The Friendly Skies

“You'll have to turn that off.”

The flight attendant stared at her crossly, his company blue blazer squeezing his shoulders.

“Excuse me, ma'am. You have to turn that off.” Her eyes didn't leave her magazine. Either she couldn't hear the steward or she was ignoring him. He bristled and stopped the pre-flight safety instructions.

The whole plane was suddenly involved.

“Ma'am! Turn that off that electronic device right now!” I looked around the plane. Eyebrows raised. A few people shared smiles. I turned around in my seat so I could get a better look. Halfway down the aisle, a stewardess shifted from foot to foot anxiously.

The passenger looked up slowly from her magazine. She drawled her response. “It's off. See?”

“You'll have to take out your headphones.”

“But it's off.”

He stared down at her. “The headphones have to come out.”

She shook her head and took out one headphone. For a moment, she silently dared him to demand the other phone. Satisfied, for the moment, the steward returned to his work. It's very important to know that your seatbelt operates with a latch mechanism.

She caught me smiling at her.

As a teacher, I've seen that a thousand times: authority versus rebellion. It looks like a question of enforcement or control. It's a tempting perspective. It looks like a test of wills, a “high noon” standoff. It's not. It's really a question of culture.

People in authority make the culture. They are the tone-setters, the weather-makers. Sometimes the person in charge of a situation makes the rules; sometimes she doesn't. No matter what the rules are, however, the authority figure has the greatest impact on the tone and civility of a situation.

Our flight attendant stopped being a leader and became a member of the mob. He did this because he made the interaction personal. In that moment, he became more interested in his own personal experience than he was in being the leader. His lack of focus on the job at hand made the situation far worse than it could have been.

As a teacher, a mentor, and an art director, I've learned that good leadership is all about culture setting. Create an environment of fluid stability and people will follow you almost anywhere.

Be a better leader:

1. Be kind. No matter what. It's not about being nice. It's about setting the tone of discourse.

2. Be professional. It's not about you personally. Ever.

3. Be clear. If your people don't understand you, that's your fault.  And your problem.

4. Pay attention. Respect all input and use as much of it as you can to achieve your goals.

5. Set enforceable boundaries. Negotiating them is the last resort.

6. Be charming. It's not your job to be liked. But they'll do a lot more for you if they like you.

If you get to be the one in charge, focus on the culture of those who look to you. The best way to avoid the midair collisions of poor group dynamics is to make the skies as friendly as possible.

No One Is Alone

notes from the director

Into the Woods

High schools are wild and wonderful places.

North Shore is filled with energy and exploration. Whether in the classroom, the gym, or the theatre, teenagers are dynamos engaged in the rhythmic pulse of life. I always marvel at the spectacle of starting a theatre production at school. Auditions are exciting and stressful affairs, powered by the electricity of hope and determination. The buzz in the hallways minutes before we start rehearsal reflects the intensity of the teenage life: the strong will for greatness measured by the tense fear of failure.

What happens in our school reflects what happens in our homes, with adults and children. We all want to dare to be wonderful. But we're also afraid that our mistakes will keep us from happiness.

Which do we want more?

Do we want to be daring? To chase adventure and all the risks that come with it? Or do we want to be safe? To protect what we already have and try to avoid losing our most precious treasures?

Welcome to thrilling and terrifying woods of our lives.

Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist of Into the Woods, has left out no terror or joy in this piece. We'll watch the characters leave home, lose friends, make new friends, fall in love, fall out of love, and lose their parents.

It's heavy stuff. But we are comforted by the presence of many of our favorite characters: Cinderella, Little Red Ridinghood, the Big Bad Wolf, and Jack and the Beanstalk all walk the stage in this piece. The Baker and His Wife are also here, although we don't celebrate their story too much anymore. Look carefully in our production and you'll see the playful Three Little Pigs, the careless Hansel and Gretel, the graceful Little Bo Peep, and the brave Woodsman.

And the Giant is going to knock your socks off.

So will these kids. They're working for themselves, these actors and musicians and crew members, but they are also working for you. Enjoy them. And, if you can, listen to what they say.

They'll tell you that we must be careful what we teach our children. That being nice and being good are not the same thing. That being brave sometimes requires being vulnerable. That saying hello to new experiences requires us to say goodbye to old experiences.

And they'll tell you that no one is alone.

Welcome to another wonderful season of North Shore Masquers' theatre! We're delighted to begin our Year of the Family with one of the greatest theatrical works of the 20^th Century, Into the Woods.

We dedicate this piece to the children who became our parents. May we remember that they were kids who braved the woods of their own lives. They might leave us, but they are always here.

History Class, With Booze

A master teacher holds class in New Orleans, LA

The thing about drinking absinthe? It numbs your lips.

It doesn't happen fast. You're three or four minutes into your glass of milky green poison before you notice that you're losing sensation in your tongue.

“It's a sipper,” Joe tells you. “I saw a guy do five shots of absinthe once. Wasn't pretty. Guy couldn't walk. Stuff is still illegal in most states.” Joe's eyes twinkle from under his straw fedora. “It's legal in New York, San Francisco, and here, of course.”

He continues from his seat in a little bar in Pirates' Alley in the French Quarter. “Tennessee Williams used to say that these were the only three cities in America. Every place else is Cleveland.”

And so goes Joe Gendusa, professor of libations on The New Orleans Cocktail Walking Tour. A retired teacher and school counselor, Joe is a guy who loves his job. He often smiles as he tells a condensed history of one of the world's greatest cities, replete with stories of pirates, ghosts, archbishops, and presidents through the lens of an upturned highball glass.

It's so awesome to learn from a teacher who loves his material.

I've had absinthe before. But I never had it in a century-old bar that reputedly served it under the table during an international absinthe prohibition that began in the 19^th Century. The anise-spiked spirit opens its flavor with a little water and a burning sugar cube. It'll take you on a trip, people. And that's just one of the featured drinks of the tour.

I had a beautiful Pimm's Cup (a concoction of caramelized gin, lemonade, ginger ale, and cucumber) that's best made at the Napoleon House. Did you know that Napoleon planned to escape imprisonment in Europe by fleeing to New Orleans? He had the 2^nd floor of the Napoleon House ready to receive him. He died before he could move in.

I had a bizarre and absolutely wonderful cocktail named The Bayou Bash. Made with wine and Southern Comfort, it's as if Mark Twain made a drinkable rocket fuel: southern, hilarious, and ready to send you into orbit. The drink was invented by a native bartender who wanted to find a way to marry a distinctly Old World wine with a New World spirit. Like the best of any creole cuisine, the beauty comes in the exotic marriage of strange bedfellows.

Joe had us all at “hello,” using historical anecdotes to improve the cocktails-- and vice versa. Like any master teacher, his passion for the material not only engaged us: it made us work for him. Sure, we got to drink and that was cool. But, that wasn't what made the experience masterful.

We wanted to see the city the way Joe saw it. We wanted the secret knowledge of a passionate expert. Joe had us right where he wanted us. He had a class that wanted to learn.

That's a pretty far cry from most classes in our schools.

We've built our schools on the concept of containment and control. We value security way more than we value curiosity.

Administrators and teachers, hobbled by a culture that fears danger more than it hungers for growth, huddle in the shadow of litigation. Instead of putting discovery at the center of learning, we've put stability and security.

What makes Joe such a wonderful teacher reads like an indictment of what is missing in most public school classrooms:

1. Joe is as important as his curriculum. He loves his topic and relishes his time sharing his knowledge.

2. His classroom is wherever the learning happens. He literally explores his material with his students.

3. Instead of attempting to control learner curiosity, Joe surfs it.

4. The length of his class is based on how long it takes to learn, rather than on a predetermined time allotment.

Now, I'm not saying that the best education happens with a drink in your hand.

I. Would. Never. Say. That.

I am saying that we must recognize that the best learning puts great teachers in charge of where, when, and how students learn.

We need to start asking better questions about what makes a great teacher. About what makes a better learning environment.

And let's start drinking better cocktails.

Scapegoats and Saviors IV

the final article in my series about teachers bringing sexy back to education

The Age of Quants: An Introduction

Quant- (noun) a person who understands by determining a numerical value of things; one who sees the world through a lens of numbers

We are a culture obsessed with numbers. And for good reason: a solid statistic is hard to argue with. From stocks, to movie ticket sales, to batting averages, to votes on American Idol, we derive a great deal of information about what we value from numbers. Conversely, however, we love to argue with numbers. Debates about climate change, the electoral college, and who is the greatest pop star in the world all straddle the fault lines of the reliability of data.

Most often, we use and celebrate data that support our conclusions; we refute or ignore data that challenge our conclusions. I do not point this out because I wish to make the point that we are stupid, listless morons who eschew the very fundamentals of inquiry (although: sometimes we are).

I point it out because, in our cultural dialogue, statistical data doesn't always end debates.

Often, we argue about the efficacy or value of the data. We talk about who came up with the data, what motives the data collectors had. We like our data to come from 'trusted sources.' In our culture, this often means that we like our data to come already packaged to support our political or personal belief systems.

We like boutique data. Personalized data. Friendly data.

Keep this in mind as we talk about how to integrate 'data' into teacher evaluations.

Scapegoats and Saviors: A Recap

In parts I-III of this series, I presented the reasons why tenure is doomed. I explored how the American public will no longer accept the status quo regarding teacher quality. Simply too many poor teachers have served in public education; the national argument about taxes has sharpened the teeth of critics of teachers. Student academic performance, long ignored and undervalued, appears to be finally affecting national performance in the private industry. Americans are beginning to truly imagine what a future will look like when we are outplayed by smarter, better trained foreign competitors.

People are angry. On the left and on the right. Everyone agrees: schools need to improve. The current political answer is to improve things through tests.

Race To the Top: A Quick Review

President Obama's 'Race to the Top' is an unparalleled game-changer in education reform. In this massive project, states compete for federal money. Any state that accepts the federal money has to play by certain conditions-- and one of the most important conditions focuses on teacher evaluation through student achievement on standardized tests.

By making it an opt-in, Obama has already gotten over the biggest hurdle of government reform: “the death by a thousand cuts” of legislative compromise. There was barely an argument about RTT because it doesn't act like a law. It acts like a contract. If your state doesn't want to play by the rules, then you don't need to care about it. But if your state won money, then teachers in your state will be evaluated through student performance on standardized tests.

I've tried to distill what RTT is about. There appear to be three goals to RTT:

1) boost student progress across the nation through the use of standardized tests

2) remove the protections that tenure offers to ineffective or poor teachers

3) connect (politically) “getting rid of bad teachers” with spending more money on education

Even in a lousy economy, people are willing spend a lot of money to get rid of bad teachers and increase student performance. Brilliant, right?

The $4 billion offered by RTT has been the milkshake that has brought all the states to the yard-- or, almost all of them. Over 40 states have gotten into the running-- all accepting the premise that teacher pay would be connected in some way to student performance. The states that have won the money have taken the first big step to replacing tenure as we know it.

New York state, where I teach, has won hundreds of millions of dollars this summer through RTT, as did over 40 other states that are accepting RTT money in some form. The ball is rolling.

I'm not sure people understand that this is already happening.

It's the Teachers, Stupid

“These new tests will be an absolute game-changer in public education.”

Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education

Here is the rub: this new model puts standardized tests at the center of everything.

The paradigm shift is nothing short of tectonic; the impact on teacher evaluation is impossible to refute. In fact, everything in education will bend to the new gravity forces of testing.

This is a mistake. Standardized testing cannot lead the reform. Yes, improving tests is a good idea. But testing simply cannot be at the center of public education.

Investigate the track record of standardized tests like IQ and SAT and you won't find much that speaks to bettering student performance. Standardized tests do little help the learning process; broad standardized tests ONLY serve evaluation purposes.

Tests are tools. That's all that they can be.

Using tests to improve education is like regulating drum beats to make songs more moving or wonderful. It's like regulating surgeon scalpel sizes to make people more healthy. It doesn't make sense. Education, like music and medicine, isn't just a science. It's also an art.

The most important thing in education is the relationship between students and teachers.

And the most important thing in a good student/teacher relationship is a good teacher.

It's not the tests! It's the teachers! We have to focus on the teachers!

New Tenure: Checks and Balances

Let's improve education by making better teachers.  We'll do it by rewriting how people become teachers.

I propose that we focus on how we can use system I'm calling “New Tenure” to develop and protect great teachers. The lion's share of our money, talent, and effort should be dedicated to developing a culture that will produce kick-ass educators. We need to make schools into farm systems that generate great teachers.

We can do this by using the quantifiable data right alongside qualifiable data.

We need to broaden the sources of teacher evaluation. That's right: teachers need MORE official evaluation. Face it: teachers are constantly being evaluated by everyone--but so little of it has any professional or useful impact.

Here's one way we could do it-- I'm sketching very broadly here because only experimentation will bear out the best ways to do this. These ideas, however, should form the basis of how tenure is awarded and maintained.

You listening, US Ed Secretary Arne Duncan?

New Tenure Teacher Evaluation: Four Sources

1. Student Performance. In the Age of Quants, we must accept how much we love the numbers generated by things like standardized tests. We cannot-- and should not-- get rid of them. I say we keep standardized tests but remove them from their ever-growing privileged place at the center of evaluation of teachers.

2. Administrator Input. Managers will continue to provide anecdotal evaluation of teacher performance. Teachers will be evaluated as “Unsatisfactory,” “Satisfactory,” or “Kick-Ass.” Ok, maybe not Kick Ass. But something like that. The point is to focus on the idea of valuing and striving for astonishingly good teachers.

3. Student/Parent Review. This has been done for years in universities and colleges- but I suspect it will work best as non-anonymous. Elementary and Secondary models should be different. Perhaps it will follow a “Yelp” or “Amazon” ratings model. It'll allow for a productive outlet for the most vital (and viral) of current evaluations. No more gossip. You put your name on an evaluation of a teacher.

4. Peer Review. My most revolutionary idea-- and my best. Every year, teachers will be evaluated by other teachers. Peer Review will function best if it is THE component that drives teacher development. 

By making teacher evaluation a more broadly sourced enterprise, based on both quantitative and qualitative data, we will build a culture of rigor and professionalism. We'll also productively engage ALL of the voices that already speak about teacher evaluation.

Teachers: The New Hotness

RTT is a good start but its focus on testing needs to change. Teachers don't need to be regulated through standardized tests. They need to be scouted, developed, and then protected.

Standardized tests should be made by great teachers-- not the other way around. Using standardized tests to try to make great teachers is illogical-- and a dangerous move. We need change, yes! But let's not put tests at the center of the education universe. And let's not put children there, either.

Let's build everything around great teachers. Everything else will follow.

Teachers need to be superstars. A great teacher should be as valued in our culture as a great surgeon or lawyer. As treasured as a great professional short stop or vocalist.

Imagine it: a kid's bedroom with a bed and a desk and a computer. The room has your typical kid mess: clothes draped on a chair and some empty cups on the desk. The bed is an unmade riot of sheets and kid stuff. There's a cell phone on a shelf, headphones hanging from a bed post.

On the closet door is a poster. It's the type of poster you see in any kid's room. The superstar is a woman who worked her butt off to be great. She's an innovator and a hardworking talent. The kid was proud to tack up this poster and looks at it at least once a day.

The hero on the poster is not holding a tennis racquet or a microphone.

She's holding a piece of chalk.

The Coolest Party Ever

commentary on the film, the social network

When did you join facebook?

Were you aware of how much your world would change when you did? Are you aware even now?

One of the many brilliant and wonderful things about David Fincher's riveting picture, the social network, doesn't happen in the film at all. It happens inside of you. When you watch this story about the most important website of our time, you can't help but see yourself on the screen.

“That's me up there,” you think without reflection. “I'm on facebook.” You picture your own page. With not a small amount of glee, you say to yourself: “I'm a part of this story.”

And you are. You realize it without realizing it. You ARE a part of this movie. And you love the film because of it.

And this is why this movie is the movie of our time-- at least, right now at this second. It's a movie about itself that is about all of us seeing this movie about itself. It's the title! We see this movie in order to exercise our own role, socially, in the network that 'the social network' the film is all about.

We watch ourselves watching ourselves.

It's a great story, too. It's about a friendship as much as it's about the birth of facebook. You'll care for these fictionalized, real people and wonder what they are doing now.

Mostly, however, you can't help but see how astonishingly significant facebook is.

What facebook has done to all of us is, well, kind of hard to grasp. It hasn't simply enhanced how we interact, made things more convenient, or virtualized real life. It's dramatically changed all the boundaries of the social game.

As Aaron Sorkin's sharply articulate script shows us, facebook has taken a simple truth of humanity (we love to include and exclude people from our lives) and intersected it with a complicated truth of the internet (it's a global connectivity network that one can access alone in intimate moments).

The result? Just like in life B.F. (before-facebook), we get access to people by giving them access to us. But now, W.F. (with-facebook) we can remotely share (and watch) the most private and real moments of human existence. With anyone we choose to share it.

As Mark Zuckerberg, played smartly by Jesse Eisenberg, reveals to us in the film: we love exclusivity. More than anything, we want control over access.  We want to be cool.

We want to have velvet ropes, bouncers, and lines to the party of our own lives. We want to control the guest lists and final approval on the official photos. We are in demand, hanging with other people who are in demand.

Facebook has done the impossible: it has allowed everyone to feel cool.

We all get to feel like celebrities, both elevated and scrutinized as well as reduced and commodified. 

We curate the photos of our lives that tell a narrative that we want people to see-- and others do the same with their photos. And it goes both ways.  Now we get pictures of people that we can look any time we want, of moments we'd only have access to if we were intimate friends. 

More so, you get to do this with acquaintances that you accept as friends- because facebook offers access to all 'friends.' Best friends, casual friends, barely friends-- if you are a friend, you get the whole enchilada. Privacy will never be the same.

Facebook has transformed us. 

After the seeing the movie, my friends and I went out to eat. One of my friends swore she knew the waitress-- from facebook. They had never met, but my friend was sure she could identify this stranger by name.  We, alas, never asked the waitress-- but there we were, watching her across the room, as she brought cocktails to another table.  She was the star of her own movie.  We were her interested audience.

Everyone has had this experience. Facebook has celebritified all of us.

Right now, even while you are reading this, someone is probably looking through pictures of you from your vacation this summer.  There you are on the dock, your feet in the water.  The light is perfect.  You look great from that angle.

Welcome to the new world of interaction.  The world of facebook.

You're cool.

Finding Studs

A product review of Zircon's “Studsensor Edge”

When you are looking for a stud, you get what you pay for.

Take a walk through the Home Depot and indulge yourself in a feast of products. From floor to towering ceiling, the airplane hangar showroom is filled with things you will and will never need. So many boxes! So many tools!  So many sales!

I don't know when hardware stores first grew into super-mega marts. When I was a boy, I'd steal away on an afternoon with some friends to kick around our small town of Skippack, PA. The hardware store in town was a playground of sharp tools, oiled bolts, and handwritten price tags. The narrow aisles were secret trails filled with accidental discoveries and hand-held reckonings. Holding a brilliantly fashioned tool or instrument, carefully made by a designer and craftsman, filled me with wonder.

A little paradise perfumed with graphite and pine.

Don't get me wrong: I love a mega-mart. I love the buzz of countless options, the giddy possibilities. Get me into a supermarket and I am totally gone, smile on my face, narcotized by the bright lights and dizzying variety of tasty morsels in little boxes.

Something's happened to quality in the shadow of the imperial scale of these market cathedrals. The little moments are gone, the intimate niches swept away. And when I hold Zircon's “Studsensor Edge,” I'm faced with the real cost of replacing little hardware stores with places like Home Depot.

A good tool doesn't need instructions. You pick it up and use it. This is why people like touch screens, tambourines, and crayons. No need to explain anything.

This grip-sized stick of uselessness gives you all kinds of directions. None of them help. Here's what will happen to you if you buy Zircon's “Studsensor Edge”

1. You'll hold the “Studsenor” up to the wall, hoping to find a stud (which should be fun anyway you interpret it)

2. It'll beep like crazy and you'll think “sweet! I found a stud!”

3. You'll move it around and find way more studs than could possibly be there

4. You'll check to make sure you're doing it right, redo it, and find a Million Studs March on the big open field of your wall

5. Rinse and repeat until you realize that little “Studsensor” just ain't playing fair with you

This little plastic tool, emergency yellow colored and as heavy as a deck of cards, completely sucks.

Don't buy it.

Go buy a well made tool and pay the higher price for it. And start doing that more often, for heaven's sake. Do it for the craftsmen (and women) of old, those designers who used to worship at the altar of quality.

And do it for tomorrow's kids who will be running around in the stores of the future.

Because who knows what we're going to replace mega-marts with.

The Teachers of Penzance

A song for an old teacher.



Bud Stock would say things that completely stupefied us.

Slowly pacing the classroom, he would leave chasm-sized pauses in his lectures. He'd stare out the window, like a captain gazing at the sea, absently pulling on his goatee. A minute would pass.

In the beginning of the course, some of us nurtured the belief that, sometimes, Mr. Stock would forget where he was. His AP English class was like no other AP class in school: slow-paced, recursive, and marked by silences. It was weird. His voice was slow, when he used it, and his cadence was measured on a scale that we teenagers did not understand. He took pauses between readings of Thoreau or Auden, O'Connor or Dickinson, stand like a statue at the bank of window panes, and say something that moved the ground.

“It's not really yours until you give it away.” He'd turn to us and ask “Or not. What do you think?”

It was Mr. Stock's mastery. He challenged our ideas and how we constructed them through choice texts, great pauses, and few words. We wanted to think like Mr. Stock. We wanted to answer his questions, read the pieces he gave us, and, well, be smart.

Were we tested? Sure. We had to participate in discussions, write essays, proofread each other, diagram sentences on the board, and read aloud. He famously hated talking about grades- and, yet, he graded us. Mr. Stock prepared us for the AP and SAT- and, yet, he rarely talked about either test. We were all evaluated using many nuanced, less quantifiable methods.

Mr. Stock was an artist and a technician. He served the quantifiable through qualitative measures.

Nonetheless, the million dollar question is (put in a big ol' pause here and stare out the window for a moment): would a formal evaluation of Mr. Stock show him to be a 'good teacher?'

Given the gravity of the decisions we have to make about education, nationally, it's actually a billion dollar question.

My answer: hell yes!

Mr. Stock was an artist and a technician. Like a good surgeon, attorney, or architect, he served the quantifiable through qualitative measures. He was well read. He knew his tests and his techniques. He knew his students. He knew that inspiration coupled with discipline made students sing.

Mr. Stock was the very model of a modern Major-General. Of teachers.

Everyone likes a pirate, sure. They look so cool.  But when the sea gets rough, and stuff gets bad, you don't care about cool.  What you want is a Major-General, a genius who has mastered information: animal, vegetable and mineral.

The challenge, of course, is to make a system that can attract, recognize, develop, evaluate, and reward a teacher like Mr. Stock.  A system suited to developing great artisans of teaching, broader than standardized lesson plans and byzantine testing systems.

'Cause it ain't what we got now. What we've got now is too many pirate kings singing songs of tax cuts, standardized tests, and teacher evaluations.

Here's to Bud Stock:  a navigator, a leader, an artist, a technician, and a model.  The very model.  Thanks, man.

NEXT EDUCATION BLOG:  my proposed system of improved teacher evaluation.  Tenure is dead!  Long live tenure!

California Teachers: Hot or Not?

Value Added and Reduced.


This week, the LA Times published the findings of a study of teachers and effectiveness. 6,000 third-fifth grade teachers, from all over California, were rated and ranked from “most effective” to “least effective.” The top 100 were highlighted in their own column.

Bombshell! Teachers across California must be rattled. In a world where tenure has reigned supreme for decades, suddenly teachers are being reduced to numbers. A California fourth grade teacher can look herself up, on the LA Times website, and find her rank. And so can anyone else.

How did they decide who was Hot and who was Not?

The LA Times developed this ranking on one statistical value derived from one place: standardized tests. While not complicated, it does take a little explanation:
1. Researchers compared a student's performance on state-wide standardized tests from one year to next year.
2. The difference in scores reflected a higher score, a lower score, or the same score.
3. After each student's net change score was tabulated, the students were grouped by teacher.
4. Each teacher group's average net change score was determined based on these numbers.

This “Value Added” score, the Times argues, allows for anyone to see what “value” any teacher has added to any of his students. Simple. Clean. A raw piece of data-- just what we love.

Ah, but not so fast. Data's beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.

Those who challenge the data have some great arguments against the analysis. First, the data all hangs from the chain of the quality of the standardized tests. A 'good standardized test' has proven to be the the single hardest thing to build in the realm of student evaluation. Holy Grail hard.

Second, it's not that ONE test has to be terrific: the first year AND the second year test must give an accurate measure of a student's acumen. And then every subsequent test that is used in this manner. Furthermore, these tests must be built together in order to measure growth; the tests must work in concert in order to have comparative value.

Finally, the 'Value Added' score doesn't measure ability-- it only measures change. Take one example of the many scenarios that skew the data. Think about what happens when comparing a teacher with kids who start with an average of 95/100 to a teacher with kids who start out with an average of 45/100. The teacher with the better kids, weirdly, has a terrific chance of being ranked as a poor teacher.

However, those who support the data build a strong case, too. First, every teacher (and student) is measure using the same test. Subsequently, no matter how 'good' or 'bad' the test is, everyone is handled with equal fairness (and unfairness). This is true even in comparing first year to second year tests-- it's fair because everyone is measured with, theoretically, the same stick.

Second, no small number of students who had 'a bad day' will skew the data simply because all of the students took the test. Arguably, a nearly equal number of students would have had 'a great day' taking the test. The size of the sample smooths out the inconsistencies or anomalies. The more years this data is collected, the less the effect of accidentals.

Finally, supporters say, the data show that where a kid comes from (class, ethnicity, and gender) are far less important than the kind of teacher she has. This is good because we can finally separate the data about student achievement from the data about teacher achievement. The Value Added model focuses on growth as opposed to talent or natural endowment. (Richard Buddin, who wrote a paper about the data collection, loves to say the word 'endowment.' You have to love using that word earnestly. I implore you to work the word 'endowment' into conversations you have today.)

Find Buddin's work here http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2010-08/55538493.pdf

These are just the arguments about the data and its collection. The hot and nasty arguments are about philosophy, cultural values, and professionalism. Rightfully, some of the argument centers on whether or not information about teachers' evaluations should be made public.

I'd like to offer a broader perspective.

The idea of ranking teachers is ridiculous. It doesn't serve to improve the profession; it only serves the media's love of bite-sized information that allows for thin conclusions. Henry I. Braun, in his treatment of Value Added Assessment, warns of the dangers of "casual interpretation" of data. The amount of ugliness that will follow the Times posting this information may very well swallow any other productive dialogue.

It takes a quality blindfold to pretend that something is rank-able just because it has a number attached to it. It's a shame that the solid journalism that supported this research has been shared in this way. The LA Times decision to rank the teachers has turned California into a Miss America contest. A beauty pageant isn't about beauty: it's about winners and losers. Revamping education will require a much wider, more informed view than that.

That said, evaluating teachers (like evaluating anything) requires some hard statistical data. Toss the ranking; keep the data. The “Value Added” Score provides non-anecdotal information about a teacher. For this reason, this statistical information, despite its potential flaws, is not only useful. It is important.

Stats like “Value Added” are essential. And, they are the future.

As you will read in my long-awaited final installment of “Scapegoats and Saviors IV,” at least part of teacher evaluation must come from a number like this. It cannot-- and should not-- be avoided.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/teachers-investigation/
Check out the LA Times to read the article yourself. I'd love to hear what you think about it.


If you really want to dork out (and I highly recommend doing so), peruse the scholarly work (including that of Buddin and Braun) on how and why they did the Value Added model.
lookee here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-value-added-sources,0,6109096,full.story

Mosque-a-rade

James Madison said it would be better if we fought with ourselves.

In order to replace the centralized power of a king, emperor, or simple majority, Madison supported a system of warring factions. The irritating arguments on the TV and internet grow directly out of this idea. Because the writers of the Constitution built a system in which shifting partisanship replaced autocracy, we often find ourselves in rather Jerry Springer-like exchanges.

“These supporters of the Mosque are unAmerican! It's like the Nazis putting an ice cream parlor at Auschwitz!”
“Those who would deny the right of believers to build worship houses are unAmerican! How can anyone be so disgusting as to use this as a political weapon?”
“I don't know who my baby daddy is! And I don't care! I'm in love with my grandmother!”

The recent media kerfuffle over the so-called “Mosque at Ground Zero” affords the perfect cross section view of how the rich and lively politicization of our culture can unfortunately distort even our most simple values.

Madison's colleagues, the Constitutional Framers, made absolutely no bones about the importance of the separation between Church and State. These complicated men saw Tyranny (with a capital T) as the bane of civil stability, freedom, and growth. These people knew the Bible intimately; they also knew the writings of Locke and Rousseau. Almost all were churchgoers.

But they knew of the political obstacles of religion. The colonies represented an escape from religious intolerance and State-imposed beliefs. When Ben Franklin, that old charmer and partier, proposed that the Constitutional Convention should begin daily meetings with a prayer, the Framers voted it down. This isn't a legend. I saw and read Franklin's proposal, in his own handwriting, at the Library of Congress this past weekend.

(You have to go to the Library of Congress. It is so cool-- seriously, you will freak out. They have the most amazing stuff. Goosebumps, man. Not the book series-- I mean actual goosebumps on your arms. And neck.)

Wary of the monarchs and aristocracies of Old Europe, the Framers wrote and ratified a document that ensured that certain personal freedoms would be held as our most valuable. The First Amendment of that document identified the principal and preeminent of freedoms: liberty to think, believe, imagine, communicate, and protest.

The Framers sought no byzantine legal system of overseeing religion. They intended the government to simply stay out of personal spiritual business of the citizenry.

This separation between Church and State has provided no shortage of political division in our country-- and yet the most hardened partisans agree on the core idea. The government is to offer no special treatment or bigotry towards any religion. If one follows the civil laws of our country, then one can believe anything one wants.

Our government, therefore, may have no legal position on methods, or places, of worship other than on those that violate the law. It's astonishingly simple.

Those who call for the government to act on the “Mosque at Ground Zero” are, in effect, asking for the government to act in a “extra-Constitutional” manner. Keep this in mind the next time such a call comes from a voice from that also claims to support “smaller government.”

It's hard for me to imagine a better way for the “terrorists to win” than for us to depart from our most cherished values in the name of security or “sensitivity.” The reason “American values” infuriate the Islamic extremists is that, as the Framers knew, personal freedom dismantles the tools of tyranny. Freedom is contagious.

Bin-Laden has publicly decried the “godlessness” of America. His argument against the West is fundamentally religious in nature. He rallies extremists against the malevolent insensitivity of the Americans building military bases in Saudi Arabia. Al-Queda's stated goal is to expel American influences (bases, markets, churches, etc) from the sacred land of Islam.

How ironic that some in our culture would use the same argument to expel an Islamic prayer room from the sacred site of Ground Zero.

Conversely, how powerful for our country to remain steadfast to its Constitution, and the Church-State separation, even at our most sensitive and vulnerable underbelly.

To paraphrase Madison, "Father of the Constitution" and orchestrator of partisan bickering: may the better argument win.

Sigh. Indeed.

Saviors and Scapegoats III

“What we've got here is... failure to communicate.”


I like to reference Cool Hand Luke because it's such a great movie. Seriously, reread this article's opening line in your head with that dude's crazy voice from the film. Hilarious. Anything going wrong at any work place is on display in Cool Hand Luke. That movie ain't about prison. It's about business.

Education is business. Or, at least, that's how we like to talk about it. It's a losing government business, almost as financially stupid as defense. And education has been inching towards the “free market” for years. From standardized test vending to tutoring super-businesses to charter schools, private industry has been making inroads into “public” schooling for years.

Battle lines are drawn here. The teacher unions are against privatizing. Business leaders are against public spending that raises taxes. Liberals tend to be for budget increases in education. Conservatives tend to be for slashing budgets in education. (Disclosure: I am an elected representative in my school's teacher union. And I'm making bank in that gig! Disclosure again: I am not making bank. It's like $350 a year after taxes.)

This is the failure to communicate. We can't talk about better teachers because we can't stop talking about taxes.

Public Education Gets Kicked In the Privates

The debate about taxes, specifically public funding vs private funding, might be the most polarizing political argument in our country. Innovation in schools, like innovation in anything, costs money. Therefore, innovation, change, and growth in the field of education divide people right on the same line as taxation. Which is to say: most people do not seem to favor spending more money on education.

Duh. We've married “improving education” with “raising taxes.” It's like wedding “chocolate fudge sundaes” with “root canal work.” Can you imagine enjoying Ben and Jerry's on your couch while watching a stereophonic HD documentary of a dentist drilling cavities? This is what happens when people talk about improving education. They hear the high pitch drill of higher taxes.

So, the private sector looks like it may get another win. Charter schools, home schooling, industry incentives have all made it to the table. I already mentioned how private companies develop the standardized tests like the SAT and AP. Private answers to public problems have been winning all over our culture. In education, this is probably a good thing, at least in the near term. We might get beyond just talking about taxes and actually talk about innovation.

But long term, the private sector has troublesome issues. As awesomely awesome as the free market is, it runs best on customer satisfaction. In fact, it runs like a champ on the sweetest tooth of satisfaction: immediate gratification.

Put It In My Mouth

McDonald's doesn't do well because people appreciate the nutritional value of its food years after the food is gone. It does well because we eat it and enjoy it right now. No one takes a moment to reflect and say, “Five years ago, I ate an 800 calorie Big Mac instead of a fresh organic salad. (pause) Man, that was smart.” Big oil doesn't run the world economy because it makes long term sense. Using dead animals and plants that are millions of years old to power everything is astonishingly stupid. But who can care when we need to get somewhere in a car?

Doing something that is more expensive and less enjoyable doesn't really float in the free market. We spend way more on diet foods, books, and cosmetic surgery than we do on fitness. Like I've said, teachers must be free to be unpopular, irritating, and completely "unsatisfying" (in the immediate satisfaction model).

The Teacher Brain Drain

So, if the public model allows for those awful teachers I mentioned in part II and the private model works on a system that has trouble incentivizing teachers to be independent of customer satisfaction, what do we do?

I'm working on it. Generally, the private sector has a much better model to increase spending based on good quality. Likewise, the public sector does a much better job of sustaining stability regardless of economic conditions (or quality). I suspect we need to find a way to make public and private play more nicely together. And we need to a lot more imagination, as a country, to get around that corner.

But the radioactive conversation of taxes keeps directing us into the wrong conversation. It's not about HOW we pay. It's WHAT we are willing to pay for.

We need to bravely address the most important fact of education: great teachers make great students.

It's simple. We need well-trained, innovative, cream of the crop, badass, well-paid teachers. We need to entice talented people from the better paying, more respected gigs of our culture and get them in the classroom.

I think we start with tenure. I'd wager that if we do this right and people will be more willing to pay more for education, publicly or privately.

Check out part IV, the final installment of this series, for my thoughts on how to do it.

The Carla Bruni

Mixology.


Ponder, if you will, the lemon.


Yellow, so perfect, we say the color after the fruit. A scent that conjures spring and summer. "Lemon" sometimes means broken or flawed-- but, more often, it means clean and wonderful.

As comfortable in silver bowl at Versailles as in a plastic cup on the boardwalk, the lemon is a diplomat. Cuisines from Europe to Latin America to Asia literally depend on it. The lemon might be the most elegantly pedestrian fruit in the world. Tart and refined, the lemon freshens ice water and kitchens alike. It is a cure to fishiness and filth; as a flavoring, it replaces vinegar or salt-- or both. It is sour yet bracing; with sugar, it opens like a flower. It brightens Christmas garland, dresses shop windows, and provides designers a polestar of sunshine.

It's skin is pliable yet firm, like a fine leather. The lemon nearly explodes its perfume when cut and its sections seem to almost emit sunlight. The zest from the rind christens hands and rooms with its oil.

The lemon is beautiful. And I have the perfect drink for it.

You'll need a bottle of a Lillet Blanc to make it but, despite how difficult it can be to find, you won't be sorry. You'll get through the bottle fast, too; Lillet is lovely on its own. But put dress that Lillet up with some lemon, add tea for structure, and you've got a supermodel in your hands.

Named for a pop star who captured the heart of a head of state, this cocktail never forgets where she came from even as she leads you by the hand onto her balcony. You might invade a country. Or, at least, buy a fantastic suit.

The Carla Bruni

6 oz of Lillet Blanc
4 oz of unsweetened iced tea
2-3 wedges of fresh lemon

Get a solid glass from your cabinet, something you usually drink water from. Nothing fancy; every glass becomes pretty with Carla in it. Take a wedge of lemon and run it around the edge of the glass, then squeeze it into the glass and throw the lemon in there, too. (The seeds are fine with me but, if you aren't a fan of them, squeeze the lemon through a sieve or cheese grater or whatever.) Fill the glass with ice. Pour the tea in the glass. Squeeze another wedge of lemon and then add the Lillet. Stir with a spoon and then, if you like, add one more wedge of lemon for garnish. I certainly do.

Oh, and feel free to mess with the proportions to your taste.

The Carla Bruni. You'll swear it's good for you. And that's because it is.

Another original iBlogAmerica cocktail.

Scapegoats and Saviors II

About a year ago, my friend Jason amused himself by starting or ending sentences with the phrase “in THIS economy.”

He'd say things like “man, it is hot today... in THIS economy.” Or, “in THIS economy, we should go to the movies.” Or, “this burger is really good... in THIS economy.”

Jason got a kick out of the fact that everywhere in the media, seemingly, everyone was talking about the ECONOMY. And Jason was spot on: people WERE freaking out. Everything seemed to be about THIS economy. The housing bubble was bursting. The Dow was tanking; unemployment was rising. Pensions were disappearing and factories were continuing to close. Healthcare costs skyrocketing. And, as some theorize, Obama, our first black president, was elected because of the desperation of THIS economy.

Nothing could be-- or can be, because we're still there-- seen outside the lens of money. Financial security is the panacea to all that ails us.

Enter teachers: summers off, long holidays, work only until 3pm. With fat pensions and solid healthcare benefits. All a teacher has to do is get through the first couple of years and then they have guaranteed jobs forever. With constant raises. Those jerks.

People hate a lot of things about teachers. But they loathe 'tenure' in education.

Some have forgotten why tenure has always been so important. It's quite simple: tenure allows professionals the right to be unpopular. In an industry where most of the 'product' and 'returns' come years (sometimes decades) after the work is completed, tenure has protected fantastic instructors from the caprice of administrators and parents.

Teachers are like umpires or cops: an essential part of the job is telling people things they don't want to hear. Tenure has allowed transformative teachers the ability to lead the unwilling and unmotivated to consider new ideas. To break generational chains of ignorance. To encourage courage.

My friend Nancy puts it most succinctly. Tenure gives teachers permission to be honest.

But I have a brief announcement:
tenure... is... dead.

Or, at least, is on it's last legs. About to bite the bullet. Buy the farm. Check out. Croak.

And, no, not because of 'No Child Left Behind' or 'Race To The Top' or any governmental edict (although I continue to research the RTTP national standards and I'll finish the article sometime soon! I hope). Obama's initiative might expedite tenure's demise, but the government won't be brandishing the executioner's axe.

Tenure will die because, in THIS economy, people are scared. And people are mad.

Some teachers are to blame for the bad rep of tenure. Who didn't have at least one obscenely horrible teacher? I had a half dozen freak shows in front of me as a student. Drunks, molesters, abusers, dimwits, anti-intellectuals... and that's just grade school. Ok, AND high school. I wish I were joking. You've probably got horrible stories, too. And I can practically guarantee that the worst teachers any of us ever had were tenured. They were protected while they made a sham of the profession.

And we return to our jokes about teachers.
What do you call a welfare recipient with a book?
A teacher.
What do you call a welfare recipient with a ball?
Coach.
What do you call a man in a dress who feels up kids?
A drama teacher.

Our favorite worst stories about school are about bad teachers.

Our memories of our teachers, coupled with our cultural tendency to portray teachers as either criminals or saints, give anyone the right to believe that tenure is the stink at the bottom of the education barrel.

And that's why teachers are so sexy these days. Because fear and anger and stinky things get us all hot and bothered.

So what will happen to honesty in talented but vulnerable teachers? What will happen to the greatness of those teachers who inspire hope and change?

In part III, I'll talk about why we keep having the wrong conversation about tenure and what will happen when it's over.

And I won't use any more death euphemisms for tenure. Let this blog be the last breath, the final twitch, the death rattle of these morbid expressions.

The Coronet

Mixology


So, I like to make drinks.

I've decided that this blog could use some refreshing, especially given the sub-tropical climate as of late. It's fun to say that something needs 'refreshing.' I'm worried that this word is being hijacked by the internet browser brigade. The purpose of a good drink, a clever rejoinder, or a sparkling introduction is to refresh. To refresh something else is a beautiful, generous thing. It is at the center of hospitality and civility.

Here's to iBlogAmerica's first drink- an original creation! And here's to you.

The Coronet

2 oz. Gin (preferably Hendricks)
a healthy splash of Rosemary infused simple syrup
a cucumber
club soda
ice

To make the syrup, heat a cup of water until it simmers. Slowly add a cup of sugar and kill the heat. Stir until the sugar has melted. Get a handful of rosemary, tear it up, and toss in the syrup to steep for as long as you like. Let syrup cool and bottle it. Some people like to strain the herbs out. Do your thing. Then...

Fill a shaker with ice. Add the gin, the Rosemary syrup, and one or two thin rounds of cucumber, cubed. Shake it like you mean it-- until your hands hurt from the cold of the ice.

Strain into a highball glass (or a glass slipper, a coiled palm frond, or what have you) over ice. Top with club soda and garnish with one or two thinly sliced rounds of cucumber.

Ah, the coronet. Bright, cheery, a little sophisticated, and wildly refreshing.

Sigh. I love the summer.

Teachers: Scapegoats and Saviors I

If you can't DO, then TEACH.
If you can't teach, teach Gym.

What do you call a lazy, know-it-all with summers off?
A high school student.
What do you call a lazy, know-it-all with summers off with pay?
A high school teacher.


It's actually kind of hard to find good teacher jokes on the interwebs. I mean: hard in a “I found it on Google or Yahoo in .34 seconds” sort of way. I only looked for five minutes-- which is the equivalent of three weeks in pre-internet time-- and found really stupid, “family friendly” jokes. Gross. I think I hate “family friendly” anything. (Disclaimer to my parent readers out there: I know that I am a myopic bachelor who lives at the center of my own universe AND when/if I have children, my outlook on everything, including “family friendly” will change. Check. I got it.)

Anyway, I started thinking of writing this blog based on a simple supposition I have: teaching is the most controversial profession of our time. More than oil tycoons, prostitutes, priests, or bloggers, teachers bring out reactions in us. We all have opinions about them, many of us think most are frauds, we've all been screwed by them, and we know that a good one is priceless.

No one doesn't have an opinion about school teachers. Whether we are talking about summers off, salary, moral character, or competence, everyone feels free to judge teachers. A few of my favorites:

“Teachers only work nine months a year-- and they only work from 8-3.”
“People who become teachers do it because they get to push around little kids.”
“I had a teacher who was wasted/high all the time.”
“Teachers have no 'real life' experience.”
“My friend/cousin/coworker had a teacher who was sleeping with his students.”
“Teachers are people who couldn't make it in 'real world.'”

Fun! And these are just among the most common. My favorites are about how teachers are lazy fakers who mooch off the tax system, just to teach their own, narrow belief systems.

Don't get me wrong. I know that the other side of the coin is equally charged: the belief that teachers are magic-working angels. That a good teacher literally gives his life for his students, sacrificing a life outside school in order to grade papers, plan assignments and activities, and tend to his most needy students. These teachers are the Christs or Buddhas of our times. They have no families, are divorced or unmarried, often have nine cats or a couple of dogs, and float a few inches off the ground.

Anyway, so what's it all about? How did the 'fall back job' of the last few generations become the Lady Gaga of professions?

Check back soon and let's talk about it in Part Two!
And I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Cartoons and Mirrors

A film review.


Once again, Pixar uses brightly colored playthings to smash us to pieces, only to glue us together again.

Prickly pieces have punctuated Pixar's productions in the past. In Finding Nemo, we find a desperate father absolutely devastated by the death of his long lost son. In The Incredibles, a family gets ripped to pieces by secrets that question identity and trust. Wall-E gives us harshly dystopian world in which an orphaned, trash picking robot is the only 'life' left on a planet destroyed by humans. And who can forget the brilliant opening sequence in Up? The perfect confection of boy meets girl leads unstoppably to the bitterness of loss and widowhood.

Dark stuff for kiddie movies. These people at Pixar aren't messing around.

This summer's Toy Story 3 avoids none of the bleakness, either. The end of childhood comes to toy-stewarding Andy, and never in the film do we see him happy to go to college. The focus remains on the toys, however, and here we find abandonment, attempted homicide, and the annihilation of a family.

I'm reminded of the unvarnished Grimm tales. Before Disney (ironically the parent company of Pixar) got a hold of a Grimm tale like "Cinderella," the story was filled with harsh consequences. For instance, the “evil” stepfamily abused Cinderella and constantly lied to her. Cinderella's name comes from the fact that she picked her food from the ashes in the fireplace- often for the sport of her family. Late in the story, when faced with a too-small glass slipper, one of the sisters cut off her own heel to make a gory fit. The prince recognized that Cinderella as the true owner of the shoe simply because “there was no blood in” the shoe when she slipped it on. Birds that spent the story helping Cinderella finish the tale by pecking out the eyes of the sisters, leaving them blinded for a life of darkness.

Yikes.

What makes a Grimm “children's story” tick are the abject desolation and violence that many stories of our time whitewash. Oh, sure, our stories have explosions and death; we love a good chase scene and showdown. But most of our stories often leave us where they found us, counting on the idea that all will be right in the end. The status quo will be preserved. The good guys (or girls) will win and everything will be returned to normal.

The storytellers at Pixar make no deals with us. They grasp that an authentic representation of the world must include irreversible consequences. On one hand, Pixar films seem to offer escape and bliss: we go to these movies expecting to have our heartstrings pulled while we giggle and laugh. On the other hand, Pixar films abuse us with the burdens of our sympathies: we lean forward, inhaling, worried that these little dolls/fish/robots might not actually survive how awful everything is.

We adults watching these films know that the world is an unforgiving place. Bad things happen to good people. Friends leave us. Homes are destroyed forever. People die. We know what's on the line for Nemo's dad when he breaks down in the face of how incredibly large and dangerous the ocean is. We understand that Wall-E's trash dump world is a reasonable, if avoidable, future to our own fragile green planet. And we know that Andy's loyal and determined toys, like all playthings, are all destined to be tossed off by a boy who outgrows his own childhood.

These Pixar characters are destined to be changed forever by their travails, left with permanent scars and irretrievable pasts. In Toy Story 3, Woody and Buzz and the toy gang go through a one-way door, forever leaving the familiar comforts of grown-boy Andy's bedroom. And Andy, too, goes through his own threshold, leaving his emptied bedroom for college. Andy, like his erstwhile plastic and fuzzy friends, will never be the same.

And we, watching from the chilly dark of our cineplex, recognize these primal forces at work. We know that these animations are merely ephemeral pixies, pretty things that glow from hard drives. (It's just a cartoon!) But something about the distance of it all-- the remove of the cartoon coupled with the remove of the cinematic experience, opens a window into the very center of us.

In the dazzling color of all, something wonderful happens. Through the unique alchemy of animation, Pixar makes us kids again. Witches are real, as are giants and monsters. We re-encounter the way we experienced stories as children. We look up at towering kitchen tables, looking through belt buckle perspectives and are reminded just how big and scary and thrilling this world can be.

Where nostalgia helps us shine up our memories, focusing on the good and the beautiful, Pixar's Toy Story 3 gives us the entire memory. We see mom's heartbreak at our newly emptied room. We remember our own favorite and worn toys from our childhood, knowing that these well-loved pieces are likely in a landfill somewhere.

And we remember that first, last time we looked at the place we grew up, that first time we left home. We clearly see that one way door that led from our technicolor childhood to our complex and ever-shifting adulthood.

For a moment, in that half light of the cinema, the fragility and durability of these animated toys pulls back the curtain. And the beauty is more than enough.

Staring At the Sea

All of my gay friends spent the Fourth of July in 'Gay Towns.'

You know 'Gay Towns.' These are the places where lesbians push baby strollers and middle aged gay men get to wear those tight tank tops that they don't wear to office parties. Trannies order cafe lattes right next to bald, hairy men in leather vests. Muscle boys in cargo shorts flirt with skinny boys in American Apparel short shorts. Women in ankle length skirts with unshorn underarms hold hands and blare Amy Ray from boom boxes. Other women, in baseball caps and sleeveless shirts, talk sports or politics while sipping beer.

A few of my friends went to Provincetown on Cape Cod, others went to Rehoboth on the shore of Maryland. Like Melville's Ishmael, all seemed drawn to the water. Why do the gays head to the coast? Maybe it's the idea of an outpost away from society, where mores and customs seem more relaxed. There's a 'live and let live' quality that so few of us practice and yet many of us claim.

Perhaps it's the sense of scale at the ocean: the social hierarchies and rules of human beings can appear trivial in the face of the irrefutable horizon of the sea.

At any rate, my friends, all of them Americans, left their homes for the holiday and headed to the sea for safe harbor among like-minded people. Every year they do this. It's an annual tradition.

We celebrate the Fourth of July to recognize a singular event represented by a searing piece of writing from the 18th Century. Standing at a crossroads in history, the Declaration Of Independence championed an idea: no governing body could bestow basic rights upon human beings because human beings already had those rights. No king, no emperor, no minister, no consulate, no board, no governor, no voting body-- no one-- was empowered to give or take certain, inalienable rights from people. Among these were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 'We are born free,' the document said.

I'm still knocked out by all of that. The power of the Declaration still vibrates and pulses; its relentless tide still disturbs, resonates, and inspires. Like the ocean, its hard-line horizon is irrefutable.

Two hundred and thirty four years ago, a group of men left their homes and headed to a port town, on the water. With it's bustling marine commerce, it was a lot like a coastal town. It was named for and dedicated to Brotherly Love. These men sought safe harbor among like-minded people. And they wrote about freedom.

And as I think about those men, who literally put their names to an idea that flew directly against norms and laws and the power of a king, I can't help but wonder what we, as a nation, are doing with gay rights.

How is it possible that gays cannot serve openly in our military? How is it possible that gay people cannot get married? How is it possible that these people must choose to be 'open' or 'in the closet?' Gay or Bi or Trannies or whatever. What is going on here?

On the Fourth of July, we gather to recognize the signing of an incredible document. It's our most important national holiday and it's about freedom. Every year we do this. It's an annual tradition.

And the sea is there, with its undeniable horizon, sending wave after wave.

We are born free. We are born free. We are born free.

Monsters Singing You To Sleep

A music review.


The music scene is riddled with average singers, couched in polished production and sugared with Autotune. Everybody sounds the same, it seems.

Scott Peterson, of Pittsburgh's feisty band The Wreckids, is no average singer. And he's no average songwriter, either. Accompanied by his brilliant actress/musician wife, Sarah Siplak, Peterson has made a record for our time, putting his toy boat of hope in a sloshing tub of fears.

The Wreckids' 2010 EP release Singing You To Sleep But Giving You Nightmares finds a place between worlds of sweetness and bitterness, often stealing into both. The Wreckids tell wry stories of loss and heartbreak, layering thrilling harmonies with old school acoustic guitar playing. They're not afraid to make you laugh or make you cry; Peterson's authenticity simply demands a response from you.

"What'R We Gonna Do?" drops you into the Wreckids' cockeyed world of jokes wrapped in dark but plain observations. We're trapped in our boring lives, Peterson reminds us before advising us to "eat" and "sleep" in order to deal with it. "Somebody's Heart" cuts you with its scalpel lyrics only to sew you back up with its soaring vocals and harmonies. And you'll sing along without meaning to; this is a real folk album.

But don't expect a 70's throwback: Peterson isn't James Taylor or Joni Mitchell. The Wreckids are clearly not trying to replicate a sound. If you need a comparison, Peterson might be closer to earnestness of Ani DiFranco with the tenderness of Rufus Wainwright. He's playful, too, like Regina Spektor, but kind of nerdy, like Ben Folds.

The point is: The Wreckids have a whole sound, a new voice on the scene. And Peterson and Siplak put on an undeniably riveting live show that grabs and builds audiences immediately. There is something special here, and audiences in Pittsburgh and New York City know it.

In a music world of hipsters, rockers, ingenues, and models, The Wreckids bring you something different. They bring you the real thing: music for music's sake. Get this record. It'll soon be one of your favorites.

Singing You To Sleep But Giving You Nightmares is available on itunes.

Full disclosure: The Wreckids' Peterson and Siplak have been known to personally serve food, jokes, and whiskey to the author of this review. Among other things.

Boredom Is Learned

Part Two in my series on Curiosity.



There are no bored three year olds. They don't exist. Three year olds want to know everything: they explore the worlds through their eyes, hands, and mouths. Not always in that order. And that doesn't begin to describe a child in the presence of a strong odor, like fresh cookies or dog poo, or a loud sound, like fireworks or bird chatter. The five senses are hubs of great activity. The world is a whirling carousel of interesting things to a child. Things shimmer with possibility and purpose. Three year olds NEED to know everything.

So why don't thirteen year olds? Or thirty or forty or fifty year olds, for that matter?

I don't know. I suspect it has to do with the hidden cost of experience. As we grow and learn, we get energized by what is fresh and novel. Things happen that we don't expect. It's a ride! We experience something, we are thrilled/horrified/seduced/shocked by it, then expect to experience it again. Or expect it to change. Either way, by the very nature of learning, we use past experience to shape our present experiences. We know the world through the comparison between what happened yesterday and today. We feel wise when we recognize what's about to happen. We celebrate our ability to see the patterns in things; we reward those with the most correct answers. Our lives become safer and more stable as we become more steeped in the “causes and effects” of the world.

But something happens: as we grow, these expectations begin to erode our ability to experience something on its own terms. We experience fewer things that surprise us. We are constantly predicting what's going to happen-- and, often, we are right.

Life is scary! Predicting what's going to happen makes it bearable. Sometimes, it's the only difference between safety and danger.

The cost is that we often don't see everything that's there. We begin see ONLY the patterns that we've seen before; we focus on what's predictable and often miss the things that we don't expect.

As Sherlock Holmes tells us, we see what we expect to see.

And so, we learn to stop learning.

And that's how I define boredom: the result of displacing the wildness of curiosity with the stability of predictability.

We return to the three year old. Driven by curiosity, a child has no room for boredom. He wants to learn everything. As he grows, the preponderance of experience wears down his interest in the world, like the ocean lapping at an enormous stone on the beach. The sharp edges of curiosity, through predictability and experience, become the smooth contours of boredom.

How do we stop this erosion?

Do we even want to?

EAT! SCREW! RUN! KILL!

Part One in my series on Curiosity.

Why do we do anything?

I ate three hot dogs this week. I bought a Phoenix record. I ran twice. I got up early to watch the World Cup. I drank beer. I called my mom. I read about “Bloody Sunday.” I graded papers. I ignored a phone call. I DVR'ed the President and Glee. I watched one but not the other. I remembered a lost friend.

Why did I do any of this stuff? Seriously. What is the engine that drives human movement?

And how did I eat three hot dogs? Yikes.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be exploring why people do what they do. I'm interested in what moves us. I'll be examining myself and, if you freaky readers are into it, I'll be examining you.

I'll start this week with a list of concepts I'm playing with. Get in here if you've got ideas that I'm overlooking. Get in here!


I Blog America's Taxonomy of
“Why People Do Stuff”

The concept of INCENTIVE.
We love this one in our country. INCENTIVE is the prime mover. Desire + work = action. People don't do things altruistically. People do things to get something for themselves-- and all of us want things for ourselves. It's natural, baby. It's Adam Smith's economic psychology blended neatly with Thomas Aquinas' theological credibility; The Wealth of Nations' manifesto and the Quinque viae's undeniable elegance. All movement begins as the same force: to serve one's needs or desires.

The concept of SURVIVAL.
Here is Charles Darwin's contribution to the conversation. Not entirely distinct from the INCENTIVE argument, SURVIVAL boils things down to eating, reproducing, and running from danger/neutralizing danger. Keep the species, the relationships, the family, the business, the town, the country-- keep things going. Help things thrive and kill things that present danger. During a riveting episode of the BBC's Planet Earth, my tatooed, bearded, and reflective friend Brian eloquently observed that all of life is about four interjections: EAT! SCREW! RUN! KILL!

The concept of GUILT and SHAME.
Ok, I don't want to go to deeply into spirituality, religion, or psychology here. I have tremendous respect for all three and I recognize that the politics of these kind of conversations can often overshadow everything. And it's not to say that religion or psychology can be reduced to guilt or shame. But I would be remiss if I skipped the idea that we do things in order to avoid GUILT and SHAME. Here, we care less about what we want and more about avoiding what we don't want. We act in order to not feel bad.

Finally, my favorite concept of CURIOSITY.
Curiosity offers no unified theory. It's a messy idea, really. The CURIOSITY argument seems pretty easy to deny, actually: 1) the reason to do anything comes from curiosity and 2) people are curious because they want to understand the unknown. The deniability of CURIOSITY rests in the idea that, after childhood, our curiosity atrophies. I'm not sure we do very much to satiate our curiosity throughout the day. We don't investigate much, we don't explore much, we don't leave our comfort zones much.

We're not, actually, all that curious.

I mean, sure, we watch our celebrities or our politicians, we watch our children and our parents-- we are “curious” about some things. We want to know what's happening next door when the cops show up. We want to know what our best friend is doing at the hospital. We want to know what you will get me for my birthday in November. November 3rd-- just a heads up, people.

But we are not curious when we are eating three hot dogs. We are not curious when we call our moms. We are not even that curious when we are watching Glee or the President. We are not all that interested in understanding the unknown here. We're basically just being amused. Or irritated. But we're not being curious.

So why do I add it to the list of 'Why We Do Stuff?'

Because I suspect, in any effort to improve anything, CURIOSITY might be one of the most important and useful reasons to do act.