Some words for the end of the term

Remember. 

Work hard.

Learn.

Those are my words for the end of the term. Remember, work hard, and learn. Allow me to explain:

Remember: 

Merriam Webster dictionary defines "remember" as a word that doesn't need a dictionary definition. Seriously, though, you should all take some time at the end of the term to remember what has transpired this year. Students, think back all the way to August when you were going through Arena Scheduling for the first time. Think about the new West Campus building, and about the teachers you had and about the classes that you took. Remember that silly dance that your teachers performed for you, and how that will never happen again. Ever. Think about the friends that you made and about the work that you did, and about the learning that you demonstrated with that work. Fellow teachers and staff, remember how fresh and new the beginning of the year was, how full of inspiration you were, how full of drive and determination to make this the best year yet at RPA. If there are parents reading this, you, too can remember. Remember how many questions you had and how those questions were (hopefully) answered or at least addressed. Remember how your child was at the beginning of the year, and then, naturally, remember the child many years ago. How fast it all goes. How very, very fast. 

Seniors, you get a special note here, for your remembrance will be especially poignant. Remember the first year of high school, whether it was here or somewhere else. My guess is that you all have a vague recollection of who you were then. Remember how awkward it all was, how strange and how new. Remember the learning that happened (or didn't) and the work that you did (or didn't). Remember how big and impressive the seniors seemed to be, how strangely grown up. Now you are the senior, and you give off the same impression as they did. Remember, then, the rest of the years. Some of you were at a different school and were going through the "normal" paces of high school. Some others were here, safely entrenched in the spirit of RPA. Regardless of where you came from, you are here now, and you are about to graduate. Remember who you were, and realize who you are, and then think about how fascinating it is to know who you will become. Always remember, though. Our memories are our surest weapons against Time. 

Work hard: 

This phrase seems a bit silly, if you think about it a certain way. If it's work, then it's hard, right? If it's easy, then it doesn't really qualify as work. Regardless of the type of work in which you are engaged, whether it be school work and studying for that last final or preparing for that last presentation, or grading papers and final assessments and planning for June-Term, or making sandwiches at Subway, or pouring lattes at a coffee shop, there's no reason to work easy. If you are engaged in a thing, you should work hard at it. This doesn't mean that it will be unpleasant, mind you. It simply means that the work you do will be done with vigor and with life behind it. Hard work doesn't have to be unpleasant. You make it pleasant just as you make it unpleasant. The work is there to do, and you get to decide how to approach it and how to finish it and how to think about it. So work hard.

Learn: 

Of course, the sappy teacher is going to bring up learning. At this point, you're probably thinking that I'm going to admonish those who did not learn what they were supposed to learn this year and came up short in demonstrating their proficiency in certain areas and subjects. Nope (although I kind of just did...). What I'm going to say is that at the end of the term, as you reflect and as you work hard, you should rest assured that you are learning whether you like it or not. Each day you spend on this earth provides you with an opportunity to learn, and if you dismiss that opportunity, that in itself is learning. Sure, there is learning to be done with reading, and tests, and assignments, and did I mention reading? You need to be learning about functions and how sines relate to cosines, and how to get your parents to co-sign on a car loan; about English grammar and essay writing and made-up people who teach us about real people; about the troposphere and chemical reactions and stoichiometry and how stoichiometry is nothing like Geometry and how a Geo Metro is nothing like either of those two; about throwing pots and about overthrown governments and about how to save someone choking on their own throw up (sorry about that - I was looking for another use of the word "throw"). That's the school part of the learning that you should be doing, and it is all valuable. Trust me: it is. But there's more. 

There's learning who you are when "things" are easy and who you are when "things" are hard. There's learning about your goals and your drives and your dreams and how your past can shape your goals and drives and dreams. There's the learning that happens naturally as you grow and the learning that happens in a more contrived manner. Ultimately, there's learning about learning, and if you commit to that learning now, you will find that the other types of learning come quite fluently. 

Hopefully this hasn't been too cliche. If it has, then remember to work hard at learning why writers sometimes use cliches and why, sometimes, life really is like a box of chocolates - or a highway - or a many splendored thing. 

I hope you have been enjoying my words. There might be a word or two published over the summer, so stay tuned, you four or five wonderful people who have actually read this silly blog. Like as not, though, I'll realize I'm just an old man yelling at the sea to take its waves back, and this blog will recede into the ethereal place where blogs go to die. 

Cheers,

HW

What's going on next door?

Ray Bradbury wrote a wonderful short story called "The Pedestrian" in 1951. In the story, the protagonist wanders the streets of his dystopian society and is met with the muted flashing lights of TV screens projecting the latest shows. The idea is that no one has a personal connection with anyone else. The screens have taken over, and people do not interact with real people - they only interact with the two-dimensional ones on the various screens. He wonders as he walks, “What’s going on next door?”

While I could at this point launch into a diatribe about how Bradbury totally called it in 1951, how our society is starting to resemble the dystopian world created by Bradbury in this story (and in Fahrenheit 451, and in other stories), instead I'll talk about a different world altogether. It is my world at school. (Groan if you will, but I haven't posted on a topic like this is a while, having been completely consumed with finishing a story about a squirrel.)

So what's going on next door in my world? I love teaching at this school because the walls are so thin. On Tuesday morning, I can hear my good friend Mr. K talking about criminology next door while I blather on about media literacy and digital communication and bias and truth. Criminology sounds fascinating. The criminal element has been around for quite some time (forever, I think is the term), and so the study of criminals - the state of criminality, the people who become criminals, the system that deals with criminals - is absolutely important for our understanding of how part of our society functions. 

Later that day, after switching classrooms, I can hear two sets of voices. Mrs. K is enthusiastically informing students about Calculus (or Algebra 2 or Trigonometry or basic arithmetic, I can never tell the difference). Knowing that the universe can essentially be explained with math, especially the higher orders of the discipline, makes me wish I could sit in and watch the show, tinker with numbers (rarely) and letters (more often) and symbols (quite often), figure out the universe.

Comingled with this voice is the voice of yet another colleague, Ms. B. She’s talking about childcare and about human development and about the psychology and physiology of children. I cannot think of anything more intriguing than learning how we have all travelled through the same stages of development, but we have all done so uniquely and with a different result – us. She takes her students to schools and preschools and has young people at one end of the development spectrum work with other young people at the other end of the development spectrum. Youth informing youth: beautiful.

I go upstairs. There, I see students working independently on various online curricula. Some students are huddled around a single computer and are collaborating and learning together. Others are simply using the computer for purely social reasons and taking a break from learning. (Again, I could launch into a rant about how long that break often lasts, but I won’t. Yet.) A teacher, Mrs. M, works with individually with another student who is having trouble with a particular mathematical concept. Here, one can almost hear the hum of students’ brains, or maybe it’s the lights overhead and the screen and the printer/copier.

In another office upstairs, our director is busy captaining the ship – sometimes meeting with the crew, sometimes with the harbormaster, sometimes with the customers who fund our little expedition. In my own office, I sit and unpack my computer and continue working as I eat lunch. My officemates come in and we have a conversation. We talk about work, of course, but we also talk about our personal lives and about our mission and about our country and our society and our world. We are intelligent people and we talk about intelligent things, until we don’t. It is inspiring and challenging and comfortable.

Still later on this typical day, I descend the stairs once again to class and through the wall I hear Mr. H. He discusses journalism and the school newspaper and then he discusses issues that are tangentially related to the newspaper but have real meaning in the lives of the students. They laugh. Everyone laughs in this classroom, now that I think about it. He stays in that classroom as I stay in mine for the next class, wherein he discusses drama and the art of creating life on a stage from the words on a page. If that isn’t some sort of magic, then I guess we’ll have to rely on Hogwarts after all.

This is just one day. The next day, while I hack away at my blog and read my students’ thoughts, I hear the projected voice of Ms. B again, mixed with the distinct vocal delivery (and laugh) of Mr. Mc. She teaches first aid and CPR, while he teaches about the history of our country. In another room in the building, someone is administering a science lab and helping students experience the learning that so often stays up in the abstract regions of the brain and soul.

All of that occurs in only one building of our four. Down the block, a teacher holds court in the art studio, and is peels open the creative genius that has been dormant for many years in so many students. Here, another form of magic exists, the art of visual composition in various media. In the same building, but in a separate room, another teacher incongruously provides instruction and facilitation in Geometry. What strange building mates these two make, until one sees the art of geometrical shapes reflected in the photography and the sculptures and the painting and drawings of the art studio.

What’s going on next door? Allow me to completely cheese out and say that Life happens next door. Nearly every facet of Life is represented through the walls of this school if people will listen. Students move from class to class, just as teachers do this year. What happens in those classrooms, what happens next door is just as important as what happens outside. We are not mindless screen-watchers content with flashing lights and images. We are the wanderers of Bradbury’s story. We walk the nights and seek out the experience and the knowledge. And we fight against the ending of that story by noticing the people and engaging them in our wanderings.