School Yourself

The biggest obstacle isn't a reality:  it's a dream

Here's the old model, the time-tested, incredibly persistent concept of "school:"
The teacher teaches the student.

It's simple, easy to understand, and has the ring of truth.  We say things like "he taught me so much!" or "I learned so much from her."  The teacher is a vending machine, a talking textbook, a knowledge dispenser. We keep the wisdom and dole it out.

As a teacher, I can tell you:  this model works-- less than half of the time.  The days it works are sublime:  you lecture, digress, and expound. Your students sit in the glow of your brilliance, they eat it up, light bulbs go on, and the music of instruction plays like a street fiddler in the square.  You make the magic.

But when that ain't working for you, when the students are bored, lost, or detached-- these are awful teacher moments.   Your students loll in the harsh light of your artificial sun, they list in their seats, darkness pervades, and the clatter of the lecture plays like a rusty chain on the pavement.

The "Great Teacher" Fantasy
Often, teachers of teachers claim to want to debunk this model.  The better part of professional development that I have seen in the last 10 years as a teacher seems to be grounded in the idea that the teacher should not be the "Sage On the Stage."  I swear, I hear that stuff all the time in staff meetings.  It kills me because I don't think anyone really belives it.  When we talk about a great teacher, we often talk about this brilliant genius around whom the classroom orbits. I loved Dead Poets Society and Stand and Deliver.  To some extent, I dreamed of being those guys when I started my career.

This old model is the problem, of course.  It's those dream days of magic teaching that encumber and bewitch us.  We calculate success in the classroom as a measure of the proximity to this idealistic model.  The perfect becomes the enemy to everything else.

Teachers and schools haven't invented this old blanket, however.  It's deep in our collective thought about learning.  We live in a Guru culture.  We celebrate the "amazing teachers" in movies and in books.  Parents "are the most important teachers" of their children.  Older siblings "teach" their younger siblings.  We've even created our computer models around it.  Data is "downloaded" from an original source.  It's "copied." Knowledge is not created-- it's ctrl C then ctrl V.  Real artificial intelligence remains the provence of science fiction because we don't put a high premium on the efficacy of anyone teaching herself.  Once computers are built to teach themselves, it'll be a whole new movie, baby.  But we don't really know how to do that-- because we don't do much of it with each other.

That awesome teacher moment-- that's what we crave.  But it simply doesn't happen often enough-- even for the great teachers.

There's a more effective model, of course: a model that is, arguably, even more recognizable. It's a model that has founded just about every bit of learning ever done by any one.  It's hidden under the old model, nearly unsung in our public discourse about education despite its ubiquity in "real life" applications.

The Better Model
Student teaches himself knowledge.
Teacher helps when and where necessary.

First time parents have no teachers.  Brain surgeons must hold the scalpels alone on a first surgery.  Nobody could teach Mick Jagger how to sing, Warren Buffet how to invest, Oprah Winfrey how to produce, Michael Phelps how to swim, or you how to do whatever it is YOU are good at.  Of course, people helped Mick and Warren and Oprah and the rest-- but no one taught them-- at least, not in the traditional sense.  They taught themselves.  Their mentors were there when and/or where needed.  As have been all the great teachers in your life.

Heck, you taught yourself language.  How to walk.  Do you ever think about how your brain must work for that to have happened?  For it to happen to everyone, everywhere, in every culture around the world?

This old model needs a real challenge, especially as our cultural and political conversations about good teaching begin to gain more and more traction. It's blotting out the light and our schools-- and our culture-- continues to whither under its shiny promise of the "better teacher."

When on the job, the best teachers are barely there.  They elegantly and efficiently drop in and out of the learning process.  They pay attention, make it about the students, and constantly convince/inspire/trick students into teaching themselves.

In a world of Teaching Specialists, we need teachers need to be Specialists in How Teach Oneself.  We need teachers who teach people to not need teachers.

Complicated, indeed.

The Great Ones

It’s the Teachers, Stupid

Think about the greatest teacher you ever had. 

There’s nothing quite like a truly Great Teacher.  If you were lucky to have one, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  

The Great Ones were cool, man.  They seemed to have effortless mastery of the content.  They knew how to manage the class; they made jokes sometimes but always at the perfect time.  They were occasionally terrifying, but you killed yourself for their approval.  They might have looked horrible—no fashion sense, homely, downright ugly or bizarre—but you didn’t care.  At times they may have pissed you off, at times they may have made you cry:  but they changed you.

Like great athletes, mechanics, doctors, or pilots, they acted in the moment, made split-second decisions, and had access to great instinct and skill.  

And they made you want to be a better version of yourself.

Greatness Is Invisible To the System

You ever notice how little official "love" the Great Teachers got at your school?  The Great Teachers were often off on their own, doing their own thing, while other Good Teachers (and sometimes Lousy Teachers) were carried around on shoulders, having parties thrown in their honor, t-shirts made about them and crap like that.

In fact, Great Teachers were often scary or annoying to other teachers and staff.  Some of the kids didn't get them or even hated them.

I always turn into Holden Caufield when I talk about this stuff.  Celebrations of teachers often just feel like a Festival of Phonies.

It’s kind of gross.  Our educational system, of course, does practically nothing to attract, develop, or sustain Great Teachers.  Great Teachers exist IN SPITE of the constantly changing weather of education: the movements, the swings, the trends, and the political fray.  This is because Great Teachers are not managed, supervised, or led into being Great.  

         How does a Great Teacher "happen?" 
         There are only three ways-- and none of them are 
         addressed by our school systems.  
        Great Teachers are...

            1.  BORN great-- all the talents are there
            2.  MAKE THEMSELVES great on their own

            3.  are coached or mentored by an 
                 OTHER Great Teacher

            

That’s the problem.  Even though almost everyone in any school knows who the Great Teachers are in it, school managers have no “official” way of identifying them.  Administrators, generally not great teachers themselves, lack the skills or tools to even recognize Great Teachers.  They look at test scores, student behavior, and parent feedback—none of which consistently identifies Greatness in teaching.  

Squandering Resources

We don't spend any time actually talking about Great Teachers.  Like so many other teachers, I have sat through hundreds of hours of "professional development" that are not only insulting, they're ridiculously devoid of anything that can help me get better at my job.  Mind-numbing, soul-crushing, pencil-stabbing-your eye stuff.  And when I look at the few Great Teachers on my faculty (everyone always knows who the Greats are), I can't believe how ignored they are.  It's a sad and deplorable waste of time and resources. 

Our goal is to raise test scores?  Are you serious?  What are you smoking?  We don’t need better tests and test scores, better tutoring systems or education models, happier parents, happier students, better computers…

We need Great Teachers.  It's the whole thing, man.  

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?

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.