From a certain point of view...

On the last day of school, a student confides "I have a gift for you but I forgot it at home!"

I say, half-joking, "Well, you know where I live so you can just drop it off sometime."  (I live in town and not too far from this student).

She says "Okay -maybe I will."

Yesterday she emails me to see if someone will be home today so she can drop it off.

This afternoon, my parents and I go out for a walk and this student happens to be driving to my house to drop off the gift.  Seeing me, she stops, jumps out and hands me a gift.  Then she jumps back in her car and drives off.

Hours later, Isabelle comes home and sees my unwrapped gift:

"Hey, where did this cool book come from?"

Before I can explain, my Mom pipes up, "When your Dad walks around town, people just stop their cars and give him gifts in the middle of the street."

I pause for a second and then say, "Yes,  that's exactly correct."

This is what you get...

... when you show "My Dinner with Andre" to some students.

Student Council ran a charity fund raiser in which you buy a cup for hot chocolate and write a message of kindness/support on it.  The cups are delivered and then you use the cups during lunch to score your hot chocolate gift.  One of mine read as follows:

Rather than use it for a drink, I taped it up on my desk to remind me to appreciate the simple pleasures in life.

Thanks, ML (with sidekick AC)!

Dilbert, Sales, and Teaching

     I was listening to an interview with the creator of the Dilbert comic, and he was talking about how he changed the comic to please his readers and then experienced blow-out success.  His contrast of how traditional artists don't do this whereas it is a core idea of sales reminded me of Dan Brown talking about how he followed a similar formula in writing his block buster novels (short, easy-to-digest chapters; unchallenging plotting & characters; easy enough mystery that his readers can feel smart solving on their own, etc.).  Although this idea of the difference between the "pure" artist creating the art for art sakes versus the more crass "I want to be popular, give 'em what they want" entertainer is nothing new, I found myself thinking about education.

    There is constant pressure to do evidence-based teaching strategies that often fall flat in class: project-based, flipped classes, individualized course-of-studies, authentic real-word ambiguous problem solving, purposefully exploring misconceptions, actively constructing & testing models, etc.  Why don't we teachers do more of these things in the face of the evidence that learning outcomes frequently improve when we make the learning harder?  Part of the answer is that we can not afford to be artists; we are actual more on the salesman end of the spectrum.  If the students are unhappy (or we are unhappy) then the effort is doomed.

     The first song you hear on the radio should not be challenging to parse if you want to start liking music.  The first painting you appreciated probably was just a nice scene well executed.  The first book you read cover to cover was probably more fun than deep.

Education is more Dan Brown than William Faulkner.
More Norman Rockwell than George Braque.
More Elton John than Nick Cave.



The trick, of course, is to serve the students some fried chicken but let them catch a whiff of coq au vin...

Hard of Hearing?

First there was the bald spot.
Then, the reading glasses.
Now, I can't hear right???

Today, at the end of a long meeting, the teacher on my left leaned forward and asked me, "Hey Ken - do you have any recommendations for a good Scootch Band?"

Now, I'm not usually so proud but for some reason I was really embarrassed that I have no idea what a Scootch Band is so I kind of hemmed and hawed, but eventually just admitted, "Sorry  - I'm just so not with it, I have no idea what a Scootch Band is  - I don't even know what the "Scootch" sound is..." (I was thinking some kind of reggae meets bluegrass kind of thing??)

As I turn my head in shame, she laughs and says, somewhat incredulously, "I asked if you have any favorite brands of Scotch.  You know Scotch Whiskey? I need to buy someone a gift."

Oh boy... now it all made sense... a music teacher wouldn't normally ask me for a band recommendation, would they?

The fact that my fellow faculty members would ask me a whiskey recommendation is probably worthy of a whole blog post on its own...

Evolution, Dwelling, and Free Will

So, here we are with all this grey matter.  We evolved all this ability to think through a whole lotta "what if's" in order to feed ourselves, take care of our tribe, and avoid those predators in the night.  But, now, life doesn't offer us those existential threats so we invent our own.  We dwell on some trivial detail.  We keep ourselves up at night dwelling: "Why did my boss send that email?", "Why did I say the wrong thing to that person?" etc.

All that predisposition to use our brainpower to avoid life threats now squandered on trivialities of modern existence.  I have, for years, found that very sad and would dwell on the negativity of this feeling about the modern condition.  Woe is me.  Woe is us! (Imagine the rebranding of Toys-R-Us as a store for existentialism: "Woes-R-Us"!)

Recently though, I had a bit of an epiphany.  Why not turn that excess cognitive bandwidth over to dwelling on irrationally positive feelings?  How lucky I was to catch my favorite song on the radio!  How beautiful the snow on the naked tree limbs and that I have the time to stop, catch my breath, and admire this view!  How wonderful that this student came by to share a personal story and we had a very real human-to-human moment in the midst of a very constructed and hectic school day!

It's like my favorite Bohr quote about Profound Truths:  "A profound truth is one where the opposite of the statement is also true."

Modern life has provided space for me to dwell on and fret over the negative minutia.
Modern life has provided space for me to dwell on and enjoy the positive minutia.

A snowy day at the kids' dentist's office

The smell of the freshly fallen snow is unmatched

The white blanket covers all of life imperfections

The cleanliness of cold air is purity distilled,

Perfectionists rejoice.

The flowers and rains are earthy and funky

The colors and sprouts hint at possibilities

That funk hints at the life that spawns it,

Futurists hope.

The heat and humidity cloy and smother

Visible waves of heated air distorting vision

Introspectively wondering at our life’s course,

Philosophers ponder.

Hints of decay and drying vegetation tantalize

The variety of transitions intriguing in its potential

As the possibilities nested within choices manifest,

Dreamers dream.

Are there really Seasons?

Are there personality types?

Do things come in bins or do we organize them that way?

Isn’t life both quantum and continuous?

I shift from Dreamer to Philosopher to Whatever to Whoever,

Moment to moment.

Weather or a Season or Climate?

I am all those things and I am none of them.