Race to the Top?

            When I was in high school, just a decade ago, standardized testing was not a part of our lives. They were just beginning to field test some of the HSA’s, but none of these tests counted against students or schools. I recall being selected to take the biology test, and, knowing that the test held no weight on me or my school, I did very little preparation for the test. Regardless, I wasn’t one of those students who could ever just turn in a test where I bubbled all C’s, so I did my best. The test was surprisingly easy. But, I only had to take one of those tests. Every single person I graduated high school with said thank God we graduated when we did and didn’t have to take all those standardized tests. We were in some of the last good years where our teachers still had the control in their classrooms to lead us on a journey. We were part of the last good years where teachers weren’t forced to teach to a test. We were focused on tests that meant something, on AP classes that were rigorous and challenging (and didn’t ever use those buzzwords as descriptors, they just were). We had some of the most amazing teachers, who were amazing because of the freedom they had to teach about what was meaningful and important, rather than what would be on a test that was shipped in a box like an Amazon package.

            My most meaningful classes in high school were AP European History and AP Composition. AP European History was one of the few challenging classes I ever took (We were also, unfortunately, already a part of the age where students were beginning to complain about too much work, and at a school where students were expected to get all A’s and B’s because of course everyone’s little Sally Joe did all of the assignments and I have no idea why she is failing!). First of all, the teacher of this class was one of the best I have ever had to this day. Everybody loved him. He was anecdotal, honest, and hilarious, and he knew the subjects he taught inside and out. To pass his class, you had to read the textbook. You had to create a timeline of European History in your head (and probably on paper first, too), and he helped every single one of us do that by providing us with some of the most fascinating stories of European History. And, of course, any one who knows a thing or two about European History, or even just knows of Henry VIII and his six wives, will tell you that the content provides a wealth of anecdotal stories fascinating to any age group, but especially to the budding and, at times, volatile romantic minds of teenagers.

            To be a good teacher, you have to be a storyteller. I think this goes back to our history, to the oral traditions of Homer and other stories and legends that were not only forms of entertainment, but beautifully disguised lessons as well. As a teacher in a time where standardized testing has led to standardized curriculum, I see the rules are changing. I see the reins of every classroom being handed to someone sitting in an office at the Board of Education who has quite possibly never set foot in a classroom, let alone taught in one. The oral traditions, the opportunities for storytelling are disappearing, but when I find time for those moments amidst the overflowing curriculum, I remember why I got into this job in the first place. Teaching is a beautiful profession. When you are passionate about what you are teaching, when you tell a story, when you can help students to connect and associate what they are reading with something relevant to their everyday lives (Disney/Pixar movies, Instagram, texts), the reason for learning becomes clear to everyone in the room, and students become engaged. It is those moments of magic that I live for. The quiet in the room as all the students look up front and open up a lively conversation about how the neighbors in Rod Serling’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” are falsely accusing one another with a mob mentality that frighteningly resembles McCarthy era America as well as Gaston’s jealous incitement of a mob to “kill the beast” in Beauty and the Beast - those connections and associations have always been what excites me about learning. I become so excited when I speak about these associations with my students. They engage with my excitement and with the connection. Our neurons are firing in the ways they should be! Students’ brains are engaged and they aren’t making off task associations. We are keeping it all relevant and interesting at the same time, which can be so very difficult to do with twelve and thirteen year olds who are constantly bombarded by fights with their best friends or bullying or crushes. And, the truth is, even those stories, have a connection to what is being read or learned in the classroom. The stampede of students running to watch a fight in the hallway certainly follows the idea of mob mentality, which leads to a teachable moment about peer pressure and overcoming the changes in your brain that occur when you become part of a mob. Why is it difficult to be Steve and easy to be Don? Why didn’t people call out McCarthy for falsely accusing people of being communists? Why didn’t anyone tell a teacher that there was going to be a fight?

            But as educators, and certainly at the county level, we don’t talk about real life associations or even associations among texts that are relevant to students. We talk about “driving connections among various texts.” That sounds terrible. And, what makes it even worse, we are told what texts to drive the connections among. So, where is the creativity? We are not teaching children to take pride in their associations. We are not forging new connections in their brains. We are spoon-feeding them connections that have already been made by someone else’s brain. We are teaching them to see what some person at the county or state or even federal level saw. What good does that do anyone?

            When I was in college, I took a class in which we watched The Lion King. Yes, I went to a "little Ivy" school in Boston and one of my course's texts was The Lion King. Why? Some of you may have already guessed the connection to a college-level English literature course: Hamlet. Seeing the connection between a Disney movie I had watched and cried over again and again, and a Shakespeare play that I could never really fully engage with emotionally, made me realize what Shakespeare was all about, what literature is all about really. It is about sharing the human experience. These stories repeat themselves in many ways. Themes recur and teach us lessons time and time again. And, just as learning the definition of a word one time doesn’t quite send the point home, learning a lesson or a message once, doesn’t quite get the knowledge hammered in either. We know how our brains work. We know about connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge. We know that we remember things better when they are tied to something meaningful or emotional in some way.

            So, am I purporting that we need to find a Disney movie to connect to every piece of literature? Well, not exactly, but I am suggesting that we need to make learning more relevant. The things we teach in school often exist to our students as information or texts that stand alone in a textbook, textbooks that stay in their desks and seem to have no relevance to the outside world. What is the greatest way to help a student to remember something? To help them to connect it to something that is already meaningful to them. For most people, some of our deepest connections are tied to emotions forged in childhood. For me, and probably many twenty somethings, we connect to Full House, Disney movies, Pogs, Nickelodeon, Tamagotchis, Lisa Frank-the seemingly trivial things that were always there as we learned about the world. When I meet an old friend we can connect over old stories from high school or legendary teachers. The truth is that we remember stories better than we remember anything else. We can learn this from great Roman orators, or even more recent speech makers who tell a story and bring a call to action or a lesson through their narrative. You have to make what you are saying relevant to your audience. Stale curriculum and standardized (yep, this word alone says it all) tests are relevant to no one, except for those waiting for the data to pour out the other side. That is why they are stale and standardized. They have one purpose: data.

            But the data-driven world is on a sour path, if they think they can close the achievement gap by making things look better on paper, on a chart or a graph. We can make our academic graph look better, but there will still be kids stampeding down the hallways because they never learned about mob mentality and how to resist it. What truly makes a difference is connecting through our human experiences. Is that hard to do with adolescents? You better believe it. Is it impossible? Of course not! We are here to teach, to learn, to go through a journey. We are not here to Race to the Top and make sure that No Child is Left Behind. This thing we are doing -learning, teaching, education- it is a journey, not a race. There will be no child left behind because every child will be a part of this journey that will continue for the rest of their lives. There is no top. We are moving across a timeline, not up a mountain. As Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces has taught us, as Star Wars has taught us following that example, there is something that brings all humans together, something that is universal. It goes back to great myths, to all of our literature. It is the universal experience of being human, what we so concisely label as “theme” in our secondary language arts classes. Teaching through narrative will close the achievement gap because this is truly the universal language. The experience of what it is to be human, in any space or time, this is what will bring us all together. This is where our educational reforms need to start.

Coffeehouse Confessional (work in progress...)

I came in on the tale end of the conversation. Grant already had his drink in hand, but he continued to stand to the side and chat up the barista. "Yeah, having kids, that is something I never did. Never had a family." The barista's reply was short but not unfriendly. She was busy making my iced mocha. Grant took the hint and wandered outside to one of the shiny black tables newly minted with no smoking signs (because some people in Washington state were smoking pot outside of the coffeehouses there, Grant later told me).
I always try to steer clear of too many people in my close vicinity when I am writing. I like having people around me, but only at the level of white noise (and I suppose the equivalency of white company, but that sounds a bit racist... I mean feeling the presence of others without actually having to interact with them. The company of others without the sensory overload, like white noise. A presence that is there and comforting but not something you have to attend to). On this particular day, though, I had set out to go to this particular coffeehouse as a new environment to inspire my writing. The inside was too crowded, so I made my way outside and sat at the table next to Grant's. I could have sat looking at him or with my back turned to him. I chose to have my back turned, so I could focus on my writing.
But Grant isn't the type of guy who would let a back turned to him stop a conversation. "You know if you smile, you'll feel better." A smile crept on my face as I sat down and looked up at him in surprise.
"That's true, I suppose. I feel better already."
"That's what I tell my customers. Unfortunately I get a lot of unsavory replies."
"Really?" I asked, half surprised, but really not surprised. I myself was torn between the bitchy and friendly reaction when he said it to me.
"Yeah, the four letter F-word is generally the worst."
"You must have some pretty unhappy customers."
"Seems like a lot of them are," he said. "The little old ladies are the nicest. They really don't care about anything. They're the least judgmental, the least stuck up. Sometimes they even bring me food during my shift at work."
"That's nice," I said as I started to turn away to my notebook to hopefully start my writing. It seemed to work because Grant had already struck up a conversation with a passerby he seemed to know. He invited her to join him, but she had to go in and order her drink first. I'm not sure why, as I usually avoid unnecessary conversation with strangers, but Grant intrigued me. He seemed so carefree in his ability to converse with strangers. Being so the opposite of myself, I was curious to see what more he would share. "Where is there a Food Lion near here?" I asked after observing the logo on his work shirt.
"Where isn't there a Food Lion near here is a better question! Are you new to the area?"
"No...I've lived here my whole life." Grant then proceeded to share a list of nearby Food Lion grocers, closing with the grocer that he called home. "I suppose I never paid muchattention."
"Where do you usually do your grocery shopping?"
"I'm a Co-op fan."
"Oh, the old communist co-op...and I say that in a kind way. I actually send them a lot of customers."

Cold

It is tough to feel anything out here. I thought it would just be a cool, stinging rain, but the water fell in heavy, icy sheets. Barbara taunted me to come inside with the sweet smelling steam of hot cocoa and a red knit blanket big enough for two, but she couldn't move me. I was frozen to the porch, barely feeling my face, fingers, and toes. Ice coated the road in front of me, transforming it into a skating rink for squirrels. But even the squirrels weren't out in this chill. They didn't need to feel coldness to the core; they didn't need to see the world around them change. They curled up and slept through it, just like Barbara.
An icy wind began to blow. Frozen pieces of water flecked my face and stuck to my eyelashes. I tried to dry them, but the fuzz of my mittens kept sticking in the corners of my eyes. I pulled off one of my mittens. The tingling on my fingers turned to a burn as the once enclosed hand was shocked by the land of ice being built around it. I quickly wiped my eye clean and felt a melange of hot and cold sensations before I slipped my hand back into the mitten. My fingertips were still wet, and the tips of my mittens froze almost immediately. I curled my fingers out of the tip and into my palm in protest. The round, frozen tip of the mitten hung limp over my pink knuckles.
I looked out at my car, a crystalline fossil, like a preserved relic for men and women or aliens of the future to find and learn about our mechanical technology. The vehicle looked so useless; it was so useless in this frozen world. I looked at the trees. They stood naked but stoic while ice whipped past them, sticking to some of their branches like a hair or a fungus. They could freeze and refreeze, feel the shattering chill or the burn of the earth, always with repose.

The Rash

The rash pimples up my spine and wraps around my rib cage. Tiny little red, sometimes purplish, bumps itch and sting my side. I scratch at them, and then they start to burn like a fire on my skin flaming my clothes away. I try to tell myself to forget those bumps, but no amount of convincing seems to work. The bumps have created their own neurons of special attention in my brain. With every itch and focus on these bumps, I begin to feel my spotted rib cage protruding, as if it is growing with pride each time I think about it and worry, verging on panic, about the origin of its speckled surface. I imagine these bumps growing on each individual rib bone and jutting outward, an internal disorder not merely classifiable as contact dermatitis.

Sketch: Atticus and Father

Atticus, through icy blue eyes masked by a mop of dark hair, penetrates a glare into his father who is "rat a tap tapping" on the family dinner table. Father's fingers pound down on the plastic, the plastic that wishes it was wood and imagines itself so with brown paint and darker circles and lines attempting to mimic the grain. Father's thumb is the bass drum leading the beat with a pounding rhythm inside of one of those faux circular grains. Father even leans into it with his upper body, as if pushing down a pedal, but Atticus can't see his father's feet through the railing from his spy perch on the stairs.

Atticus watches as his father's ring and index fingers, the hi-hat and snare, join almost automatically with the upper body convulsions and bass beat. Atticus' icy eyes glare with increasing intensity at his father's fingers and the fake wood of the dining table, while father's eyes look black and empty staring off in vacancy. Father's hand continues pounding rhythms in a mathematical fashion that makes father an automaton connected only to the fake wood with a long string of zeroes and ones.

From the beige carpeted stairs that grow out of the living room, Atticus sees his father through the doorway to the kitchen and dining room. Suddenly, the tapping stops. Atticus shoots up on his two legs and bolts down the steps. Without a word, he heads straight out the front door that beckons him at the bottom of the staircase. With Atticus gone, the tapping continues.

Restaurant

When I saw the white sign with the green lettering that read, “Food-Liquor-Motel,” I knew we were close to home. The little one-stop triumvirate was about fifteen miles from our home in Frederick. It was the end of a large stretch of farm fields, wooded parks, and a petting zoo that made up Thurmont and Emmitsburg.

            Seeing the sign brought back memories of the one time we stopped at the restaurant there. It wasn’t a pizza joint or a sandwich shop, they were actually trying to be a real restaurant, white tablecloths and all, directly off the side of a highway. The attempts at formality without a thought for current tastes froze the restaurant at least thirty years in the past, a 1960s steak house that was once the height of stylized dining for wealthy ad men in New York City. Being inside the restaurant, however, I felt more like the housewife waiting at home in suburbia for her husband as he downed drink after drink and hit on the waitresses in the city. A brown roast was drying up in the oven, bland mashed potatoes were crusting over in a pan on the stove, and green beans were cooking to smithereens in a vat of pig fat.

            The restaurant's food, in truth, was so bland and tasteless that I don’t even remember it. What I do remember is my father being angry about the food or the service, or both. The water glasses with smudges and stains were filled and then overfilled causing a spill into my mother’s lap. “Oh, oh, that’s okay,” she said trying to allay my father’s anger.

            “No, it’s not okay. Someone needs to get a towel and clean that up. Somebody needs to get over here and take our orders too,” my dad shouted at the busboy and the two other members of the wait staff wandering near our table. The bus boy ran off to grab a towel. He apologized for the mishap as he handed my mother the towel. My father glared at him. I was just glad that the young man didn’t attempt to over apologize by awkwardly mopping up my mother’s lap for her.

            Why we ever stopped at that restaurant, I will never know. Maybe it was the incessant screaming of my sister, “We’re hungry!” while I drowsily passed out from the soothing hum of the car engine.  My dad always responded with frustration, “I’m not stopping for fast food. I need some vegetables, Abby!” So many times we had passed that restaurant on our way home from a day trip to Gettyburg, but we never stopped. It was as if fate was determined that the Bateman family knew why they never stopped.

Rant on the Right

Rarely do I get fired up about political issues, but the past week or so of politics has made my blood boil. Of course, I think it is no coincidence that this feeling is coming to a head as the GOP candidates make their rounds for the Republican Presidential bid. My biggest problem with all of the Republican candidates is their lack of consistency. For example, Republicans claim to stand for liberty. Their favorite, as of late, is religious liberty. While defending this religious liberty, however, they are denying many Americans liberties and freedoms such as the right for gay men and women to marry. Furthermore, "religious liberty" seems to be defined more specifically as "protection of Christian mores." Christian "liberties" are defended so whole heartedly that the Bible becomes the words by which national laws are created. What ever happened to separation of church and state? The argument that we cannot allow gay marriage because it infringes on the rights of Christian Americans to define marriage in a particular way directly disagrees with the foundations of a free country. Remember the Declaration of Independence?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Yes, all men and women are created equal and should be granted the same rights. Everyone should have the right to marrying the person that he or she loves. We cannot conflate "belief" and "liberty." Someone can hold a different belief than you without infringing on your liberties. With that in mind, I have never heard a logical argument for why gay marriage is illegal in so many states. It is an embarrassment to our nation that this is a topic that is up for debate. Have we learned nothing from our past transgressions on the rights of our fellow humans?