The Osmosis of Paying It Forward

 

 

I’m not sure if it was thinking about being in the back seat of a car driven by my high school track coach smiling devilishly as he swerved and circled through the near empty snow covered Northeastern University parking lot; or it was running into my senior English teacher while on my Cape Cod honeymoon with my young bride almost a year to the day following my high school graduation.  But those human intersections popped up as I  pondered the question , “ How did I get here?” ‘Here’ was a summer professional development day for our staff. The keynote session was led by Julia Freeland Fisher, researcher and author of Who You Know, Unlocking Innovations That Expand Students’ Networks.  ‘Here’ was me, a 30+ year educator now in a leadership role at a cutting edge virtual school.

Thinking about the question, I began to recall the many social network intersections of my youth and formative professional years that led to opportunity. As compelling as Freeland Fisher’s message was about expanding student networks and mentoring connected to student interests, I felt it was only part of an equation for getting to a point in one’s life translating to satisfaction and happiness. Another part? Good adult modeling. The type of modeling Ted and Nancy Sizer alluded to in his book, The Students Are Watching: Schools and the Moral Contract. I had a wealth of both and would argue that all students need mentoring, modeling, and networking opportunities. It’s a key to unlocking a student’s passion and joy for learning and understanding what motivates him or her to take advantage of possibilities as they are presented.

As I thought about ‘how did I get here?’ a bit more, the picture began to sharpen. …

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Things Educators Carry As Covid Carries On

One of my favorite activities with students when teaching English/language arts was found poetry. It motivated the full spectrum of students because it had all sorts of word play, and could connect it with all genres of reading. Reluctant readers could be asked to look at a page of text from the literature we were reading and simply list some of the favorite words they found on a page. Motivated readers could do the same and the activity leveled the reading and comprehension playing field as we shared words, strung them together to make meaning. Over the course of a chapter, students could take the words to create a free verse poem to try to capture an element of the story. It was a great entry-point for demystifying poetry, increasing class wide comfort for sharing, and segueing into discussion at large. …

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The Fog of Literacy

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Thinking About Literacy Part II

 

As the politics of school standardized test results continually ratchet up, the fortune of good leadership described in Thinking about Literacy Part I resonated through the lens of a conference I attended.  The topic was a proposed a switch in our state (NH) to move from one high stakes testing period per year to two, potentially creating a more vicious cycle of accountability and teaching to the test. In my view, increased standardized testing  is counterproductive to motivating reading and writing. Ultimately, the biannual testing became a choice of individual school districts.  Districts choosing to test twice though with one set of tests still had to give the annual state mandated test; meaning students in some districts were tested 3 times a year. …

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Has the Word Literacy Become a Cliché in the World of Education?

Thinking About Literacy Part I

 

 

 

We all have memories that become moments integrating into our ongoing stream of consciousness that connect to facets of our daily lives.  A recent moment returned me to 1967 as I drove my parents’ car into the now demolished Dorchester, MA Neponset Drive-In with three  passengers, two of whom were hidden in the trunk. Once we all made it comfortably into the car, we settled in to watch The Graduate, a movie that resonated for four teenage boys because of Mrs. Robinson and the graduate’s (Dustin Hoffman) love interest.  However,  it was one iconic word of advice that brought me back to the present and unfortunately was predictably accurate…”Plastics!” Today, as we address issues of climate change, plastics is one of the key challenges to reducing our carbon footprints. 

As a graduate student, I received a piece of advice that was just as iconic as ‘plastics’; at least for me. Ted Sizer, a founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools(CES) was a guest in my class, Educational Issues & The Politics of Policy. He spoke of the Coalition’s philosophy centered on its 10 Common Principles, one of which was “Less is More.” The reductionist notion wasn’t originally coined by Sizer. Poet, Robert Browning, used the phrase in his 1855 poem, and multiple architects are given credit for coming up with the phrase in connection with a minimalist building designs during the mid twentieth century. For Sizer and the CES, the educational connection to less is more meant “curricular decisions should be guided by the aim of thorough student mastery and achievement rather than by an effort to merely cover content.”

Which brings me to an overused word in the educational arena today that might carry the same insidiousness going forward that has evolved with plastics over the last 50+ years…literacy

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Memorial Day 2021…Something Feels Different

This is a link to my Memorial Day Column In the Newburyport Daily News

Since rescuing a very energetic cocker spaniel, I’ve taken regular walks throughout the Oak Hill Cemetery in Newburyport Ma. For us dog owners in Essex County, there are so many wonderful spots to walk, but I’m not sure many matches one of the country’s first rural garden cemeteries consecrated in 1842 and listed in the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

The stately oak and pine trees, older than anyone walking the grounds these days, are towering reminders of the largess of those buried there.  Especially those veterans representing essentially all the wars fought to protect our freedom, our democracy and the Constitution that has centered our nation during the most tumultuous points of our history. At this time of year, I always think of my father, George, who served in the Navy during WWII; my Uncle Paul who was wounded on a destroyer in the Pacific theater; my Uncle Sam, who I never met because he was killed in action as his Marine battalion stormed a hill in Okinawa; and my Uncle Charlie who was a crew member on a tank in the Korean War

During my walks of late I’ve made it a point to stop at several graves each day that are staked with small American flags signifying their service and while I can’t list the hundreds of our finest laid to rest in Oak Hill, I thought that at least three could be remembered for paying the ultimate sacrifice: …

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