On being asked, "Why are there poor people?" by a book at book club...

             Who is poor and how should we treat them? The history is interesting though his writing style seems to leave the juicy details in the footnotes disappointingly.  Tracking attitudes about the poor seems like a job that could easily dredge up some interesting and shocking language from pop culture. Anyway, as I think about this I feel like giving our culture a break. The question of who should and shouldn’t be considered poor, who deserves help and who doesn’t is ultimately knotty because of the fact that it’s a micro and macro issue. Any one individual’s situation is a STORY, a set of discrete circumstances. It’s not as though every impoverished person will have an easy villain we can target to pinpoint the cause of their misfortune. But we’re simple animals. We evolved from the chimpanzees who were skittish enough to run up a tree when the wind rustled the tall grass, not from those who chose to ignore it and had their throats ripped out by a saber-toothed tiger. Effects must have causes, and our brains demand that those causes be clear, near, and simple. So the man in heavy work clothes holding a cardboard sign I drove past on the way here? The literal hundreds of us who passed him on Noland Road had to take at least a moment – consciously or unconsciously – to figure out why we didn’t stop and help him.

                I tend to lean towards the micro. If I give him $5, that’s enough to buy just enough of something to contribute to his possible dependency problem. Of course, therein lies the prejudice. That story makes sense to me – beggar takes his alms and runs to perpetuate his problems. I’ve hurt him by helping him. Of course, I also see the macro, and it leaves me equally paralyzed. Here’s a person with limited options, whose misfortunes have put him in a position of shame the equal of which our society only has a few levels below – maybe the bright orange jumpsuit of the “perp walk”. And even if he turned my $5 into a small bottle of booze to help the obliterate the pain temporarily, the trap is unavoidable. ‘Why doesn’t he get a job?’ I’m sure many other drivers think on their way by him. As though it were that easy. There’s that monkey brain again: him need money, job give money, him need job, why him not go get job.  The psychological, social, emotional, legal, and familial load that any person bears everywhere tangles and twists. Things are complicated. But we want simple answers.

         As I read this though, I found myself catching whiffs of an anti-capitalist sentiment that I find troubling. It’s not that I don’t see problems with capitalism; it’s that poking holes in the system doesn’t create a new and better system. So I find myself wondering, well, what then? I certainly don’t trust “the market” to solve all of our ills, but I can’t wrap my brain around many solutions that would effectively “end” poverty. 

          Prepare yourself for a massive leap of an analogy: Today my students read “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” After getting past all the literal interpretations : “he’s an assassin who is going to kill someone,” “he’s a robber who is going to the man who owns the woods house,” “he’s lost in the woods.” We started digging into the poem. As with any great poem the experience, no matter how many times you’ve read that poem with that type of kid, is always massively different. We honed our analysis in on this moment. There he is contemplating those “lovely, dark, and deep” woods – pining for them (pun intended). But what moves him on? What pushes him forward? “I have promises to keep.” My students began to discuss life as a never ending series of obligations pushing us forward, creating our meaning for us. And when I read this, I find myself thinking that (and I know this is a horrible thought probably planted in my liberal brain my brilliant and conservative father) maybe the gritty and sometimes vicious results of poverty are the gears of capitalism turning. That without the threat of those consequences, we stare into the deep, dark forest and wander off into the snow.

Breaking Bad and Me - How Walter White can inform my teaching...

     First, I should admit that I love that hat. Seriously, Walt, great hat.
     Secondly, this has nothing to do with the realities of the evils of crystal meth. It's bad. I know.
     But, damn, Walt's a good teacher.

    I wrote the above about a month ago after watching the first season of Breaking Bad. I'd been enjoying the show on so many levels - MacBeth parallels, tremendous acting, frantic pacing - but I couldn't shake the fact that Walt was a high school teacher, and so am I. I found myself wondering if I could discern anything about education from the show. I don't think Vince Gilligan intended that, but I found myself bringing that to the show myself. Not the few scenes that take place in the high school, but the relationship between Walt and Jesse.
     Then I realized that I'd better watch the rest of the show before I tried to tackle this. Now I've caught up on the first four seasons and am ready to sort out my thoughts on Breaking Bad - Educational Treatise.
     There are several questions the show raises (and sometimes answers) about teaching and education. Who should be a teacher? What sorts of experiences are truly educational? What is the right relationship between teacher and student? Diving into them has been an opportunity for me to reflect on the nature of education.
     Who is Walter White? We don't know much back story. He's a bitter, failed chemist who came to teaching probably through telling himself that he was too good for the corporate rat race. It's hard to imagine that he hasn't had multiple conversations about how the "intangible" benefits of teaching make up for the lack of prestige and money. But then again, he's not the only public servant in the family, and Hank clearly has top dog status at the beginning of the series. His job is glamorous, heroic, and masculine. Walt is openly hostile to the way Hank seems to be "stealing" his son's attention and affection. Add to that the fact that Hank's stories and the actual events of the series seem to disprove all of Hank's bravado and the importance of his job, and it's easy to see why Walter is too smart to accept his position at the bottom.
    So, wait, who is Walter White? He's not in teaching for the kids. If he loves anything other than his family, it's chemistry. Woe betide the high school teacher who loves his subject more than his students. I tell people often, I spend so much more time with my students than I do with English. His awkward performance at the pep rally really speaks to his lack of connection to what we would think of as the life of a school.
     And yet, does he seem like the kind of person (removing his felonies from the equation for now) who should be teaching high school students chemistry? He's personable, nerdily charismatic, and a full-fledged expert in his subject. Why shouldn't he be? But his actions reveal his character: vindictive, arrogant, obsessive, and, if not immoral, then at least an equivocator. He's not a man I'd want grading my lab report.
     But his relationship with Jesse is deep. It's not a coincidence that Jesse never stops calling him "Mr. White," nor that he continually reaches out to Walt for help - "Let's go get a beer" - when his life is falling apart. Mr. White is his touchstone and the foundation of his well-being. Jesse's been rejected by literally everyone in his life - even his skeazy meth-head buddies - and yet he stands by Walt from beginning to end. And Walt does the same for him. How does that make sense?
     Walt doesn't like Jesse personally. That's clear. They're not friends. He doesn't gush about Jesse's talents. Jesse doesn't remind him of himself. All of the typical teacher-student relationship cliches are missing. The only clue is when Walt tells Jesse that he never "applied himself". Tired turn of phrase, but maybe it has a deeper meaning here. Walt sees the ability in Jesse; Walt doesn't seem to be the kind of teacher who would see this in everyone. This is not his stock phrase. Jesse had an affinity for chemistry, but Walt couldn't get Jesse to bring it to the classroom. When do they connect? In the RV. The lab is a classroom, and Jesse is a willing - if truculent - student. When the two work side-by-side, Jesse learns. He eventually matches and possibly even eclipses the master.
     So Walt's expertise can only truly have an influence when put to practical use. Jesse's experience is an apprenticeship and allows moments at various times for various kinds of instruction. You see it when Jesse tells the RV mechanic to "fix the buzzer on the key thing." You see it when he lays out his larger business plan Combo, Badger, and Skinny Pete. You see it when he negotiates his way past Hank in the RV standoff. You see it when he removes the toddler from the meth house after the ATM incident. He's learning more than just the technique for 99% pure crystal meth; he's learning responsibility, professionalism, and business acumen. His learning puts him out-of-step with his two remaining dealer buddies, and they're not capable of his sort of ambition. Even when he tries to re-submerge himself back into that world, it's clear Walt's education has left a mark. He can't be satisfied in his semi-functional meth-house no matter how much pizza and video games with prostitutes are available. Walt's shown him the other side, and he cannot go back. Education is supposed to work like this: open a student's mind, and he will find his own way out.
     We used to discuss the different sort of "voices" that teachers use on their students. There's parent voice, child voice, and adult voice. The only effective voice - according to the Ruby Payne theory - is the adult voice. If you want proof, I still have the video my Mixed Media Ninjas made explaining it to the whole staff. I think that Breaking Bad elaborates on this. Walt is not a surrogate father for Jesse. He's a business partner. No matter what emotional cataclysms either finds himself in, the other is involved only as an equal. Contrast Walt and Jane's father. Jane's father is (justifiably and nobly) intervening with his daughter. He's set her up as the landlord and is shepherding her to her meetings. He obviously loves her deeply - even so deeply that he's unable to drag her from the house and fatefully waits "until tomorrow" after finding her relapsed with Jesse. When Walt finds Jesse passed out with Jane, his complaint is not one of the existential disappointment and pain that would come from a son's downfall, but instead, the practical reality of a momentarily unreliable and irresponsible business partner. He's not going to drag Jesse to rehab; he's just going to consider a different way of doing business. When he does force Jesse into rehab, it's not out of any concern for Jesse. It's a business investment. And his "accidental" negligence towards Jane? Savvy business decision.
     Walt's not jocular or buddy-buddy with Jesse. He's demanding and clear. Their relationship doesn't reflect any of those three Ruby Payne voices. Jesse is Walt's apprentice, and Walt's high standards are only going to matter because he has an equal stake in the game. They're not pretending or practicing. They're producing, and their relationship reflects that reality.
     What do I take away from all this? I am going to consider the power of being side-by-side with my students, of meeting them truly where they are to help them see the "reality" of what I'm teaching. I'm going to work to make my students feel the authenticity of what we're doing so that they can begin to make their own choices and changes.
     I'm not going to become a meth producer or its English teacher equivalent.
         
   

Duality

     Why questions. Why questions? Why question?
     Complicated language, English.
     Today, I listened to a podcast about linguistic analysis.  Specifically, it was about the "gendering" of languages like Latin, Spanish, and German. Instead of asking what the masculinity and femininity does or is in those languages, the podcast was asking a more difficult question: why do human languages have them in the first place?  The conversation smoothly moved into one about the naturally dual nature of our consciousness. There's no simple answer to the difficult question, but what answers there are seem to lie deeply rooted in our minds.
     I wonder if it's a defense mechanism - an evolutionary safeguard. If there's anything that is fundamental to the human condition, it's categories. We organize the world - us and them; good and bad; with and against; right and wrong - naturally and ceaselessly. These categories are primal. But do they make any sense? Our very facility with language makes us assume that categories are meaningful (most words are categories, right?), but in that sense do they ignore reality?
     Let me put it like this: categories are shorthand ways of dealing with the world, but that doesn't mean that the things we place in categories belong there or actually share anything.
     I just listened to lots of analysis of the NBA draft, and I root for a baseball team that cannot figure it out. Sports fans and executives are constantly "typing" players. This team needs a rangy, long-armed jump shooter, while that one needs a big who can space the floor and run on the break. The Royals have needed starting pitching since 1994 and have drafted every type of player conceivable. And yet if the people were reducable down to these categories, why can't we simply put sports teams together by formula? Surround a superstar big man with above average slashers, shooters, and plus defenders, and you'll have a winning team. Except when you don't.
    That's where "chemistry" is invoked. It's the wild card that fills in the gaps of logic that these types of people are the winning type while these others aren't. Analysts want to know why this team won that game that time while ignoring that the elements involved are completely unreproduceable. Our need for order in the universe forces our minds to believe that we can exert control where we can't. Decisions will be made, shots will be missed, great hitters will strike out. Unpredictably. Afterwards, we'll think we should've predicted it. Next time, we'll know what's going to happen. And because the outcomes are so simple - win or lose - we'll judge from the feedback even though we probably won't do so accurately.
      I feel like parenting is a similar game with a similar problem.
     There are so many right ways to parent and so many wrong. So many decisions that will be pivotal and so many others that only seem so. What type of child do I have, what are the right ways to nurture and develop her? But what I have is a person - individual and unlike any other. I don't mean that in the smarmy, "we're all special" sort of way. Instead, I mean that most of what puts us in the category of "human" is superficial compared to what makes us the individuals that we are. When I spend my energy trying to figure out the type of person I'm raising, I can lose sight of the actual person I'm raising.
     A psychologist I know told me that there was a school of thought in psychology when he was in college  that saw all psychology as individual. That one can only analyze and treat a person's psyche, not the type of person that he is. I am not a psychologist, and I may not have even described that correctly, but it rang in my ears. What value is there in "typing" yourself or others? I can only see expedience. It eliminates the need to actually know anyone or yourself. I find myself caught in ruts so often because doing something different is not what my type of person does.
     Ultimately, it's probably a function of our brain's need for categories. I need the world to fall into categories - loved and hated; success and failure; moral and immoral; grown-up and child - so that I can sleep at night believing that my life is predictable.

Dissection of an Embrace

     I try to live an examined life. I pick apart and analyze. I admit my faults and my biases. Sometimes, they're all I can see. I question definitions and consider connotations. I see my blame in every conflict, see the other side of even my most deeply held opinions. I think of myself as rational and reasonable.
     Obviously, this has its drawbacks. I can be too honest, too "on the nose." I assume others have considered all the implications and sometimes get frustrated when we're slowed down by misunderstandings. But really, I can solve for that. In the course of examining my place in the world, I can adjust for the fact - FACT - that I'm spinning away in my head, anxieties miles ahead of everyone else in the room. I'm a chess master of worry - seven moves ahead.
     But there's one thing I can't seem to sort out.
     Hugging.
     See, here's the thing. I want to hug you. Bro hug, backslap hug, handshake to backslap hug, one arm around shoulders from-the-side hug, full frontal bear hug, bear hug with excited lift hug, slow eye-contact hug, hug with close-up conversation followed by more hug hug: I am prepared for all of these eventualities. I will be glad to produce a comprehensive guide to these and more hugs at a later date.
     The problem is this - if there are different types of hugs, then there is the right hug for the right person and situation. And yet, the correct hug protocol hinges on so many factors, I find it nearly impossible to predict exactly which sort of hug I should give you.
     I take as a mantra that words have distinct meanings. I don't say enormous when I mean huge. So, I think, do hugs. But oh the tenuous moment pre-hug when it's clear we're going to hug, and I'm not sure how many hands to commit. I can't even imagine what my face looks like.
     And this is the problem with the examined life. I'd love to just relax and hug it out, but hugs have meaning. Willy-nilly hug barrages seem ill-advised and dangerous. I'd rather be a hug sniper than use an affection gatling gun.
     I'm going to give you the right hug, but I doubt that you're going to notice.  

Me, as a Leader

Me, as a leader

                I’ve been hearing lots of different models of leadership lately. In college, William Jewell seemed flooded with “servant leaders,” leading humbly and without the kind of drill-sergeant persona many associated with leadership. It was gentle and caring.

                I’ve also heard people talk about “leading from behind” as a way of deconstructing that posture of leadership that seems to suffer when it glorifies the leader. As a teacher, that plucked a string loudly at the core of my being. My worst days of teaching were those that I walked away from the classroom feeling as though I’d only been focused on myself – the days I’d felt the most on stage. “Leading from behind” sounded like what I needed to do – get off stage and let the learners do the leading.

                Recently, though, I heard a soldier describe his commanding officers in Iraq. I could hear the disdain in his voice, the bile it raised in his throat, when he described one of his commanders as “leading from the back”. It struck me hard. How could I make the assertion that I was leading if I wasn’t willing to charge the front lines with my students? Keeping myself out of the fray seemed noble on paper, but when my students were in the midst of the intellectual battles I drew up for them, was sidelining myself unfair? How could I charge directly into the maw and put myself at risk as well?

                I think of teaching as leading. I think of it that way because I teach at the consent of the students. There are too many of them and they’re too big for me to force to do anything. They take a risk in deciding to learn from me, and I have realized in recent years that that means I have to risk something too.

                In terms of building leadership, I am at the absolute beginning of that experience. We are in our infancy as a district encouraging teacher leadership, so my opinions are inexpert at best.

                I know what my worries are, though. I worry that I’m waiting to be tapped. I sit in meetings and trainings and sessions and think to myself that I have the ability to facilitate, to engage participants, to challenge respectfully, and to partner with teachers as they think, but I’m not sure how to become that person. I have no psychological or emotional explanation for the egoless-ness I find myself having. It’s not that I don’t believe in myself; it’s that the moment I begin to push myself into a spotlight, I am completely filled with guilt. Who am I to push myself out there? Why should anyone listen to me?

                At the same time, when faced with opportunities and chances I perceive something in the way I present myself to the world that sabotages me. Am I too funny? Too critical? Too self-deprecating? Too fat?

                I’m beginning to believe that the people who have blown by me on their way to positions of “power” didn’t do so because of their merit. I think they grabbed the idea that they are leaders by the throat and created that reality.

                Now the question is whether or not I’m a throat grabber.

Me, as a Learner

                I remember sitting in the station wagon in the garage returning home from somewhere. I was in middle school, and my high school sister’s Algebra book was in my lap, open. She was in the front seat. I was reading it.

                “What are you doing?” she asked.

                “What is this?” I asked, “Is this math?”

                “Yeah,” Jami replied, “in high school it gets harder. You start using letters in with the numbers.”

                She didn’t say it like it was scary or anything. She was nonchalant, matter-of-fact. I walked into the house in a daze. What was it about letters that I didn’t know? Why was this being hidden from me?

                I remember this as the first time I grappled with an idea. There was a physical feeling in my head as I stretched and strained my brain to try and find the meaning of this cryptic message – “You start using letters in with the numbers.”

                I heard a blind man on the radio describe the feeling of being lost, alone in a hotel room. He described “groping” the walls try to understand and conceptualize the layout of the room. Though I’m not blind, I related to that in the way that I felt as I wrestled with big ideas. I groped and fondled and grasped but lacked the ability to conceptualize the entire picture.

                I’ve always loved this feeling. I read books and authors about subjects I have no expertise in; I ponder philosophical mysteries I haven’t done the coursework for. Not because I can understand the answer but for the lovely feeling in my head that comes from knowing that there’s something too big for me to grasp.

                I think that what I’m fascinated by is the feeling of possibility when I ponder a topic I can’t grasp. When I read Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe about the nature of string theory, I walked away with a flawed and rudimentary idea of string theory. I couldn’t teach a class in it. I don’t understand the equations involved. Yet I find myself searching for that feeling all the time. I want to hear and read people who know more about a topic than I’d ever considered. It proves to me how much is out there, how little I know. It also reinforces to me the vastness of the human capacity to understand.

                I have a former player and student who went on to Lindenwood University on a bowling scholarship. When Brad was a junior in high school, I pulled him aside for “the talk”. If he was interested in going to college to play soccer, I needed to know where he wanted to go so I could start the recruiting process. That’s when he broke the news that he wasn’t going to play soccer. He wanted to focus on bowling. From there on out, I quizzed him every day about bowling. Why is it scored so weird? Why are there so many different balls? I learned about oil patterns and lane strategies.

                I got the same feeling in my brain listening to Brad conduct a master class on bowling that I got from reading about string theory.  

Me, as a Writer

                I write because it’s easy. The pushing I have to do to make it past the stuck word is like scratching an itch or stretching my legs after a long car ride. There’s relief after it arrives, and I don’t worry at all if it will come. It will come. It always does.

                I don’t value my writing because of that. I don’t sweat over it and fight it. I simply let it out and there it is.

                The only real criticism that I’ve ever received was my junior year of high school. I’d just come from another session of a creative writing class in which I’d been commended and treated as an expert. I was the creative writing student of the year for two years running and saw no particular challenge for a three-peat. I sauntered into my journalism class and our laissez-faire instructor, Mr. C. His hands off approach meant that I had no actual idea of what he was like as a teacher. He’d look over our shoulders every once in a while, but the editors ran the class. I was an editor.

                I had a poem in my hand when I walked through the door – one that the creative writing teaching had oo’d and ah’d over just moments before. She’d clucked about this literary magazine and that one and publication and imagery, and Mr. C could smell the smugness when I walked through the door.

                “What’ve you got there, Jeff?” he asked.

                “Latest poem,” I answered.

                “Lemme see…” I handed him the poem.

                It was about winter. Something about snow and frozenness, I’m sure. It probably included the word “crystalline”. I watched his face as he read it, and my concern started to grow when it didn’t begin to glow with wonder. His eyes didn’t widen and refocus as he read something that – boom – demanded to be read closely. That was life-changing.

                “It’s pretty,” he said.

                “Thanks,” I reached to take it back.

                “But what does it mean?” he didn’t move to give it to me.

                I stopped short hand in my grasp. Mean? “What? It’s…winter, you know…cold…nothing…” I trailed off both offended and worried. I felt naked. He’d uncovered my fear all along. Yes, I can put these words together, make it sound like meaning and sense, but what did it mean?

                He put the poem back in my hand and turned to go sit back at his desk. I wasn’t angry at him. If anything, he’d pulled back a curtain I’d known was there all along.

                I remember watching a home improvement show much later, after I was married, and seeing a designer hang curtains in a room with no windows. He’d walked in and said, “This room needs a window.” And instead of the major construction of putting a hole in the wall, he simply hung curtains where one should go. I remember thinking, ‘Geez, at least paint a window behind it. Maybe an African savannah or something.’ But I think my writing in high school was like that window. Decorations of nothing. I stopped writing for anything but assignments.

                But I can feel myself wanting to write – I’ve been feeling it for the past few years – and I feel the worry now of pulling back those curtains. Twenty years later, I realize that I have to write to find out if I have any meaning, if there will be a landscape behind those curtains or if I’ll pull them back to find a blank wall staring back at me.