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...

Okay, so maybe the title is a little misleading: We didn't mock  Machiavelli. But it sounds cool, so I wrote it. We did study some of The Prince  in class today, and it's interesting reading it whilst under a state whose actions I tend to disagree with, instead of the opposite. For as long as I've been teaching, I've been able to study The Prince  through the point of view of being in favor with most of the policies coming out of Washington. Under the Obama administration, there were a lot of areas in which Machiavelli and President Obama differed, and those areas where there were parallels were worth considering. Under President Trump, it's fascinating to see how much more is there. For instance, we talked today about how a prince (or state) can get and maintain power. In Machiavelli's words, he says [..I]t is necessary for [a leader of a state] to be sufficiently prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which would lose him his s...

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...

It is confusing that, despite being decades away from an agrarian America, we still use our agrarian calendar for schooling. It's easy to see how we got this way: The system that pushed us through the Industrial Revolution, and was retooled for the post-war baby boom has a momentum to it. As childhood increased in value, nostalgia for one's own childhood drives desires to keep the traditions enjoyed from the idyllic portion of one's life in the bloodstream of the next generation. "We always did this when I was a kid," is one of the reasons that twenty-first century children are hauled off to visit national parks, camp in the forest, or any number of other options. Entire industries build themselves off of this tendency. We're crushed by the weight of that history and tradition. We've codified the laws to ensure that there are a certain number of days on the school calendar (though, and I'm not advocating this, if we dropped all the breaks from the sc...

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 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...

Klosterman's But What if We're Wrong? is bubbling in my brain. I mentioned it before , and I've pushed deeper into it since then. In it, Klosterman tries to imagine where and how the next great piece of literature will come into being. His argument is that it will be someone fringe--someone who is outside of societal mores, someone who is part of a minority so small that no one can really anticipate or think of anything worthwhile coming from that direction. The argument makes a lot of sense, as he explains it (and, though I'm not done with the book, I do recommend picking it up). I'm only sketching here, because his thinking got me thinking about the past, rather than the future. As I drove from a lunch with a former student, I texted my friend, who is our resident Classics expert, and threw down a different idea of how we could define what a classic is (as opposed to the Classics, of course). It's something that has been nebulous if only because we're...

It's Sunday. Here's something slightly more religious: Paradise Lost. I started another reread of Paradise Lost  this last week. My school is having an informal book club about the poem and, though I won't be able to attend as often as I wish, it's exciting to read Milton again. One of the interesting things that was brought up during the discussion was the mistrust most of the participants had of Satan. I mentioned before some of my experiences discussing the Prince of Darkness, but that was in the formal school setting. In this conversation, we could be even more forthright, and since most of us were LDS, we were able to dive into more specific theological implications than I do with my students. (The added benefit was that we didn't have to waste any time explaining what happened in the book, as summarizing and explaining the text is a huge piece of my pedagogy.) As we wandered through Book I, it quickly became apparent that there was a reluctance to embrace...

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...

When going to Seminary* back in high school, I remember seeing on a classmate's desk the quote, "You don't have to read the scriptures everyday, just on the days that you breathe." I'd seen a similar sentiment elsewhere. "You don't have to practice piano every day..." or "You don't have to practice basketball..." or "You don't have to do art..." or whatever else. And in a lot of ways, that's what's wonderful about that sentiment: It doesn't matter what you plug into the blank, if you truly care about something, if you love it and want to excel at it, you have to inhabit it. The last nine months have been interesting for me. I'm now at the close of an experiment that I decided to begin in August of 2016. I toyed with writing daily for a half week or so, but really began the experiment in earnest on 23 August 2016 in which I talked about  beginning my ninth year as a teacher. I wrote it in the morning, befo...

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 ...

I may be a lord , but I'm not a master. That is, I don't have my master's (or Master's or Master or master...okay, I'm kidding, this is the rule ) degree. I've been longing for one ever since I graduated (though not the day of...my son had been born two days before I graduated, and I was more worried about him surviving with only half a heart than another degree), but I've never done more than occasionally and idly hoping for the chance to get an advanced degree. The thing is, I don't know why. It's strange, because I'm not interested in being a doctor. After all, why be Doctor Dowdle when I'm already Lord Dowdle? (Though Lord Dowdle, PhD sounds pretty cool.) So it's not as though the advanced degree qua degree is what appeals to me. Then again, maybe if I earned a master's, then I'd want the next step, too. There's also a question of what I would study. My first impulse is to say MFA, since that's kind of the thing th...

I think I'm approaching my mid-life crisis. I'm not likely to want to buy a Corvette or get a divorce so that I can date someone significantly younger than I am, and I certainly hope that I'm not at the actual  mid-point of my life (I'd rather live beyond 68, thank you very much), but I'm feeling a certain level of panic when I think about how much I still have to read and write before I die. Is that weird? While I know it isn't a competition, I feel like I'm losing to...well, most everyone when it comes to knocking down titles. There is so much  to take in: volumes and tomes and treatises and film and music and video games and...and...and... I feel a bit like Veruca Salt when it comes to intellectually ingesting as much as I possibly can. I don't care how: I want it now. This is the only version of the story, aside from the book, that I accept. ( Source ) The direct corollary to this has to be my job. Over the last nine years, I've been le...