My intuitive voice within said, “For most of our young people, there is a very thin space between their inner light and the dimming of it.”

Perhaps more than ever – in watching that wonderful film – I realized that today the greatest gift we can give our young people is to create a larger space between their inner light and the dimming of it. Not just a larger space, but the largest space our hearts can possibly conceive.

This, to me, is why the transformation of education is so important. There is no greater gift we can give our future generations, than to co-create – with our young people today, a learning journey that turns their light into a bonfire.  As I watched that film and saw the glowing light in their eyes, as they spoke about their visions for changing education and about the empowerment they felt, I got, at an even deeper level, the power of listening as a way to begin.

Asking young people to step into a circle of trust and authenticity and share their inner wisdom, a wisdom they often don’t know they actually have sometimes, is a beautiful experience. But as you might imagine, young people today are so wary of adults and their methods of manipulation, coercion, pushing their own agenda, etc., that it requires an absolutely pure environment for them to decide they will open up.

But this is what we strive for in the three hour Listening Sessions with teens that we lead all across the country. Through listening, we are working with them to build a national collective voice on the wisdom of young people about how they would transform education, if it were left completely up to them. In the space we create and hold for them to emerge within, they share their ideas, tell stories and ultimately paint a co-created vision of a learning journey they would love to experience.

These paintings are visual stories of their wisdom, creativity and passion for life – of their inner light. By repeating Listening Sessions with young people from all walks of life, all over the country, a series of themes begin to synthesize and ultimately, will become their collective voice

To date, we have led 20 Listening Sessions in 7 states, predominantly on the west coast and in the south. Most recently we conducted 6 Listening Sessions in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Student responses during the tour were overwhelmingly positive with us twice being asked, “Can you come back tomorrow?”

I think young people are saying this for two reasons: the first is that while the debate about changing education goes on feverishly across the country, young people are not being invited into the process. They have so many ideas, feelings and insights into how to change school, yet are noticeably missing from the conversation. This is a very disempowering place for them – a place of dimming.

The other reason they are so excited about being in the listening sessions, is that through our act of trusting and believing in them to be able to offer meaningful content into the educational conversation, they feel seen and heard – by us and by each other. The first thing we usually hear at the end of the Listening Session, is, “Thank you for listening, no one ever asks us what we think.” Our hosts have said they have literally seen a transformation occur within them, right before their eyes.

Listening seems a simple act, but it requires a deep caring, a complete absence of agenda and ego and a delight to hear from them. Creating a space for the purity of their voices to emerge is a sacred act, and it is one that leads to a brightening that is almost blinding.

In working to keep the Listening Sessions as pure as possible, I have always shied away from asking any organizations or people to contribute to our effort. I realize now, that instinctively, I have been trying to protect that distance between young people’s light and the dimming of it and let them fill it with their own beauty. I have not wanted anyone else’s agenda or beliefs to shift us from our purpose to just listen without any attachment to outcome.

But due to an unexpected outpouring of requests to do Listening Sessions, we can no longer continue to self fund Imagining Learning. I am delighted to say that the word has gotten around about what we are doing and we now have more than 35 communities requesting we come and lead at least one Listening Session!

So for the first time, we are asking others to support our work through a national campaign in partnership with IncitEd, a new crowdsourcing site (www.incited.org), solely committed to helping educational efforts receive funding. I love the idea of crowdsourcing because the giving, without attachments, will enable us to continue our purposeful way of Listening.

Being Stewards of an effort to bring the voices of young people forward, holding the space between their light and the dimming of it, is a gift to those of us involved. May we, as well as you who also hold them, grow in sensitivity and ability to do so.

Both perspectives seem to miss the actual words spoken.

I’m amazed that some of the same people who say, “Look at the hole in the wall theory” and “teachers don’t matter” and “just give kids videos and they’ll learn” are the same ones who rip on packets. What is a packet? It’s a prescribed, pre-organized, non-relational, non-interactive method of learning.

A Khan video is essentially a packet with a screen. Many glossy apps are merely packets with a tech twist (sometimes even more pre-programmed than a packet). The truth is that a packet is essentially the mindset of “leave the kids alone and let them learn at their own pace.”

I get it. That’s not entirely true. A packet lacks some of the choice and interactivity of a book or of social media or of twenty percent free exploration time. But on another level, some of the technology that people see as liberating can become a packet if there is no relationship. The danger in a packet is not just that it’s irrelevant and lacks student agency. It’s also the reality that it lacks a relationship and learning is fundamentally relational.

It makes me wonder if the anti-teacher pundits actually listened at all to the video. Yes, Jeff Bliss rips on the teacher. True, some of his statements resonate with the alternative education community. However, he makes the case (indeed a strong one) that teachers need to care.  His words are “get up and actually teach.” He also says, “they need to learn face-to-face.”

Jeff Bliss isn’t arguing in favor of holes in the wall. What he isn’t saying is that we need to do away with teachers or replace them with kiosks. He’s not begging for videos or asking if his education can be gamified. Instead, he’s making an impassioned plea for teaching as a relational activity. If teachers feel threatened by this, then we’ve also missed the point. Jeff Bliss is asking for a passionate, relational teacher who wants to engage.

And the good news is that those teachers exist. If we want that to be more common, we have to quit vilifying teachers and start listening to the students who are reminding us that what we do matters.

If you watch the video and come to the conclusion that teachers don’t matter, you’ve missed the whole point of what he said.

Today a video of student Jeff Bliss, a sophomore at Duncanville High School in Texas, went viral fast. In the video below we are privy to Bliss passionately speaking his truth. He knows that learning is more than packets to fill out, more than passively fulfilling simple and mindless tasks.

You want kids to come into your class, you want them to get excited for this? You gotta come in here, you gotta make them excited. You want a kid to change and start doing better? You gotta touch his frickin’ heart. Can’t expect a kid to change if all you do is just tell him,” he says, as the teacher repeatedly tells him to leave the class.

While his message was pointed toward his experience in this classroom, it was born from a feeling that is boiling up in classroom after classroom across the country. It is why students are standing up and walking out of schools, protesting because they know there are better ways to learn together. They know they learn best when they are able to learn with teachers that teach to their hearts and not just to the test.

Students are not alone in this feeling, teachers and community leaders are also standing up and walking out. It is important to remember that we should not watch this video as an attack on teachers, but instead an opportunity to talk about what we want in our schools.

What struck me most about the video is that Jeff Bliss felt he needed to voice his ideas in a way that would get him kicked out of class. Why is this the only way for him to voice his visions about learning and education? Why did it take a 90 second video for us to realized that students “get it”? Why do we wait for students to burst or break before we listen?

Many of us are not waiting for students to reach a breaking point, we are proactively engaging them by providing positive venues and space for them to express their ideas, stories and voices.  My work with Imagining Learning along with other  organizations like IDEA, SoundOut, and Student Voice has has convinced me that  we must proactively help students activate their power to change education and the world by providing this space.

Just yesterday, Imagining Learning launched a campaign to fund 35 listening sessions (see video) around the country. Our Listening Sessions are designed to create an appreciative environment of trust and openness so young people’s natural wisdom can emerge. All young people have ideas about their education and how it should be changed.  They also possess deep wisdom about how their lives are affected by the world around them and how they can make it better. In the last 4 years we have done 20 listening sessions around the country. They are effective in providing the space to activate students toward using their voice and ideas to positively change the world and education not just to protest or react to it.

Jeff Bliss’ statements have sparked an important conversation about how we can provide positive spaces for engaging young people’s voice!

How are you providing space for young people to use their voice to change education or the world?

Please join us by donating our campaign. Each dollar will help us tour the country to do listening sessions with young people like Jeff Bliss http://www.incited.org/projects/13

In 2008, I flew to Thailand for the first time to study globalization and development.  We were able to learn about issues such as mines, dams, and urban poverty.  But, more importantly, we were able to live with people who were being affected by these issues.  We got to sit down and hear exactly how they felt about how an underground mine would affect their lives.  And while I had some issues with the way the program worked at times, it introduced me to concepts and ideas that nothing else before it had been able to do.

There’s something about sitting down with someone from another part of the world and sharing a meal.  All of the cultural differences that separate you become blatantly obvious.  The food, the utensils, the way you eat, the atmosphere: they can all be unfamiliar.  But at the same time, a meal is the great unifier.  It’s the thing that reminds us all that, at the bottom of it, we’re the same.  We all value family, food, and love.  And so no matter how many differences there are, it’s the similarities that stand out.

When we realize this, we are closer to creating a world in which we can all live together.  Because, no longer is the man who eats with their hands a foreigner.  No longer is the woman who wears a veil over her face radically different from us.  These things become what they should be: semantics.

Because, the things that cause hate in our world are not caused, for the most part, by bad people.  They’re caused by a lack of understanding.  It’s an inability to see someone else’s point of view.  It is when empathy does not exist.

The cultivation of global empathy is more important now that ever before.  While my personal opinions of globalization are mixed, the fact of the matter is that we are all connected.  And it won’t change anytime soon.  Our lives are interconnected to people across the globe in more ways than we can recognize.  If one of us falls, we all fall now.

And so, the lesson that the ways in which we choose to live our lives has an effect globally is more important than ever.

I consider myself incredibly blessed to have been able to begin to be exposed to this lesson.  I was given the opportunity to travel to the other side of the world and live with people different from myself, different from anything that I’d known up to that point.  I was able to eat, sleep, bathe, garden, cook, clean, and play the ways that they did.  Every moment of it was an incredible learning opportunity, one that has profoundly changed my life.

But I know that not everyone is so lucky.  Travel is a privilege that not everyone is afforded.  So the question then becomes, how do we promote global understanding when not everyone has the ability to explore the global community?

One such organization working towards creating global empathy is Global Lives Project.  What started originally as a little idea that seemed impossible has expanded to allow thousands of people around the world to get a glimpse into the lives of others.  With the unique idea to film 24 continuous hours in the lives of people around the world, they are able to create an unbiased view of how others live.

It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to actually going and visiting another country.  And in some ways, you’re able to get a more unadulterated view.  As a foreigner abroad, you’re not always given a pure look into someone’s life.  You are a guest and they are a host, which creates a different dynamic.  But with these videos, you see people as they are daily.  For those of us who aren’t able to fly across the world, it’s a valuable, and much needed, experience.

Personally, I take my privilege very seriously.  I understand how incredible the opportunities I’ve had are and try my best to share them with others.  I talk about my experiences to those around me.  I write about the lessons I’ve learned.  And I use film to try to bring the stories of those whose voices are often not heard.  For me, my purpose in life is to help create understanding.

What personal experiences have you had abroad which have helped to expand your views?  What do you do to create greater global understanding?  How do you work towards helping students become successful and active global citizens?

Interested in Global Lives Project and want to use it in your classroom?  They have resources just for you!  To learn more visit: http://globallives.org/resources/educators/

The part that pisses me off to the core though is that somehow we have allowed this rigid line of ideology to somehow come and punish creativity and curiosity. How is it that a country that consistently complains about not having enough capable or wanting minds for STEM, see no issue with punishing the very children who have some inclination toward it. I do not for the life of me understand it….it is as if we are speaking in double rhetoric just to hear ourselves. How is it that a country that prides itself on freedom and justice can somehow come up with a half-a**ed excuse for putting children who have never violated any type of law in prison as a felons? How? You’d think that if we can waste over 3 billion dollars on standardized assessment and corporate reform agenda that we could at minimum half-a**ed do the job for incarceration prevention for youth, or that we could at least do a half a**ed job in investing in the thing that makes the world go around…creativity. But nope, it’s easier just to lock all the kids away, especially the Black and Brown ones.

This incarceration of youth thing…it’s an area of expertise for the State of Florida though, it’s something “they” (the powers that be within the states justice system) enjoy making happen though. It makes no sense that Florida can rank 2^nd in incarcerating Black and Hispanic youths….yet, it is occurring. 1,294,212…that’s excessive…too d@mn many…way too many. (Texas enjoys it more than any other state  if we are going to be fair here.) This should not even be an issue today…we should be investing in the education of children instead of the incarceration of children. I do not see how we as a nation of stakeholders can have priorities so backward and conscious so weak.

It just makes no sense though…this country continually criminalizes and punishes youth, steals their education, returns it with a “beta” mode of “public” education and then resorts to calling them lazy entitled bums. How in the h*ll does that work?

I have a bucket list, but it’s not the one derived from the movie of the same name. No, my bucket list is a compilation of all the household chores that I’m unable to complete in a cursory manner. The things on my bucket list, generally speaking, require a bucket—as well as warm soapy water, scouring pads and a lot of elbow grease. Like many of you, these are things that, while not necessarily appealing at the moment, end up leaving us with a feeling of deep satisfaction and pride.

Late last week, inspired by weather that far exceeded my expectations and accompanied by a brand new bucket, a selection of cleaning supplies, my iPad and an afternoon beverage, I headed to the backyard to tackle one of the dirtiest jobs on my list. I know, I really should have done this late last fall, but I assured myself that I would continue to cook outside during the winter months!

I purchased a new grill last year, justifying the extra cost by making a firm (!) commitment to its maintenance and care, so this was an important task. After watching a YouTube video produced by the manufacturer, I began the task of dismantling the appliance, piece by piece, and laying it carefully out on the patio. As expected, I was initially overwhelmed by the enormity of the task ahead of me.

But as I examined the various pieces of cast iron and stainless steel that lay before me, it suddenly struck me that this wasn’t just a cleaning job but a project in restoration.

The layers of grease that had collected in the various nooks and crannies could not simply be wiped away with a damp cloth or dissolved with some caustic chemical. They needed to be loosened and scraped away—layer by layer, bit by bit. The igniter tubes could not just be dusted off. The particles of residue that can clog the fine openings in each tube required some very careful brushwork, with the appropriate tool, and in the proper direction. The stainless steel coverings and shelves couldn’t be quickly wiped down. Instead, the degreaser that I used needed some time to work before being shone back to their original lustre.

Whether we’re talking about an outdoor grill, a piece of antique furniture, a system or a human life, restoration is something that takes time, attentiveness and effort. It’s not for those in a hurry, or those without a belief that something worthwhile lies in wait beneath the accumulated layers of stuff. In a culture that, increasingly, appears to favour quantity over quality, fast over slow, information over knowledge and disposablity over longevity, it is difficult to  begin a conversation about restoration.

But it’s an idea that has lingered with me throughout this past week, and its an idea that I would like to dedicate some time to in the weeks to come.

What if we were to shift some of our discourse about school reformation—even transformation—to one of restoration? Instead of adding more and more layers to our systems of education, what would it look like if we started to strip away some of what has built up over the decades? What might we discover if we took the time to look at what lies beneath the surface? What might we learn about our core values and purpose if we adopted a restorative perspective towards education? What might we discover about the people who enter our schools everyday?

What if we were to add restoration of our systems of education to our bucket list?

Image courtesy of Joelk75/Flickr.

I wanted to share a recent essay I wrote for Care2.com, an online community for people passionate about creating a better world. Here’s an excerpt from “A Letter to High School Seniors: Don’t Accept College Rejections”:

Dear High School Seniors,

Over the past few weeks, many of you have received letters from the colleges to which you applied in the fall and winter.

Some of you are delighted with the outcome, having gotten into your top choice(s). Congratulations. This post is not for you.

Some of you are content, having gotten into a couple of schools that were high on your list. Wonderful. This post is not for you.

Some of you – all too many – are despairing because you received multiple rejections; got on wait lists that are unlikely to turn into acceptances; didn’t receive the financial aid you required; and realized that you actually have no interest in going to the affordable safety school that accepted you. This post is for you.

Many of you, who worked so hard and expected to get into an elite college with the kind of endowment that would ensure you could affordably attend with good financial aid, wonder why you even bothered to take all those AP courses; to study so diligently in classes that sometimes bored you to tears; to prep for the SATs; and to follow all the rules laid out for you during four years of high school.

Here’s my message to you: Don’t surrender your potential. Don’t accept the rejections. It’s time to forge your own path.

Read the complete essay.

~ Zoe

Suppose we looked at teacher accountability in a new way? I propose we trust teachers—a little laissez-faire education if you will. This might require higher pay and a serious look at teacher education and quality, but it’ll balance itself out. With less money thrown at testing and corporate remediation materials plus the slew of highway robbers and scripted consultants there would be billions leftover for real improvement.

Let’s start by looking at real professional learning communities like tumblr education or Cooperative Catalyst (http://coopcatalyst.wordpress.com/). These are communities of educators who engage in constant self-assessment and community growth. They are teachers who challenge each other to be better teachers. There is constant debate and discourse. The collective knowledge and understanding of the teaching practice is ever growing and changing—it’s a lovely organism.

Teachers can be professionals. We are. Put it in our laps. We’ll make the changes. Hell, give us a politician to answer to, just see to it that we’re making the decisions. Many of us do anyway. The education revolution begins with us. It’s our ability to engage and organize—not politically, but intellectually, dialectically, and professionally?— that enables us to make tremendous changes with or without the support of our beloved bureaucrats.

Change occurs in our classrooms. It is spawned from our learning communities. Let’s keep pulling others in. You have made all the difference in my career.

I was asked to sit on a panel of teachers to represent my school district during the accreditation process. I assume I was chosen because I am eager to speak in meetings and apparently speak well. This makes me think my administration has only enjoyed the sound of my voice and not the content of my O so bold oration.

I noticed quickly that I was in a room full of yes men and women who teach in the more affluent schools in our district. They all smiled and sat nicely. They were there to be slaughtered like good little lambs. The team of teachers surrounding me, my co-teachers, were, not unlike me worse for wear and doubting. Lips pursed, eyebrows cocked, notepads out. We were prepared for whatever we were going to he expected to swallow without question. Of course, my group did not act in complete accord. One just parroted off whatever was expected. Another would nod in agreement with the rest of the flock.

This accreditation team is from Advanced Ed, a voluntary “quality assurance” company that comes in for a hefty price and helps ensure that schools are quantitatively meeting standards. They provide services ranging from professional development to teacher evaluations to curriculum development to brainwashing desperate administration. The people on the teams I have met are high paid zealots who offer instruction in best practices from corporate research done in schools far different from the ones they are currently serving. This is no shock. I’ve been impressed with their ability to stick to their script even when challenged. They utilize a method similar to Bill O’Reilly’s when challenged. They simply repeat their original point in a different tone and then say “well we don’t have time to continue this” or “for the sake of time we have to move on”. But they’re generally nice people.

Back to the meeting and the flock.

We were asked general questions regarding the state of our facilities, safety on campus, professional development related to Common Core, whether or not the professional development was useful, and many more. Most people nodded along in agreement with the flock.

And then we were asked if we thought our kids were prepared for college and/or the “real world” when they left or high school. The flocked bleated, “Yes”. They provided examples, “I am a product of this district and I was more than ready.” Several referenced themselves as examples.

I asked the “accreditors” who were superintendents from other states if they thought the students leaving their districts were prepared. They paused and looked at one another. I continued, “is it possible with the way things are segmented, and the focus on testing and extreme standardization for anyone to leave a school completely prepared?” The other teachers in the room began speaking. One shouted out, “I teach at the community college in the summers. Our students almost always have to enter remedial reading courses.” Another offered her child as an example stating how his first year of college was devoted to college prep courses.

The accreditors said we had to move on, but first he said: “off the record, we’re all in trouble.” And was back to the agenda. It was an interesting moment to see a stone face break for a moment. It was a nice moment of breaking from the flock for the teachers around me. It’s nice to see a Yes Man say no.

These are all things that are big in my county right now… along with a HUGE push to use technology (all kinds of technologies, in all kinds of ways) and social media tools to connect kids and teachers to the world. Sounds incredibly progressive, right?

Our school board has even said we aren’t supposed to have as our teaching goal to teach to the state tests–that their goal is for kids to succeed with real life skills like our lifelong learner standards–and so we look at tinkering… makerspaces… engineering… design thinking… learning spaces… robotics… coding… and get kudos from our Superintendent and others in Central Office when this is what we spend our time doing.

Not that any of this is bad…if you’re reading that into this post, don’t.  I do a lot of this, and help with other pieces of it.  In fact, one of my favorite TED videos is 

Those of you who have read my writing before know I’ve taught for 30+ years. Was around before the huge “Let’s test everybody all the time” movement, and have seen many things come and go in classrooms in my system and our central office.

What I’m not seeing in the push in my county and in other places as well is the build towards sustainability. The build towards the “WHY?” The build of supporting teachers (and parents and kids and the community) to understand how coding will help the student be a better citizen, be a more productive member of society, be a nicer human being, be smarter, be more “ready” for college and/or the workforce, be …whatever.

AND, beyond the not building, we aren’t sharing and remembering what has come before….building on the community knowledge we have of what came before and what we’ve already tried.  We’re not looking back to see what didn’t work in the past to avoid making those same errors.  We’re not accessing the “system memory.”

Let me give you an example from another field. Several years ago at the Children’s Engineering Convention in VA I heard Henry Petroski speak.  From the field of engineering, he spoke to the feat of designing and building bridges, and he is known for popularizing the theory that a major bridge collapse occurs every 30 years. He says that “bridge collapses happen approximately every 30 years because that’s how long it takes a new generation of engineers to emerge and then ignore the old lessons, to disastrous results.

(The theory first appeared in a 1977 paper in the Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers by civil engineers Paul Sibly and Alastair Walker. They based their theory on observations of the pattern of major bridge collapses: the Dee in 1847 (pdf), the Tay in 1879, the Quebec City in 1907, the Tacoma Narrows in 1940, and the West Gate in 1970.)” http://discovermagazine.com/2007/aug/man-who-predicted-the-bridge-collapse#.UXvvmSt37lM

So how many times have you heard in education, as a new initiative rolls around, “This, too, shall pass…”  or “We tried this 20 years ago…” ? Is that because a new generation of administrators is in charge, or a new generation of professors in Ed Schools, or wherever the leaders are that lead the charge?  So is that how long it takes  us educators to “ignore old lessons” and go down the same or similar roads?

I think, as educators, we need to stop talking change. We need to stop talking revolution, or reform, or transformation, or evolution or any of those other words that basically say what we’re doing isn’t working.  We need to set common goals and then use what we know about teaching and learning to reach those goals. It’s not about test scores. It’s not about reading and writing and ‘rithmetic–or coding, or tinkering, or making or technology. It’s about LEARNING… and COMPREHENDING… and ANALYZING… and EVALUATING… and CREATING… and THINKING… and using the habits of mind that support critical thinking, reacting thoughtfully, doing and sharing.  It’s about  being a thoughtful, productive, responsible member of the society we call the human race. I do believe the race in school should not be towards high test scores, but instead towards this:

Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school. 

These are the things I learned: 

Share everything. 

Play fair. 

Don’t hit people. 

Put things back where you found them. 

Clean up your own mess. 

Don’t take things that aren’t yours. 

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. 

Wash your hands before you eat. 

Flush. 

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. 

Live a balanced life. 

Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. 

Take a nap every afternoon. 

When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together. 

Be aware of wonder. 

Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup — they all die. So do we. 

And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: look. 

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. 

Think what a better world it would be if we all — the whole world — had cookies and milk about 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together. 

~ Robert Fulghum ~ 

If we built our curriculum around helping people be the best they could be, and use the skills of reading, ‘riting and ‘rithemetic to do real tasks and build real things and explore real conundrums and problems and situations, wouldn’t they learn what they need to know to live well? Isn’t THAT what we want?

This post was inspired by a tweet from David Coffey, (@delta_dc) April 27, 2013 in a Twitter chat. RT @delta_dc Part of sustainability is building a system memory: what have we tried; what worked? Sharing! #rechat

And, in the interest of full disclosure, I was a Kindergarten teacher for 17 years of my current teaching career.