Anyone Can...

I'll sell my inventions so that *everyone* can have powers. *Everyone* can be super! And when everyone's super...no one will be. (The Incredibles, 2004)

Anyone can cook! (Ratatouille, 2007)

I find it consistently fascinating that any moral quandary I am considering, any paradox can inevitably be traced back to the movie company, Pixar, and one or more of their works.  Several weeks ago I posted an article that caught the eye of a few of my friends and students concerning some of the new teaching "fads" that I was being exposed to.  (I was going to say "indoctrinated with" except I have to admit that I get no sense that these techniques, these scientific principles of teaching will ever be assessed in any Orwellian way.)  I was flattered as I worried that particular entry smacked more of ranting (which I admonish my students NEVER to do in a formal way) than considered reflection.  The conversations that resulted from that post which amounted to a considered support for teaching as an art form over a scientific method spurred me to think further on the issue.

Leading me to Pixar.

The tag line of Ratatouille resonates with me both as a teacher and as an individual. It says, in no uncertain terms, that no matter the perception that others might have of me, no matter what they consider to be my ability and potential, that I can through the sheer force of my will coupled with the time I am willing to devote master any skill I choose. I can devote my intellectual power, coupled with my physical exertion, and overcome obstacles and achieve new things. Even as I type that I would argue that while my physical form limits certain things I can do (I cannot for example lift a 400 lb weight currently), my mental faculties allow me to find other ways to go about solving those problems. (I.e. why am I trying to lift that much weight? And is there another way of going about the lifting that does not require my muscles?). In this sense, I see the equivalency to teaching.

I did not begin a good teacher. I started, decades ago, thinking I knew what most students would appreciate in a classroom setting (which is defined as what I would appreciate in a classroom setting) and what was basically a waste of their time. It did not take me long to realize that many of my dictates were far removed from reality. Waxing nostalgic about my school days (which I often enjoyed listening to from my teachers) held no interest whatsoever. Get to the point, get there fast, make it relevant: that was the lesson of my first few years teaching. It was only after I mastered discipline in the classroom that I found I had time for more: stories that didn't veer from the topic but enhanced it. More importantly, I found that giving my students time to relate stories that were relevant was a much greater sense of trust than my forcing archaic tales on them. Through experience and finding the right mentors (read: seasoned and slightly irritable), I found my style. In this way, I believe anyone "can" teach. And I don't define that verb in the confining, denotative way it suggests. I don't mean just standing before a room full of students and possessing a college degree makes one a teacher. Handing out a test and then collecting and grading it doesn't mean you have taught or instructed.

But with time and, most importantly, a willingness to adapt I think there is no human being who cannot come to instruct, impart, whatever to others.

Yet what I mean by "anyone" I think has been taken over by organizations and (more scary to me) companies looking to make money and package the "skill" of teaching. Here is the leap from a single rat who, against all the preconceived notions of society and humanity, acquires the repertoire of cooking to the antithesis of the second Pixar movie, The Incredibles. What is genius and ability and wonder and laudable in the one, the individual becomes communicable (without human voice, without contact even) to the many.

The villain of The Incredibles operates out of resentment that he is not a hero. He can't fly or turn invisible or stretch like elastic. So he uses his mind (which I would define as a superhero organ to begin with) and builds gadgets to allow him to defeat what he considers "super". These gadgets can be massed produced (I wonder if Pixar had it out for Henry Ford some days) and sold to everyone everywhere. And when everyone is "super"...

This seems to be the concept bombarding modern education. When everyone has the ability to teach equally well, when everyone can share everything they have with each other regardless of humanity or contact or intent, then the entire system is composed of superheroes! We all win! Except the teachers who demonstrate success in other ways. Except for teachers who reach their students and push them to perform on more than just multiple choice tests.

I suppose even this comes back to the art form. I can't always explain why something worked so well in my classroom or even where I got the idea from. I can usually figure out why something didn't work and I don't necessarily need another set of eyes or ears to tell me that. What I do need is time: my own time to consider, think, evaluate, and redesign. I have a student who is having a hard time making rational arguments? There is no E2020 program that will help them with that. But talking to me about what they believe is right and wrong on this planet and why will get them into a better mental framework faster than anything. Heck, even a back-and-forth on Facebook is more helpful than a program of algorithms that supposedly helps them argue clearer.

I bow to Pixar for putting not just words but images and characters in places that stand for what I consider to be some of the mot dangerous and foreshadowing issues to come in this profession.

Of Grog and Mutiny

I sat in a large heated room today for roughly six hours with forty other professionals and listened to two very energetic women attempt to redefine what most of us believe to be "good teaching". I have a pretty grudging respect for that these two do; in the space of just a few years they are undertaking the task of transforming how we go about doing this most important of things: educating the youth. My problem is not in any of the details that they present or suggest, nor in their methods, but in the aggregate of what they and other "educational coaches" all over the country are doing, namely changing teaching from an art into a science.

Like most people, I have a clear memory of teachers from my past: which ones I consider "good" and which ones I do not. But here's the first important distinction - nowhere in my vocabulary, then and now, do I equate "good" with "skillful". And the name of the seminar is Skillful Teacher. While others might suggest that these words are synonyms or at the very least bear a great deal of similarity in their definitions, I would argue the difference resides in the sense of their art and hence is a bit undefinable by these pedagogic experts.

The teachers I count as really important in my life were ones who had a great of content knowledge and applied it not in a gimmicky or multi-faceted way but who challenged me to take ownership of the information or skills, to make them my own. Or more specifically, didn't force me to use them/it in *any* particular or specified way. They were tools, in a sense, to solve larger problems ahead. Example: knowing the rhythms of John Donne's poetry might never have been an applied skill but then coupling that knowledge/ability with other forms of writing or editing made my prose all the more ornate, made my references and arguments all the more poignant. But it didn't take a game of round robin or whatever technique is in fad for me to get that. To that end I think good teaching is not so much about the HOW over the WHAT.

I don't however want to mis-speak however. For I am certain everyone who might read these words has at one time (or more) in their lives encountered the knowledgeable teacher who would not be able go hold the attention of an art lover in the Louvre. So is this the science part? No, this is the passion part. Again, the teachers memorable in my life were passionate - they LOVED beyond all reason what they taught and to not become infected with that love and interest and passion was to be something other than humans. And certainly I have sat next to folks whose lack of passion and humanity made them seem a bit otherworldly. There is a sense, I think, in the best teaching of something so fun and exciting that to not join in and not become a part of that world is somehow illogical.

That all consuming passion is the art that I don't think this seminar or any class that I have taken about "teaching" can ever relate or delineate. I don't know if I achieve that sense of passion and commitment in my classroom - I hope I do - but I know that watching good teachers do what they do is a thousand times more instructive than the six hours I will probably spend tomorrow learning about this science that people are now convinced constitutes teaching.