Map or Map

Posted on April 7, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

759. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Beth came to visit after working with teachers on a curriculum map. She was understandably frustrated. If you want to understand how far awry we’ve gone in education you need look no further than the curriculum map. The idea behind the map is to ensure that all teachers in each grade level are relatively on the same lesson all the time. The map determines the path of content delivery. The map is at the center. The actual needs of the students are nowhere on the map. In fact the actual student (as opposed to the abstraction of a student) is nowhere to be found. The student is actively not considered. It is a recipe for dulling minds not opening them.

Consider that it has been decades since we understood that grouping children according to age creates an educational disaster. In other words, age is one of the least effective ways of identifying and working with stages of development. Kids develop at different rates and according to a myriad of circumstantial factors so to squeeze them into an age-box called “grade” and pre-map their curriculum path before they walk in the door is obscene.

Mapping the curriculum to make sure every child is on the same lesson on the same page on the same day is yet another extension of the national standardization madness. Gather some actual data and take a small road trip. Visit some schools. You will find that the schools are not standardized. The schools in rural North Dakota don’t resemble the schools in urban Chicago and bear no resemblance to the schools in Beverly Hills, CA. They are not funded in a standardized manner. In fact, the inequity in funding is apparent within single school districts; you need not travel far to gather your data. It will not surprise you to find that the students attending the schools are not standardized. Take a moment and reflect on our national identity. We are the most individualistic nation on the planet, celebrating our cowboy spirit and diversity and yet somehow have been anesthetized into embracing an abstraction like standardization in our public schools. Learning and standardization are antithetical.

A map can be a noun or a verb. We’ve chosen the noun to our own peril. I can give you a map to Boston and you will be able to find your way around. It is useful in locating landmarks but not in learning. If I give you a map and load you on a tour bus and give you the standard tour, you might say you visited Boston but you learned relatively little. The learning was eliminated when you got on the bus. Exposure is not learning. When teachers map a curriculum with no regard to the relationship with their students, the students become incidental. The exercise of mapping the curriculum for the sake of consistency of delivery has everything to do with control and nothing to do with educating. It is exposure. We are kidding ourselves if we think it has anything to do with learning.

The verb, to map, is actually a great metaphor for true learning. Lewis and Clarks Corp of Discovery explored the western territory of the United States. It was unmapped and therefore considered unknown. They stepped into this unknown land with inadequate supplies and engaged with what they encountered. They made big mistakes. They challenged their assumptions. They chanced upon new ways of seeing and would not have survived without alternative perspectives. They made their map as they went. To map is to have a relationship. This is learning.

If learning is the goal then it is impossible to map a curriculum without the students in the room. The true curriculum map can only be created as students explore and discover. The map is created after the fact, not months before the experiences.

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Join Them

Posted on February 25, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

718. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

In a spattering of revolutionary fire, teachers in hotspots across this nation are finally refusing to give the standardized tests. Students are refusing to take the tests. The authorities in each case are moving to punish the teachers and students, to get them back into compliance with the rules. These administrators, teachers and students, like most educators across this nation, know that these tests are impediments to learning. They serve the antithesis of what they purport.

Recently, I had a conversation with an administrator frustrated by the stupidity of the testing regime and the culture of control that it produces. She was angry with herself and her teachers for agreeing to participate with something that they all knew to be wrong. She was angry at the waste of time and energy but mostly at the injustice to the students. She said, “It’s killing them and making us absurd.” When I asked her why she continued to support something that she knew to be wrong she said, “We all need a paycheck. Isn’t that sad!” Yes. It is.

What should we do when we know something is wrong and ill intended? What should we do when finally the few voices, the courageous teachers and students stand up and say, “This is wrong.” If history is correct, most of us will turn away and pretend we heard nothing. History is riddled with stories of people who served atrocious causes and when asked why, said, “I was just following orders,” or, “I didn’t know.” David Neiwert tells the story of a German community adjacent to one of the Nazi death camps. Each morning, the people of the town emerged from their homes to sweep the ash from their stoops and windowsills. They watched each day as trainloads of people entered the camps. They knew that no one ever left the camps. The smoke belched ash onto their homes and heads everyday yet they were horrified when they learned what was going on just a few hundred yards from their community. They claimed to have not known.

They knew. We know. We have known for decades that the forces driving our public education have nothing to do with learning; the testing regime serves the opposite of what it pretends. Finally, some teachers and students are saying, “Enough.” Don’t look away. Join them. They need us to stop pretending that we don’t know..

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Walk Toward The Vanishing Point

Posted on January 17, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

679. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

The other day in Melissa’s class, the students were drawing pictures. They were learning about perspective. Most were drawing according to single point perspective: all lines meet at a single spot called the vanishing point. In the drawings, roads and train tracks ran toward the horizon, telephone poles and barns all followed the lines disappearing into a single point.

The lesson will continue for a long time. Now that the students have drawn lines to a single point they will begin exploring the greater implications of perspective. They will discover for themselves that things look radically different according to where you stand. They will learn that you can never occupy another person’s perspective so you will never be able to see what they see (imagine the implications); they will discover that perspective is personal and as varied at there are people on the planet. The possibilities of an exploration in perspective go on and on. We forget that at one point in history artists were mathematicians. Artists were scientists. There wasn’t the separation or the story that we tell today. Imagine the implications for education if we weren’t so blinded by subject separations and so singly prejudiced against the arts. Music is math, after all. Color is either chemistry or optics depending on whether you are mixing paint or light.

The next day, we met with other teachers, each sharing their experiences in the classroom. Beth (an amazing educator) listened to Melissa’s story and said, “I love the term, ‘vanishing point!’ There’s a whole world happening beyond that point and we just can’t see it.” She was lost in thought for a moment and then exclaimed, “Beyond the vanishing point anything is possible!”

Beth deals in possibilities. She is one of the few people I’ve known who recognizes that we actually live at the vanishing point though most of us pretend that we know what’s going to happen. Beth courts the vanishing point. She plays with it. She tries things just to see what will happen. Hang out with Beth and you will jump in puddles, race through tall grass, and take a turn down a road just to see where it leads. She knows that when you walk toward the vanishing point you walk into possibilities. Beth knows that life is vital in the direction of the vanishing point; the foreground of the picture is the present; it is where we currently stand. Beth knows it is the deepest human impulse to say to your self, “I wonder what’s over that hill?” And then follow the impulse. Beth knows this greatest of human impulses is at the heart of great education. Beth knows like Melissa knows, it is so simple and so possible when they are allowed to walk with their students toward the vanishing point instead of being forced to turn away from the horizon and pretend that there is something standardized about learning.

Filed under: Art, Education, Perspective, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Thank Melissa

Posted on January 11, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

673. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Avalon disappeared into the mists of time. It is there, or so we are told, but it is out of reach to we mere mortals. In the age of reason the mystery retreated to the other side of the veil. I thought of that as this afternoon we drove through fields shrouded in fog towards a rural elementary school. We were visiting Melissa’s classroom; a place alive with magic and excitement and the vitality that is present wherever true learning is taking place. If magic survives beyond the veil then Melissa’s classroom is a portal to that sacred place.

Tom once told me, “You will know when you are doing important work by the size of the tide that rises against you.” Melissa is doing important work and is standing tall despite the towering wave that crashes over her (and every teacher in the nation) everyday when she asks, “Why are we doing this? What does this test or this shabby curriculum have to do with learning?” She asks and others turn away. She is the voice in the crowd that says, “This emperor has no clothes!” And like the child in the story, the truth-teller is shunned initially, hushed by the adults who are too afraid to say, “We know. We see it, too.”

There are plenty of teachers and administrators and parents and business leaders that see it, too. There are many conversations about fixing things. There are endless strategies and punitive measures to raise standards though no one is certain what standards we are raising (hint: test scores have nothing to do with learning; neither do lists or rankings or any other from of measurement). On the surface we are expert at finger pointing and assigning blame and still the emperor prances naked through the streets.

And beneath it all is Melissa and scores of educators like her that know the system as dictated to them is doing the opposite of what it professes. So, she wades into the muck everyday and ignites imaginations and encourages her students to explore, pursue, experiment and make messes. Her students make choices (they control themselves because she teaches them to be powerful): they are engaged in a quest of discovery. Her students are excited to come to school because what they do is real; unlike most of the adults who should be lobbying for their betterment, they are very clear and vocal about what has merit and what has little or no value.

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Meet At The Edge

Posted on January 3, 2013 by davidrobinsoncreative

665. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

On the plane today I read a short piece on edges and it reminded me of the power of this simple reality. The place where two elements come together, the place where two currents meet, the place where two cultures intersect, the place where the clearing meets the forest, the place where the world drops off: these places either teem with life or fire the imagination. It is at the edges where we become uncomfortable. It is at the edges where we say, “I don’t know” and thus, learning becomes possible.

There are internal edges as well as external edges. I work with people all the time who tell me they’ve hit a wall, come upon a block, or run into a limit that feels like an abyss. Internal edges are just the same as external edges: they either teem with new life in the form of ideas and pursuit or they evoke discomfort and resistance. Edges are present when we say, “I’m lost,” or “I don’t know what to do,” or “I’m frozen and can’t move.” Edges are present when we shout, “That was incredible!” Edges are supposed to generate instability: movement.

You know you are at an edge when you judge: judge some one or something else and it’s a good bet that you aren’t comfortable. Judge yourself and it’s a good bet that you’ve found an edge. If, in the moment of judgment, you realize that you are at an edge and suspend your judgment, you are instantly capable of learning. If, at the moment of judging, that you invest in the judgment, you’ve shut down the learning. Judgment is merely a way of establishing a location, a false “known” so you can get away from the unknown: it is an oddity human development that it easier to call yourself or others an idiot (thus, locating yourself or them) than it is to say, “I don’t know….”

Edges are everywhere. Kichom Hayashi sends his students out in the world to find as many edges as they can. Try it. You’ll find there are edges everywhere: grass meets concrete, brick meets brick, glass meets steel, earth meets water, sky meets horizon, hand meets hand, idea meets idea: the possibilities are endless. See them and then imagine the edges define connectivity instead of separation. If you reinforce the connectivity, you will walk toward your edges every time; the discomfort will call you and fire your imagination. If you see separations, the edges will frighten you and drive you back into the comfort of judgment. It all depends on what you choose to see.

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Make No Sense

Posted on December 15, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

646. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I’m in Hutchinson, Kansas at the Ramada Inn. In the center courtyard of the Ramada is a swimming pool with an astronaut theme: there are mock lunar modules in the center of the pool. Over in the corner is a mural of the moon complete with 3 dimensional astronauts skipping across the lunar surface. It’s late at night and my room looks out on the moon pool so the effect is more bizarre than it might seem in the light of day. I’d wake my inner sociologist for a look but he’d snarl, “You woke me for a peak at Americana!” and then I’d be in hot water for the next few days. Did I mention there is a hot tub in the lunar landscape? I turns out that Hutchinson is the home of a most amazing museum of the cosmos. There is usually sense to be made and sometimes sense-making reveals a beautiful treasure.

When I try to make sense of education in this nation I hear Doug Durham’s voice echoing in my mind. I used to stomp into Doug’s office when the world seemed particularly cruel to students and shout, “But it doesn’t make any sense!” Doug would swivel his big bear body in his big swivel chair and say, “The trouble with you is that you want it to make sense. Stop trying to make sense of it and you’ll be happier.” I didn’t like that response the first time or the twentieth time I heard him say it – but he was right. Stop trying to make sense of the nonsense and you’ll be happier. Call the nonsense what it is, nonsense.

I understand the governor of Nebraska created a list ranking every school in the state, all 240 schools ordered from first to last according to a performance criteria. You’ll not be surprised to learn that there is absolutely no point to the list; it is nonsense though very many people, mostly non-educators, take it very seriously. It is as arbitrary as the test scores that drive the notion of ranking schools. Actually, if you squint at the list and you will see that the schools with the most funding are generally at the top of the governor’s list and those with the least money are generally at the bottom. If it was a list of funding inequity it would have meaning but instead it pretends to be a list of performance and so ignores the obvious.

I woke up my inner sociologist when I heard about the governor’s list and he was quite curt with me. He sneered, “You woke me up for this? Are you kidding! There’s no mystery here! This list makes perfect sense!” he snarled. “When in the history of western civilization has a privileged NOT stacked the deck against the rest of society and called it high performance?” He huffed as he rolled over saying, “Idealist!”

And now I’m in Hutchinson, Kansas. There is an amazing and inspirational history of the race to the moon told here in Hutchinson. There is also the most inspirational educator I’ve ever met.

All the while, a governor makes a list and checks it twice, to be poor is to be naughty and to be privileged is to be nice. And I’m enjoying this moment in the Ramada Inn precisely because there is some sense to be made of an astronaut standing in the corner by the swimming pool and none to be made of the governor’s notorious list. Won’t it be a lovely day when instead of list making we put our minds to creating great learning with the same verve that we used when once upon a time we made it our task to put a human being on the moon?

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Catch A Thought-Bobber!

Posted on July 14, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

492. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I have lately been thinking a lot about learning. Something has been niggling at the back of my mind and today during my morning walk it bobbed to the top of my consciousness. These thought-bobbers are the reason I take morning walks; insight evades me when I sit at a desk. When I move physically, my thoughts move; my perspective changes and those little thoughts lurking near the bottom of my consciousness ocean catch some air bubbles and shoot to the surface.

The thought that bobbed to the top was leveraged by a question someone recently asked me about me ebooks. They asked, “What is your hope for your books? What do you hope they bring to people?” My first thought was, “I hope they sell a lot!” My answer was blah, blah, blah, save the world, open perspectives for people, etc., but it was a good question and started tickling my mind. My focus was on the ebooks, on the material as if they might actually do something for someone, not on the person reading the book.

Here’s how the thought bobber popped up. It was simple and complete: The idea is to open the person, not illuminate material. My hope is that the material helps people open. Isn’t that elegant? And, isn’t it where we so often lose our way? We think learning is about the content, the delivery of the content, and the reception of the content. Learning is not about the content. Learning is about the learner. And, what about the learner?

In my work, when all the context and content is boiled away, whether workshops, retreats, coaching, business consulting,…when it is stripped of it’s circumstance are all processes that reinforce self-discovery. Isn’t that also true of math, science, English, and all of the other topics we think we are “delivering?”

There is a profound shift that happens when, 1) someone begins to see that they make the meaning of their life, that meaning is not something they find. And, 2) they are capable of seeing/reading their life metaphorically – which simply means the great stories become personally relevant. Imagine if history was taught with the intention to open the learner to a greater purpose: to discover in themselves the universal story cycle and pass along what they discover in their unique history to their descendants, just as their ancestors tried to do for them. They become a link in the story chain. They become connected through time.

Filed under: Education, Story, Truly Powerful People | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Learn To Learn

Posted on July 13, 2012 by davidrobinsoncreative

491. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

Dr. Alan shared his notes from a lecture on education given by Daphne Koller, professor of computer science at Stanford University. This phrase jumped out at me:

Testing is a learning tool, not just an assessment tool.

Such a small phrase to be sure but it is loaded with sanity in a world of education that has lost its mind, its bearings, and its purpose in a cesspool of testing. This single note gives me hope. It is a small cry from academia to stop the madness.

It sounds so simple: testing is a learning tool. Yes, testing is a tool in service to learning. However, learning should never be in service to testing and yet that is what we’ve created; listen to the national mantra: how do we raise our scores? We’re not asking how do we open minds or how do we support critical thinking or how do we create a citizenry capable of participating in its governance; we want test scores that somehow translate into business acumen. Could the bar be set any lower?

People do nonsensical things when they are panicked and I can only make sense of our Obsessive Compulsive Testing Disorder through a lens of panicked, lost, people. The aim (learning) is in service to the tool (assessment); the tail is wagging the dog and the dog is in hysterics.

Learning has nothing whatsoever to do with testing. Learning has everything to do with experience, with exploration, with “seeing what’s over there.” Learning is about opening a heart and mind to possibility, the pursuit of curiosity. Learning is to take off the shackles and the blinders; it is to, at its best about self-discovery.

It sounds so simple.

Occasionally we need to stop and assess where we are. It’s a good idea when on a journey to pause periodically and get your bearings. Locating yourself is useful (getting lost is also useful though that is a topic for another post). Testing a hypothesis is what science is all about, a contemporary form of call and response. However, the point of the journey is not the assessment; the point of the journey is discovery; the quality and level of engagement with life. Reinforce discovery and a test is useful. Reinforce testing and discovery withers. Compulsive assessment is a sign of fear, starvation, and madness.

Dr. Alan’s notes gave me hope. Perhaps we are nearing the point when we are in too much pain to continue pretending that we can test our way into learning. Maybe an education system designed for the 21st century is closer than we think.

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