The Art of Triage

Winning doesn't mean not losing

I used to love watching M*A*S*H*. As a kid I'd sit on the brown, short pile rug in our TV room, back against the sofa, watching reruns. Hawkeye and Trapper, elbows deep in surgery, would make jokes about hot nurses, stupid generals, or bootleg martinis-- whatever really-- and, by the end of the show, make some sincere point about how awful war is. They were flawed but honorable people, stuck in a terrible situation and with awfully limited resources, trying to keep people alive.

My favorite thing about the show was how the members of the 4077 stayed human despite how bad things got. You had to laugh to keep from crying.

I learned a word watching that show: triage. In the world of MASH, it meant that some people might have to lose a kidney or a leg in order to live. It also meant that some people wouldn't die while others would. Everything would hang from the surgeon's choices based on impossibly limited options.

Triage is built on a deficiency model. What DON'T I have? What CAN'T I do? People working within it must make the most of what is available. There is one bottom line. Survival.

It's the model at work in most of our public schools.

Surviving, not thriving

We live in a country where it somehow makes political and economic sense to have a high pressure, under-resourced school system. Teachers work in a constant deficiency model, focusing on boundaries instead of goals. Instead of focusing on growing fantastic students, pushing them to heights not yet known, we are busy with saving academically sick and dying students.

When you are a public school teacher, picking what and how you teach has almost nothing to do with what you WANT to do. It's all about what you CAN do given your many immutable limitations. It's not “no child left behind.” It's more “try to screw the children over as equally as possible.” No matter how much I want to like it, there's no “race to the top.” It's only “make sure you're not stuck at the bottom.”

Our slumping education system is preoccupied with not falling apart. We are playing like a team trying not to lose by too many points. We aren't teaching like champions; we are sawing off limbs.

The Art of Triage. It's the construct of war refugees, natural disaster victims, battlefront surgeons, and public school teachers.  

The next time someone tries to tell you that we need to spend less on education, don't argue.  Just tell them about triage.

I think I'm going to make myself a martini. Do we have any olives laying around, Hawkeye?
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Inevitable Context

Define “teaching.” Go ahead. I dare ya.

It's amazing how broad the answers are to this question. To define teaching, I figure you could provide any of the following answers reasonably:

A terrible or well-paying job

What people do when they can't do anything else

A waste of time

One of the most important jobs in the history of civilization

A place for saints/villains

A sweet gig with holidays and summers off

A never-ending gig which includes impromptu parent conferences at grocery stores/restaurants/public streets/the bar/the beach/public bathrooms/the mall/the dentist office waiting room/a park/on a train/in a plane/on a boat/with a goat

The reason for the economic downturn

The hope for an economic recovery

Here's my answer:

Teaching is the art of making the unknown knowable, 

the confusing understandable, 

and the meaningless meaningful.

The goal of teaching?  Again, the list is hilarious:

To push kids around

To save the world

To avoid a real job

To save one kid

To share information

To manipulate information

To get paid

To serve society

Here's my answer, and I think it's one of my best and freshest ideas yet-

GREAT teaching (because who needs to read more about bad or mediocre teaching) has one goal: 

to help students find the inevitable context between learner and lesson.

Great teachers know that it's all just a question of time and context.  The kid can learn! One just needs to keep cracking and innovating.

Great teachers are impossible to replace for this reason.  Lessons and instructions can be replicated in books, content can be made into clever films, and classrooms can be made into learning theme parks.  All that stuff can be done synthetically. Robots and stuff.

But-- and this is a big but- the belief that any dummy can and will learn- and the willingness to keep at it, try new tricks, learn new methods, find new jokes, explore new stories, inspire more goosebumps- ah, only a a great teacher can do that.  It makes a great teacher invaluable.  Priceless.  Like the credit card commercial.

Inevitable context! That'll be the name of a great book.

Anyone want to help me publish it?