We can make a difference

If we are to have TRUE and REAL educational reform, and not the same old stuff packaged with a new bow, we need to stop being afraid of asking the hard questions because we are afraid of the answers. We must stop focusing on “yellow highlighters”. We need to rise up and start a crusade to ask the hard questions of the hard problems that get at the heart of teaching and educational reform. We need to start a crusade for change by displaying “boldness” by asking the “deep questions”. The answers to these questions may sting, hurt, and cause us pain. But they are necessary if we want to become the teachers we want to be, to have the schools we want to have, and to help build our students into the people we need them to be to create a society we dream of.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.


~Theodore Roosevelt, Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910



I believe in my heart that all of us want to help our students to be better people. We all want our schools and the world to be a better place. If enough of us have the courage to ask the hard questions and to honestly look at the answers together… CHANGE WILL HAPPEN.  We all can be independent teachers and have the lives and success in teaching we dream about.  All this can happen if… each one of us is willing to ask the hard questions and to listen to (the sometimes painful) answers and not to give into fear.

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.


~Susan B. Anthony

Shawn

We learn fear from the practice of teaching

These fears are of the unknown, the fear of the overwhelming truth, or the fear that if we look too hard at the tough questions we might actually find answers and if we are part of the problem then we would then have to change. What do we do as educators? We, consciously and unconsciously, focus our attention on the things that we can change and measure and not attempt to tackle the hard questions by changing things that are not easy to measure. I think I fist realized this in my 5th year of teaching. I was at a high school that had 21 languages in it feeder schools, 68% free and reduced lunch, pregnancy, relatives in jail, very low family education, and low SES. The list could go on and on. In one of our faculty meetings the principal made a point to thank one of the secretaries because she cut back our school’s order of yellow high lighters to our district office. She saved the school money and was proactive. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad she took the initiative to save some money but… YELLOW HIGHLIGTERS!!! AT A FACULTY MEETING!!!?? What about the real problems? What about the things that will change lives? What about the students and our community? What about changing the world? At the time I was young and afraid and said nothing. I regret it to this day. That was the beginning of letting go of the fear of rejection or ridicule and doing what needed to be done and saying what needed to be said. I have gone back an forth over the years with speaking out and asking the hard questions for everyone to hear. Even to this day it is a struggle but I MUST let go of the fear of ridicule and of isolation and be the “real me” and to stand up for what I believe is right.


“… when we deeply probe the fundamental workings of the universe we may come upon aspects that are vastly different from our expectations. The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.”

~Brain Green, The Elegant Universe

I believe that we sometimes kid ourselves into focusing on the easy things because the real problems are so overwhelming and difficult that we are afraid to look at them. If we asked the hard questions we will know what needs to be done. But sadly we do nothing out of fear of ridicule or fear of failure. However, I believe that we will fail ever time if we do not accept the challenge of looking at the difficult questions and the tribulations of trying to answer them.

Our doubts are traitors
and make us lose the good
we oft might win
by fearing to attempt.

~William Shakespeare

Do what needs to be done.
 
Shawn

We learn to be afraid from other teachers that we work with

As a teacher I have always asked why? Why do we hire this way? Is this really the best lesson plan model? Shouldn’t we do something about the craziness in the halls? Is there a better way to take the students to lunch? What should be done about the number of absences we have? How can we make a real change in the attitude of our parents? If our current in school suspension program is so great why do we have so many repeat offenders? How are we going to change? Why do students not turn in their work and what are we as individuals and as a school going to fix it? Are these standards really important? How can we help our parents? Don’t we want to ask the questions that will not only make significant change when we find a solution but will also make big differences during the process of making the change. I try to ask the big questions, the questions that do not have an easy answer or an easy solution. We need to ask all questions, but we must not be afraid of the hard questions. Most of the time when these questions are asked no one wants to discuss them. The people that ask the questions are deemed troublemakers, a pain in the butt, negative, or worse. The response is usually blaming someone else, "the district office says" or "the parents want" or "the principals demands" , and blah, blah, blah. I’m so sick of the excuses, I even make them my self.   The others rubb off on me and I can not let that happen..


Your excuses wound me and your explanations pour salt in the wound
~ unknown

There was a time in my teaching career when that I stopped speaking my mind and asking the hard questions. I was tired of feeling bad, being told I cause problems, and being on the outside. I was tired of feeling alone. But at what expense? In the process of being more accepted by my colleagues I gave up a bit of myself and my beliefs. I only asked the tough questions around a select few close and safe people. Although I had more “friends” I was not completely happy teaching. I could not figure out why. I began the process of figuring out why I was not as happy teaching as wanted when I had a conversation with my daughter Emma about being “popular”. Emma was having a hard time with some of the other students at the school. We were having an off again and on again conversations for a couple of weeks about this. During one of our conversations I asked her, “Do you want people to like you for the real you or the fake version of you?” “What is more important to you? 20 so so friends or 3 or 4 friends you can always count on?” She thought for a moment and said, “3 or 4 I can really count on.” I then asked, “Which you makes you the happiest, the fake you or the real you?” Emma replied, “the Real.” “So what do you have to do?” I asked. As Emma sat there and thought for a moment I realized something and I could not have said it any better than this eleven year old girl. Emma replied, “to be really happy I need to be the real me. If people don’t like the real me that's their problem. Because as long as I like myself and I have a few really good friends… I will be ok.” My eleven year old daughter taught me a lesson that day.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
~Elenor Roosvelt

Am I still afraid of being on the outside, of not being accepted? Sure. I can’t control that. Over time I have come to realize and have made a conscious decision that if something is going to be different, if the tough questions are going to be asked, I may as well be the one asking the questions. I believe it is the duty of every educator to ask the hard questions to try to make things different.

“A test of moral purpose is when we have the opportunity to speak out against something we know is wrong, and we choose not to. It’s when we remain silent. Or when we leave. In the teacher’s lounge, it is not speaking when we hear others blaming a child or criticizing a teacher. Doing nothing is failing the test.” (p. 153)
~ The Hero’s Journey, Brown and Moffett

Shawn

We learn fear when we are young

The next few entries will talk about why we are so afraid to ask the hard questions as teachers and what we an do about it.

When we are young and in school we are told to keep quiet, be compliant, and to do what we are told. In high school I have extremely smart, gifted, and talented students that have been trained so well to give the teacher what the teacher wants that it has taken an entire year to get them to think for themselves. Only now are they starting to ask each other for help and not asking me for the right answer. We have had many discussions that there can be a difference between getting an “A” and learning. What is the worse thing that will happen to you if you get a B+… you get a B+. Growing up students are rewarded for following the procedures and for giving our teachers and parents what they want. I am not saying that we should be allowed to do whatever we want but there needs to be some dialogue about what is right or the best thing to do. We are taught in school that when we ask “why” a lot of the time we fell pain in some way (guilt, shame, embarrassment) and when we “go with the teacher’s program” we are rewarded and called a “model student” and a “good student”. This happened to me most of my years between 1st and 8th grades. We learn from an early to not ask too many difficult questions, do what you are told, the teacher is the expert and they alone have all the answers, and that you better do what is expected of you, even at the expense of our own needs, dreams, and life. If her book, It's All About We, Diane Gossen gives an example of how conventional teachers treat students who question.

Questions from students are seen as an affront to their authority rather than opportunities to dialogue. Challenges to the curriculum are frowned upon. Then there is jockeying for position that teacher searches for a more severe or unexpected consequence with which to surprise the student. Western discipline does not strengthen youth. It shames them and weakens their resolve to do the right thing, it alienates them.


~Diane Gossen

By punishing students who question and think outside the box, we teach them that to be accepted and to be worthy of our praise and affection we need to keep our mouths shut, do what we are told to do, and I not ask hard questions. Then we wonder why as adults most of us just keep her mouth shut and “go with the status quo”. I was lucky that I was not raised that way. I was taught to think for myself. To be your own person and to do what is right and not necessarily what is popular. There is a time and a place for the questions, learn the difference, but do not be afraid to do what is right.


Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.



~James Freeman Clarke

Shawn

Don’t let fear stop you

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
~Dorothy Thompson


Why do most people not ask the hard questions? I have many theories on this one, most from own experience, I think that they stem from the same under lying theme…fear. What is fear? According to Webster’s Dictionary, “Fear is an emotion where we feel afraid, uneasy, anxious or apprehensive about a possible or current situation.”

Fear is a good thing to have. It keeps us cautious and helps protect us from danger. When I was younger my brothers and I were not afraid of much and we did some mighty stupid things. Today we look back on some of those things and wonder how we made it to today. Fear is also a bad thing. It keeps us from doing what is right. It keeps us from being our true and authentic selves. It keeps us from speaking out when we should. Sometimes we can even be paralyzed from fear so we do nothing at all. It prevents us from changing and becoming the teachers we dream of. If keeps us from asking the questions, of others and of ourselves, that need to be asked. As educators we need to be aware of the fear involved in change and growth but we must not let it stop us… ever. Why give into fear when most of the things we tend to worry about we have no control over or will never come to pass.

"If you believe that feeling bad, being afraid, or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.


~William James

We need to ask the hard questions

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.


~ Fredrick Douglass


I read a story, in a magazine; years ago of a woman who cut the ends off of the store bought hams before she cooked them. One Christmas her son asked her, “Why do you cut off the ends of the ham? His mother replied, “That is the way your grandmother did it when I was growing up, that’s how we always have done it.” At dinner that night the son asked his grandmother the same question. The grandmother’s reply was, “Well when I was first married the only pan we could afford was too small for the whole ham, so I had to cut the ends off to make it fit.” The mother of the little boy laughed and said that she had no idea. The mother of the son never bothered to ask her mother why she cut the ends off the ends of the ham when she cooked them and she never thought there might be a better way. She saw how it was done and never considered asking why.

To be and independent teacher you must begin to look at what is being done and ask, Why we doing this? Could it be done better? Just because it works, just because that's how we've always done it, doesn't mean it's the way it should still be done? Can we make it better? Is what we are considering doing going to make a real difference? Is it going to change lives? Is it going to inspire our teachers and students to become the people they have always dreamed of and are destined to be? Are we content to do things that make us feel good because we are busy doing stuff so we can say, “Hey look we are busy… busy aren't we great?"

“We make our world significant by the courage of our questions, and the depth of our answers.”


~ Carl Sagan

Shawn