This blog will be going on hiatus indefinitely. Thanks for all your work in changing the way society thinks about school, still lots more work to do!

In gratitude,

Steve

One section of the book deals with Merlino’s experience as a student at the Lakeside School, including a discussion of its recent efforts at becoming more diverse. He interviews numerous people of color—recent graduates—who describe the complexity of their experience at the school. One of them now works at an amazing non-profit called Rainier Scholars, which provides structure and support to help promising young students of color as they advance through middle school, high school, and college.

Despite its great work, Rainier Scholars can only do so much. This is what troubles Merlino, who writes,

“At the same time, Rainier Scholars [does not try] to accept and work with every student it can, no matter their test scores. The Rainier Scholars program, instead, enrolls sixty of Seattle’s highest-testing minority students a year and looks to get them into private schools or the advanced tracks of the public schools. The idea is that without the program, the kids may fall behind and never be able to reach their potential. You have to wonder about the next sixty, who barely miss the cut. Or what about all the other kids after that? How many other talented kids lose out because their families lack the means or the background to guide them through the system? What about the students who don’t score high on standardized tests, who aren’t going to go to college? Have we just accepted . . . that a certain number of kids just aren’t going to make it?”

* * *

The tragedy here is not that there isn’t more funding for Rainier Scholars. The tragedy is that we need non-profit organizations to step in and guide kids through “the system.”

What does that say about our schools?

* * *

Sir Ken Robinson, in his awesome book The Element, poses a simple challenge. Instead of creating schools that are defined by the question, “How intelligent are you?” he suggests we flip the question: “How are you intelligent?”

In schools designed to build on kids’ strengths, it’s less likely they’ll need a separate infrastructure just to make it through. And in response to Merlino’s question, “Have we just accepted . . . that a certain number of kids just aren’t going to make it?”—I’m reminded of something a friend said to me recently.

She said, “Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a city in which everyone was dialed into the thing in life that they’re truly passionate about?”

Yes. I can.

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The authority such a leader needs is not power. Power comes to anyone who controls the tools of coercion, which range from grades to guns. But authority comes only to those who are granted it by others. And what leads us to grant someone authority? The word itself contains a clue: we grant authority to people who we perceive as “authoring” their own words and actions, people who do not speak from a script or behave in preprogrammed ways.

In other words, we grant authority to people we perceive as living undivided lives.

* * *

I received an email earlier this year from a former student, who wrote:

“I am currently a senior [in college], and have been focusing a lot on political economic theory recently . . . and I keep on thinking about your lit and philosophy class. It was really really smart, and I am really grateful to have taken it. I was wondering if you still had the reading list for the class?”

This is not the first time I had been asked this. (It’s a great honor, and these messages always fill me with gratitude and joy.) It was a popular class, one that I completely made up from scratch. When writing the syllabus, I never once considered the state’s Essential Academic Learning Requirements or what a traditional “philosophy” class might include. Instead, I focused on creating a curriculum that inspired me, selecting ideas that had a profound impact on the way I think.

Because I was inspired every day, I was able to facilitate class discussions with energy and enthusiasm. Every class period really mattered to me because every class period was focused on an idea that had changed my life.

Reading Palmer’s book last night gave me another interpretation of what happened in that class. I relied so little on “the tools of coercion”—students had to write three essays over the course of five months, and anyone who took the assignment seriously earned full credit—that the presence of any “power” in our relationship was almost imperceptible.

I didn’t exercise much power over students in that class, but by presenting a curriculum that I had authored myself, I gained a very real authority among them.

* * *

I know it seems efficient to have curriculum writers just send out unit plans to the mass of teachers in a school district. That way, students in different schools are all on the same page, and if one of them transfers to a different school, he can pick right up where he left off in his old school. It can save time and money, and acts as a buffer to soften the impact that bad teachers can have. It all seems logical.

But I think we lose more than we gain. By telling teachers what and how to teach, we take from them their authority in the classroom. Without authority from the students, they have to rely increasingly on exercising power.

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It’s meant sardonically, and the point is clear: many private schools require prospective students to take an achievement test; often, the students who do best on the achievement test are the ones who are admitted to the school.

Then, the school gets to boast when a high percentage of its students go on to attend an Ivy League college.

Education theorist Martin Haberman says this another way: “The children we teach best are those who need us least.”

* * *

I observed this same phenomenon as a public school teacher, although it wasn’t exactly the same.

But it was maddening, for sure.

I would give an assignment. Some students would do the assignment, and they’d get an A. Others would not do it, and they would get a zero.

The problem with this was that I could predict in advance what the outcome would be. For example, one year I decided to give students a multiple choice, fill-in-the-bubble, scantron test for their final exam. The results were remarkable: they mirrored almost exactly what the students grade had been up to that point. So, if the student’s grade was an 87 percent entering the final exam, her percentage on the final was almost invariably between 85 and 90 percent. It was uncanny.

It made me think: if the outcomes are so predictable, what’s the point of engaging in this ritual? I’m not sure of the point, but I have a pretty good sense of the impact: kids who experience success at school get the joy of more positive feedback; kids who don’t experience success at school get to feel even worse about themselves.

I’ve written before that so I’ve heard many parents tell their kids, “School is a game, just learn to play the game.” While I’m not fond of that particular sentiment, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. School is a game. All the kids who are good at school, line up here to receive your “A.” Send me winners and I’ll make winners out of them.

The corollary, of course, is horrifying but no less true. All the kids who aren’t good at school, here’s your list of required classes. Please report to the rooms listed on the right to receive your F.

* * *

Instead of encouraging students to play the game, I’d like to encourage all of us to rewrite the rules of the game. Instead of setting kids up to fail by demanding that they conform to the institution’s definition of success, we can ask them how they define success. We can ask them what they’re interested in. We can ask them what their goals are.

When every kid is pursuing the things that make them special and unique, everyone wins.

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From the perspective of a parent, who sends her kid off to school each day knowing that we do not have a prescribed academic program, it can feel risky. They’re not going to force my son take a science class! What if he never learns anything about science!

I have a different perspective on risk. To me, sending my child off to a traditional high school knowing that the curriculum was created without my child in mind . . . that feels like a risk.

To send him off to school knowing that the school is trying to meet the needs of 1,600 students and it’s near impossible for my son to get personalized attention . . . that feels like a risk.

To know that, in a traditional high school, my child could go four full years and never have to make a decision that mattered. . . that’s risky.

To have my child attend a high school where the learning process is distorted by the presence of extrinsic motivators like grades . . .

That feels risky.

How do they know my kid is going to be interested in the material if they don’t give him a choice in what he’s learning? How do I know my kid is going to be taken care of when the school operates like a factory assembly line? How is my kid ever going to take control of his education when he never has the chance to make a decision about it?

How will my kid ever learn for the sake of learning when he’s constantly being bribed/threatened with grades?

It’s a different way of looking at what’s risky.

* * *

It’s a strange paradox in American education: we all acknowledge that the traditional model is broken and needs reform, but to move away from the model that we know doesn’t work feels like a risk. It’s this paradox that keeps us locked into the current paradigm.

* * *

I often use agriculture or gardening as a metaphor for a new way of looking at education. The job of the teacher is to make sure the soil is rich, to add water, and to ensure the flower gets plenty of sunlight. In that kind of environment, the gardener doesn’t need to pull the flower out of the ground to make it grow. It grows because that’s what seeds do.

Similarly, when kids are immersed in a safe, nurturing environment and surrounded by talented people of high character who are role models for passion, curiosity, and producing high quality work, teachers don’t need to force kids to learn. They learn because that’s what human beings do.

* * *

If a gardener does try pulling the flower out of the ground to make it grow, some flowers may grow in spite of that. But it’s a risky strategy for making a garden bloom.

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She attended high school in a time when the school had gone through four or five principals in quick succession, each lasting no more than a couple years. The administration had fallen into such disarray that it lacked a certain measure of control over the student body. In the place of administrative control, an extraordinary culture emerged in which students felt ownership of their school.

“I went to college and I’d hear people talk about how much they hated high school,” she said. “I would tell them, ‘I loved high school.’”

The more we talked about this, the more I understood the reason she had such a deep affection for those years. Quite by accident, the school had made a trade: it had given up control, and in exchange it had received inspiration.

In most schools, it’s the opposite: the administration maintains tight control over everything, and the result is a profound lack of spontaneity. Everything is managed, so nothing is inspiring.

* * *

At one point in our conversation, she talked about perhaps her life’s greatest triumph. She performed at Amateur Night the Apollo in New York City. In one of the world’s most famous venues, in an environment in which the audience will boo any performer they feel deserves to get booed, she sang her heart out. She smiles with pride when she says, “I didn’t get booed.”

Some singers will come with a CD and, instead of using the house band, will use recorded music to accompany their voice. The audience will have none of it, of course, and that singer will get booed off the stage. The reason is simple: the audience didn’t come to hear you sing; they came to witness you bearing your soul, sharing your passion, and sharing your art. Nothing less will do.

My former student is a classically trained musician, who has gone on countless auditions for orchestras around the country. Over time, she grew disgusted by the process.

She says, “You have these musicians who are taking beta blockers right before they perform because they know they have to play every single note perfectly, and they’re stressed beyond belief. This is why orchestras are closing down, because they show up and hear the notes but they feel anything. Me, before I perform, I’m listening to James Brown. Because that’s how I want to feel when I’m playing, and that’s how I want the audience to feel.”

* * *

We talked about “Cultural Relations,” a program (that’s since been eliminated) in which the school would rearrange the class schedule for an entire week while students led forums on issues like racism and sexism. The students led the forums. Adults were instructed to sit at their desks and stay out of the way.

The result, of course, was mayhem. It was the same every year, with some of the discussions spiraling out of control, hordes of students skipping out to grab coffee at the local Starbucks, attendance counts hopelessly inaccurate. The administration had lost control of the school.

But when you talk to alumni from that era, many will tell you that Cultural Relations was a life-changing experience. Because amid all the chaos, there were still moments when black kids, white kids, Asian kids, Latino kids, gay and lesbian kids, kids who had been abused, rich kids and poor kids . . . they engaged each other in authentic conversations about their lives and their experiences. These conversations were raw and unfiltered. They were real.

So yeah, some kids skipped out. But I would argue that even those kids learned something much more profound than anything you’ll find in an ordinary textbook. They learned that subjects like racism and sexism are so important that it’s worth stopping your routine and having authentic dialogue. Even if something might go wrong in the process.

It’s those kinds of lessons that change people’s lives. But in order to create the possibility for those lessons to happen, you have to let go. You have to accept the fact that it’s OK if everything isn’t perfect, it’s OK to miss a note once in a while.

Because in the end, the most profound moments of your life are not when everything was perfect, was but when your experience was personal, authentic, and from your heart.

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Rather than viewing the pedagogy of poverty as a disgrace, however, many of the charter schools championed by the new reformers have concentrated on perfecting and intensifying techniques to keep children “on task” and compel them to follow directions. (Interestingly, their carrot-and-stick methods mirror those used by policy makers to control educators.) Bunches of eager, mostly white, college students are invited to drop by for a couple of years to lend their energy to this dubious enterprise.

Is racism to blame here—or perhaps behaviorism? Or could it be that, at its core, the corporate version of “school reform” was never intended to promote thinking—let alone interest in learning—but merely to improve test results? That pressure is highest in the inner cities, where the scores are lowest. And the pedagogy of poverty can sometimes “work” to raise those scores, which makes everyone happy and inclined to reward those teachers.

Unfortunately, that result is often at the expense of real learning, the sort that more privileged students enjoy, because the tests measure what matters least. Thus, it’s possible for the accountability movement to simultaneously narrow the test-score gap and widen the learning gap.

* * *

I spent nine years teaching in an urban high school, which was unique in that it served primarily two distinct populations.

There were the kids who grew up in the local neighborhood, which, while in the process of being gentrified, has been poor for generations.

The other group consists primarily of white students enrolled in the Accelerated Progress Program, which pushes kids two grades level ahead. These students bus in from more affluent neighborhoods around the city.

There was always pressure to teach these groups of students the same, to offer the same rich academic experience to both.

* * *

I taught some classes with students who were very serious about school and seemed to genuinely enjoy academic learning. They’d had success with academic learning their entire lives. It was an arena in which they excelled, so naturally they felt comfortable in it.

Delivering a curriculum grounded in meaning and understanding was a joy. I could say, “Read up to page 75 by Thursday,” and most of them would do it. On Thursday, I could begin class by saying something like, “What did those first four chapters make you think about?” They would respond by saying a bunch of thoughtful, interesting things. It was awesome.

I also taught classes with students who had not experienced a lifetime of success with academic learning. By the time they reached 10^th grade, they had already come to some definitive conclusions about the role of school in their lives. Getting these students to engage in a learning process focused on “meaning and understanding” was often a major challenge, because in many cases they had already decided they didn’t care what it meant, and they weren’t interested in understanding.

The resistance that students can bring when they first walk in the door is a very real phenomenon. It’s one of the most important—and least talked about—issues in education.

* * *

The point here is that, from a classroom teacher’s perspective, teaching a drill-and-skill curriculum to students who have already decided that school has nothing to offer them might be the best option. To teach for meaning and understanding requires that students open themselves up to the process, and that they offer some of their life energy to participating in it.

Many kids living poverty, for very legitimate reasons, are not going to do it. They’ve accumulated a lifetime of negative experiences in school, and they have five other classes with teachers who may or may not believe in them. Because they live in poverty, they go home to an environment in which the value of any particular lesson plan may not seem relevant. It’s only relevant as part of a daily practice experienced over time.

I remember teaching a class—I was teaching for meaning and understanding—in which students were reading and deconstructing a classic novel. A student named Joe, whose father had recently died from a lung ailment as a result of toxic conditions at his workplace, approached my desk. He was frustrated. He said to me, “Mr. Miranda, I need to know what’s real. You know what I’m saying?”

I had to grapple with some very difficult questions. Was I really serving Joe by teaching him to analyze a classic work of literature? Because of his life circumstances, was he able to get anything from the experience, or was it just a lot of white noise? Was he truly able to dedicate life energy to participating in a process that must have seemed so abstracted from his day-to-day life? Would he be better off getting daily practice in basic literacy, and daily coaching on sustained focus, respectful interactions, and delivering a completed product in a set framework of time?

I didn’t know the answers to these questions.

* * *

I tell this story to get at the real point of Alfie Kohn’s essay, because it highlights one answer that I do know. He writes,

“Remarkable results with low-income students of all ages have also been found with the Reggio Emilia model of early-childhood education, the “performance assessment” high schools in New York, and “Big Picture” schools around the country. All of these start with students’ interests and questions; learning is organized around real-life problems and projects. Exploration is both active and interactive, reflecting the simple truth that kids learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions. Finally, success is judged by authentic indicators of thinking and motivation, not by multiple-choice tests.

* * *

This is why I’m such an outspoken champion for PSCS. The traditional public school model will never effectively serve low-income kids of color. It’s not because the teachers are bad; the traditional public school model suffers from a series of fundamental design problems. That big public school in your community that serves low-income kids of color will never deliver the outcomes that we want, no matter how many financial incentives and punishments are implemented by state and federal governments. It can’t, by design. Those institutions can only be laid to rest and re-invented as new kinds of schools with a different culture and a different environment, organized according to a different set of principles, brought into being by a different structure.

A great place to start—this is where PSCS starts—is with students’ interests and questions. Students need to know what’s real, to them.

You know what I’m saying?

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That means avoiding the “divided life,” Parker Palmer’s phrase for when your true self—your whole self—is out of alignment with your actions. An example of the divided life in school is when a student forges a note from a parent so they can skip out on a class they dislike. This is a corrosive situation, not simply because the student skipped class, but because the person’s actions lack integrity. These acts, performed enough times, become the habits that lead to a divided life.

Here’s an example of how to re-imagine this in a way that nurtures students along the path toward wholeness:

At PSCS, we don’t have specific academic requirements for students; we do, however, have community requirements. What students do on campus is, for the most part, up to them—provided they engage as respectful members of the community.

We track attendance through something we call “community hours.” There are approximately 1144 hours in a school year. In order to remain a student in good standing, students must be present in school for 1,000 of those hours. The other 144 hours are called “offsite time.”

If students want to go off campus for lunch, that’s offsite time. If they’re feeling burned out from too much work and need a day to rest, that’s offsite time. If they get sick and miss a week of school, that’s offsite.

A computer program tracks all this data, so students know exactly how much offsite time they have available at any given moment.

The best part about all this is that everything is explicit. Everything is transparent. No need to forge a doctor’s note or an excuse letter from your parents. If students want to go skiing instead of coming to school one day, that’s perfectly fine. We only ask that students tell us when they’ll be gone and, when appropriate, where they’ll be.

One very important outcome of this is that students learn the important skill of time management. Sometimes early in the school year, students will see 144 hours and think those hours will last forever; they can go skiing whenever they want! The hard lesson comes in the springtime, when there are six weeks left in the school year and they’re down to just 17 offsite hours . . . and then they get the flu.

Students get real practice at making decisions and dealing with the consequences of those decisions. The only way to learn how to be responsible is by being given the chance to make mistakes, and then reflect on what happened.

The most important lesson, of course, is in living a life of integrity. I have talked to many parents who coach their kids through traditional schooling by encouraging them to “play the game.” That means if you don’t like a teacher, find out what they want as a means of staying on their good side. If Stanford requires a 4.0 GPA, then just do whatever it takes to get all A’s. If an assignment is boring or meaningless, figure out a shortcut to just get it done.

I understand where the parents are coming from but I think, in the long run, that’s bad advice. To help kids develop into whole human beings means helping them align their actions with their soul.

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Here’s an example of what I mean. PSCS founder Andy Smallman gave me a book called A Hidden Wholeness, by Parker Palmer. (Many educators are familiar with Parker’s bestseller The Courage to Teach.)

Palmer’s book starts—and explains its title—with this:

Every summer, I go to the Boundary Waters, a million acres of pristine wilderness along the Minnesota-Ontario border. My first trip, years ago, was a vacation, pure and simple. But as I returned time and again to that elemental world of water, rock, woods, and sky, my vacation began to feel more like a pilgrimage to me—an annual trek to holy ground driven by spiritual need. Douglas Wood’s meditation on the jack pine, a tree native to that part of the world, names what I go up north seeking: images of how life looks when it is lived with integrity.

Thomas Merton claimed that “there is in all things . . . a hidden wholeness.” But back in the human world—where we are less self-revealing than jack pines—Merton’s words can, at times, sound like wishful thinking. Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the “integrity that comes from being what you are.”

The divided life, Parker writes, is when we refuse to invest ourselves in our work, when we collect a paycheck from a company whose values we don’t share, or when we remain in relationships that kill off our spirits. Even hiding one’s beliefs from those who disagree simply to avoid conflict, or concealing one’s true identity for fear of being criticized—these are all examples of living a divided life.

School prepares kids for living a divided life. Daydreaming through a required class, cheating on a test in a class that you couldn’t possibly care less about, surrendering your autonomy by doing homework that is completely meaningless to you . . . all of this pulls kids away from growing into whole human beings. All this stunts kids’ development into mature adults with a powerful sense of self.

When you look at school from a human development standpoint, getting a good grade in Washington State History class doesn’t seem nearly as important as, to use Parker’s words, aligning one’s soul with their role in the world.

The best part is that it’s not an either/or question. By helping kids become whole, academic learning comes as a byproduct of that.

But it doesn’t work the other way around; academic learning alone can’t help you grow into a whole human being.

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The author wrote, “Like any student, I’ve had good teachers and bad teachers. Our schools are never going to be filled with only good teachers, but there is one lesson best taught by a bad teacher: The responsibility for one’s education can only be one’s own.”

He continues, “It’s an often-quoted fact that one of the greatest scientific and political minds this continent has produced only had two years of formal education. This trivia about Benjamin Franklin is sometimes used to point out his unique genius. However, Franklin’s genius is not unique. Why did one of 17 children of a candle and soap maker become so successful? As a child, Franklin quickly learned that nobody was going to do anything for him, and this was certainly true of his education. So he read.”

I love this story. But I think the writer makes a crucial error. Learning the importance of taking responsibility for one’s own education is not a lesson best delivered by a bad teacher through his incompetence; that’s a lesson best delivered by a great teacher through a nuanced understanding human development.

This, of course, requires a redefinition of what it means to be a great teacher. In my 10 years as a classroom teacher in traditional schools, I thought my job was to deliver academic content to students—as much as possible, in as much depth as possible. It’s hard to do that effectively when students are only there because they’re required to, and their primary motivation for completing my assignments is the fear getting a bad grade. To keep them engaged, I had to crank up the charisma and the entertainment value of our 55-minute period. If I could keep them awake and engaged, I thought, hopefully they would learn some pieces of the lesson I was trying to impart.

Then, I could pat myself on the back for being a great teacher.

It’s a totally backwards way of looking at teaching and learning.

The best teachers don’t focus primarily on delivering academic content to a captive audience. The best teachers focus primarily on helping students understand this: the responsibility for one’s education can only be one’s own. That’s the gift that keeps on giving, even after the student has graduated and moved on to the next stage in life. When students have internalized that message, they can give up playing the game of school where they memorize things in the short term only to forget them three weeks later.

To do this in a traditional learning environment is a near-impossible task. Here’s a short scene that might give you a sense of what I mean:

TEACHER: Good morning class.  I want to have a conversation with you guys about what it means to really own your learning process, to really take responsibility for it yourself.

STUDENT: Will there be a test on this?

The learning environment in a traditional school is dominated by requirements and extrinsic motivators. It’s not designed to teach students responsibility, maturity, or curiosity. Without responsibility, maturity, or curiosity, school for kids becomes a ritual in following directions and placating adults. In that kind of environment, expecting students to take charge of their education is really, really tall order.

The problem with our education system is not budget cuts, lazy students, or bad teachers. School is a design problem. For it to deliver the outcomes we desire, school needs to be redesigned based on a different set up assumptions.

Near the end of his opinion column, the author writes, “Every student is the craftsman of their own education, whether they realize it or not. We as students must dismiss the idea that we are entitled to a good education. We are not. . . . We must ensure for ourselves that we are well-educated.”

I don’t believe that for a second. Of course students are entitled to a good education. We just need to redefine what the words “good education” mean.

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