of creativity--using imagination and skill to craft something new. As a basis, I'm considering the way in which Blizzard Entertainment (specifically) and video games and movies (generally) use collaboration and joint-contribution to a single vision. This vision is of a world in which all the students are building it up in some way. It's the act of world building--which I've done by myself for years--writ large. I'm excited because this is an opportunity to become more familiar with others' ideas, to have the spark of mutual ideas stirring and generating fresh concepts. Of all the parts of making a video game, that type of creative problem solving has always intrigued me. A decade ago, I took a classroom of kids up to a local video game st...

I'm starting my tenth year as a teacher--all at the same school--which feels arbitrarily momentous. I mean, being a base 10 culture means that something like a decade "means something" and the thing that it means is that we've decided that it means something. There isn't anything inherently powerful, wonderful, or noteworthy about ten consecutive years, but it does feel like I ought to mark it. Thinking back to what I was doing that first teacher training week in 2008 makes me smile. I was so enthusiastic and ungainly, like an evangelizing foal. I mean, I love my job--and I've loved it since the beginning--but I was a pretty lousy teacher back when I started. I cringe at the mistakes I made, the assumptions I had, the poor teaching choices I selected. One of the things that I remember about that year was when I had to take charge of a break-out session for the students. Back then, we gathered the two hundred or so students for a welcome assembly, then sent...

I finished reading In Defense of a Liberal Education  by Fareed Zakaria. Having read two books now by different authors (coming from very  different backgrounds) about "the classics", I have to say that I much preferred this second one. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison by any stretch--one book was a quasi-manual for teaching in a prescribed way, the other was an argument for why liberal arts and the humanities ought to be invested--and, in a sense--believed in. The fifth and final chapter of Zakaria's book really made me happy. Perhaps it was an echo-chamber effect--I'm not above confirmation bias--but I felt optimistic about the students I teach and my role in the world. The other book left me disgruntled, abused, and pessimistic; this one made me hopeful. And the last part of the book is where it made the most sense to me. In it, Zakaria goes to great lengths to describe the accusations against the "millennial generation", of which I am bare...

I recognize that a teacher writing an essay about hard work whilst on summer vacation is potentially fraught with some hypocrisy, but there are a couple of counterpoints to consider: 1) The nature of the job is nine months in the classroom, three months out; but that doesn't mean I'm not working; 2) While this essay was written during the summer break, it can be read at any time, so its point can be derived without worrying about inconsistency. Work is Hard Peeking behind the curtain, here's what goes into a lesson when I'm at the helm: Choosing the material to be discussed Deriving a conversation about the topic Creating an activity (sometimes) about the material Finding additional resources to explain the topic Ensuring there's enough stuff to fill 100 minutes of class Build enough in the class to feel like we've made progress, yet leave enough on the table to pick up the next day If it sounds vague, it's because it has to be. There's en...

Strands: One of the books that I read this summer was about incorporating the classics into education. It was essentially a home-schooling manual, with afterthought inclusions for those who teach in the private or public schools, and it made all sorts of wild assertions about certain books. I think, were I on the same wavelength as the author, I would have understood what he was saying a little better, but for me and my brain, he was blowing a lot of hot air. An area that stood out to me? When he started classifying books as "bent, broken, whole, and healing." "Broken" is a book where "evil wins" but it motivates a person to improve the world; "whole" is where, as the author puts it "good is good and good wins", while "healing" is one that is "whole" and makes an important, personal impact on the reader's life. But it was the definition of "bent" that really made me sit up: "Bent stories portray...

Being an abashed Twitter-(over)user, I was delighted when I saw this tweet : I love homework! Not only is Doug Robertson a great resource for connected educators (you can check out his blog right here ; it's entirely education centered, rather than the hodgepodge of stuff that mine features) and a funny guy, he also throws out a lot of ideas online that have helped me think differently about my profession. He let me guest blog on one of his other sites, too, and that's pretty spiffy. But what got me excited about the tweet was not that it was Doug (sorry, Doug), but that it was talking about Revisionist History . I already geeked out about finding Malcolm Gladwell's podcast (another find that occurred because of Twitter, as it so happens), so this shouldn't come as a surprise. What was exciting was that the second season is being released. Eagerly, I listened to the first two episodes, taking extra time to do my chores so that I had an excuse to keep listenin...

What's the point of questions? This is asked not as an accusation, nor as a subversion of itself, but as an inescapably ironic process of inquiry. Questions are powerful. Very powerful. World changing. Yet their ubiquity seems to also enervate them. Can we question questions? And if the point of a question is to ask the question, can we come to an answer about questions that doesn't open up for more questions? But first, a story: I was sitting in a Sunday School class a year or so back, doing my best not to nurse my professional grudge against most (though certainly not all) Sunday School teachers*. It never is a personal grudge, but, having not only gone to college specifically to learn about different methodologies, studies, and theories of teaching, I have also completed nearly a decade of teaching. Students seem to appreciate my class, insomuch that I dare say that I'm probably a fairly good teacher, and one thing that I have practiced for that time is carrying on a c...

Finland is an interesting place. Besides giving the Russians a run for their money during the Winter War , they're consistently considered at the top of sundry lists of best schools in the world. There's always a lot to unpack whenever comparing countries in any way, not the least of which comes from the different cultures, histories, and values of the people within the counties. That disparity can make large, important schisms between comparisons and ought not to be ignored. That being said, there are universal things among humans. Specific needs, like air, food, and water come to mind, but even on the broad-scale, not-quite-universal-but-so-ubiquitous-as-to-make-them-effectively-catholic level, we can see that certain thoughts, behaviors, or techniques can have a strong effect on most everyone. When we look at problem areas in America (health care, education, race relations, gun control), we can't simply point at another country, account for comparative development and...

Approximately two times a year (at the beginning and ending of the school year), I get the opportunity to sit down with my coworkers and have real conversations. This isn't because I don't get to sit down and talk with them during the year, but there's always "something else" that we have to talk about. It's usually (read: almost always) about students--how we can help one or another, what we can do to ensure the continued functions of the school, what teachers are doing that may need correcting of the course to aid the kids--so it's always worthwhile. I mean, I'm not complaining about the fact that I have to talk shop with other teachers about the students we're teaching. But during our trainings both before and after the school year, that pressure isn't there. I don't have assigned students, there aren't parent emails to consider, there aren't snatches of conversation to wedge between the bells. I can work in my classroom doing ...

The way I take notes in my faculty meetings is via Twitter. It's a very 21st century style way of documenting one's thoughts, I admit, and whether or not it has any permanent value is open to debate and research, but despite its trendy way of recording information, I find it useful. One is that I write faster on the computer than I do by hand. Additionally, my coworkers who are on the hashtag can explore ideas quietly with each other while the rest of the conversation shifts to different ideas. Normally, I'd say it'd be better for us to speak aloud so that others can hear what we have to say, but there are two reasons why I prefer it this way: One, they can see it by looking up the hashtag  themselves, thereby learning what we talked about; and two, we have a vociferous faculty. Meetings always go long because we love to talk, share ideas, and enthuse about our common vocation. If I were to say aloud everything I tweet, we'd never be done. Today, we had a large, l...

Today I stepped down from being department head at my school. It's a normal thing; every three or four years, they cycle the leadership, particularly of large departments (like mine, which is the biggest there). I enjoyed the time, and now I get to have a little more free time, since I have fewer responsibilities for me to ignore, and that's always a nice change. I'll miss being "in the know" with some of the big choices in the department and school, but I have a pretty poor batting average on wise decisions for large scale things, so I'm sure that it's the right step. One thing, though, that I always wanted to do for a department meeting but never got around to was to pose this question to my teachers and see, not only what we came up with, but why we made the choices that we did. The thought experiment is easy enough: What would you do if you could build a school? The details: There's essentially no budget (but it needs to be within practical rea...

Why do I feel like I'm dying? The end of any school year is difficult. There are grades to turn in (late), awards to hand out, yearbooks to sign. And, of course, commencement. I enjoy commencement exercises. I sometimes listen to commencement speeches online. I'm not even graduating, I just like the inspirational thoughts that the speaker drops on a very inattentive (or, if you're Mike Pence , non-attending) audience. I've been in school, in one form or another, for approximately twenty-six years. It's my career and my passion, and I learn in order to teach better. So learning from the wisdom of the speakers--gaining motivation and inspiration from them--is a natural part of not only the end of the year, but of how I try to become better. So why do I feel like I'm dying? At our school, we have an annual tradition in which the faculty challenges the students' quidditch team. I coach the team all year long so that we're ready for this finale. (For ...