http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-Strips/47398/

The church needs to saint this man…

From Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton:

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that is an unreasonable world, nor even that is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

My family recently chuckled its way through Charlie Chaplin’s last silent film, and one of his best, “Modern Times.”  One scene near the beginning has our hero at work in a modern factory, with some sort of “widgets” sailing by him on a conveyor belt.  His job is to tighten two bolts as they go by.  He has a wrench in each hand and is doing fine, till the boss sees they need more production and tells the guy up line to increase volume.  Then Charlie’s character is up against it.  He tries to keep up; the comedy is all too poignant.  Modern times have come upon us.  We are not able to keep up.

As a life-long educator, seeing that picture reminded me of what happened in the late 1950’s as the baby boomers started to hit our nation’s schools.  The numbers spiked in 1971, but throughout the 50’s and 60’s this wave of kids hit our schools and schooling had to change.  There were just too many kids for the limited space and faculty of most schools.  And thus some things had to be lost along the way toward increased efficiency and high volume instructional methods.  And within the next few years, the Boomer’s grandkids will spike our kindergarten classes.  Most say this is coming in the 2012-13 year.

Be of good cheer, fellow Christian classical educators.  There are plenty of students yet to come!

Read the following recently on “The Endeavor” blog and because I have used Newton’s quote so much, just had to post it here:

Isaac Newton famously said
If I have seen farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.

Later Mathematician R. W. Hamming added
Mathematicians stand on each other’s shoulders while computer scientists stand on each other’s toes.

Finally, computer scientist Hal Abelson quipped
If I have not seen farther, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.

The headmaster was enjoying the quiet of the post-first-thing-in-the-morning-rush.  It was Friday.  The flowers were in bloom.  The storm had been replaced with beautiful sunshine.  He leaned back in his desk chair and sighed.  And noticed a nice green decent-sized grasshopper on his wall.  He asked a dad out in the main office if his i-phone had an app for transporting small insects out of one’s office.  As the dad joined him, they noticed a second green grasshopper, on another wall, facing distinctly away from the first (now named Uno).  Dos, the second grasshopper, seemed at odds with Uno.

Given that the headmaster had past experience with a snake, several mice, a few lizards, and the like, he always has a large pickle jar with appropriate holes in the lid waiting for such an opportunity.  Uno entered the glass house.  Dos dropped in to say hi.  Immediately, Dos headed for a position near the lid, while Uno turned from his place near the floor until both of them were nose to nose, or, well, antennae to antennae.  Either detante or friendship was entered.

How can any headmaster just let them go?  He must find a way for his mediatorial work to be appreciated.  He introduced his catch to the Kindergarten.  They were wide eyed.  Our headmaster hunts, too!  And soon, they will release these new friends to the great outdoors, hopefully not by stomping on them to say good bye.  And the Friday improves with each breath.

Our word “school” has an interesting derivation…

Latin

Etymology

From Ancient Greek σχολή

Noun

schola (genitive scholae); f, first declension

1. Leisure time given to learning.
2. A school; a place for learning or instruction.
3. A student body; the disciples of a teacher.
4. A sect; body of followers of a teacher or system, such as the Praetorian guard.
5. An art gallery.

How close or far from the above ideas are we?  Is there any connection between leisure and learning in our schools?

Spring Break has me thumbing my beat up old Bible, this time in search of passages that expressly address the notion of education.  If you check out the Pages section of this blog you will find a list I have started.  By all means weigh in with your own suggestions.  I am surprised at how demanding and challenging this exercise has been.  I thought I knew a lot more than I do!

The idea I am pursuing is to list only those passages that directly approach the subject of education in the limited sense of “intellectual advancement” or learning to read, write, and otherwise improve our intellectual skills.  I am not suggesting that for education to be a biblical endeavor it must be directly addressed in Scripture. 

I do believe there are strong principles and reasons for pursuing an excellent education, but that for most of my career I have perhaps pressed the Scriptures into doing what it does not really do: directly instruct Christians in how to educate.  This opens up a lot of cans with worms in them, but I think it is necessary to pursue this line of thinking so that we can answer our own and other’s questions honestly.

In CCE (Christian classical education) we regularly espouse the ideal of cultivating life-long learners by gifting children with the seven liberal arts.  This is what we are seeking to do.  My question for this meditation is then related and simple: “What kind of person is best suited to lead students to such a place in their lives?”  It almost seems rhetorical, does it not?  Those who are leading a life of learning are best suited to replicate such in their student’s lives.  So that leads me to a set of questions that might compel others to join the discussion:

A.      What are the characteristics of a life-long learner, apart from the obvious that they learn for a life-time.  Are we to be following Solon and state that we can’t know if we are one until we are dead?  Are there distinguishing traits commonly shared by such leaders/teachers?

B.      What can be done to identify such leaders so that they might be gathered in a locale, such as a school?

C.      What role does one such leader play in the development and encouragement of other such leaders?

D.      How much money does it take to finance a “professional” life-long learner’s needs for learning and should a school supplement that financial need or leave it to the learner?

E.       How does a school juggle the issues of time and “load” that compete in a teacher’s life?  Can we afford to give them time to be learners themselves, or is that just something they have to find in their leisure?

I think these are really huge issues because they cut right to the heart of our school’s success.  I have been struck more and more by the way Independent School Management (for instance) has addressed this issue.  They have struck at the monetary issue by saying that a strong, stable, quality school gives 2% of its overall budget toward professional development of its staff.  Just to crunch that esoteric percentage into some more meaningful, a school with a $1million budget who has let’s say 20 teaching staff would be investing about $800 per teacher per year in encouraging them and directing them toward being better teachers.  I will think aloud about the actual activities that such money could be profitably spent on in other blog.  But the notion itself is worthy of discussion.  I find it tough to argue against the notion of Professional Development. 

So what forms of PD are necessary and beneficial to a school faculty?  There seem to be two extremes with the middle being best.  On the one pole there would be the school administration that looked at its faculty and said “what we all need is ____” and filled the PO, sent off the check, and let everyone know that the “expert” was coming, ya’ll be there and sit through it.  He might actually have some wisdom at work there if the school is brand new and everyone needs to get on the same page.  But the opposite of that seems a pole as well.  There would be the Admin who would say, “Hey, we have 20K to spend on your being better at what you do.  You each find something you like, ask, and we will set you up with it.”  Now, again, some might actually really benefit from their choices, but a number would choose something that fit their comfort zone and did not address real needs because they often don’t see those needs in themselves.

So in the middle seems to be the best place.  There are some group activities that can scratch where everyone is itching well, then there is some specific needs that only a few or even just one faculty member can benefit from, but in the end make the whole team stronger by strengthening one member.  That leads to the notion of intent or objectives.  What might be the various objectives for such PD?

A.      Content – there is no question that all teachers can benefit by adding more knowledge to their lives, but this is highly individuated and is best done in either small pairings or single learner experiences; classes, if you will.

B.      Concepts – every good faculty will be seeking to better understand the great ideas of their shared community, and to do so in a manner that brings practical agreement demands that they be learned and discussed together.  This is where the group thing is powerful, if the leader is using proper facilitation and not simply viewing his role as delivering “content.”  He must lead them to the questions, not so much the answers.

C.      Habits of teaching: Pedagogy – teachers are thieves in a very good way.  We love to learn our art by seeing it modeled by others.  We often call these experiences “workshops” or “observations.”  This can be achieved by visiting other schools, having master teachers come and model good teaching, and encouraging peers to observe one another within the school.  Again, the temptation is to hire someone to come in and try to deliver pedagogy as though it were content.  This just does not work.  The experience must fit the objective.  The learner (teacher) must SEE the model, not have it outlined for them on the whiteboard.

D.      Cultural formation / Spiritual unity – The first three objectives are measurable to greater or lesser extent.  A report can be generated to show that the objective was met.  Now we are in the higher order of faculty development that is very “site specific” and driven way more internally than by bringing in an expert.  Faculty must be given time, must make time, must be the kind of people who demand that they talk about student behavior, their own behavior, the day to day joys and headaches of the school, and most importantly are in constant seasons of prayer and spiritual meditation about those things. This is perhaps the essence of a Christian school.

E.       Team building / encouragement / trust – I have made this last for two reasons.  A) it is the most important, so we have been building toward it, and B) it even more than D gets neglected due to its “subjective” nature.  As it is almost impossible to measure, it makes for a hard sell come budget time.  If it does not exist, your school is in peril.

I would simply summarize with the adage: “the Faculty are the School.”  It is a rule: if the faculty are not life-learners, and allowed to be such by the culture of the school, then the students will not be either.

What are we going to do with those hours?

Someone led me to this link for a recent Glen Beck sound bite.  Maybe its worth five your minutes, maybe not:

http://www.edspresso.com/index.php/2009/03/oh-now-thats-a-good-idea/