Given the events 8 days ago we rightly have a concern for the issue of safety in schools, and certainly I have written my share of posts on the issue of guns and schools recently. Safety is about far more than guns, however. And for this week's Saturday meditation on teaching I would like to reflect about the broader issue
I tell my students when I first meet them that I will do all I can to ensure that they are safe in three ways
- physically safe
- emotionally safe
- intellectually safe
I intend to challenge them, and to grow and develop they will need to get outside their comfort zones, which they will only be able to do if they feel they are safe, including in making mistakes. Our entire approach to education needs to recognize this if we want the most from our students, otherwise we are wasting the time we have with them, and we are wasting them as the most precious of our resources.
We have in recent years had a renewed focus on stopping bullying. Since Columbine we have no excuse to be ignorant of the possible tragioc consequences of unabated bullying. That is not saying that the massacre in Littleton Colorado was justified because the shooters were bullied, but it is to acknowledge that had the bullying been addressed that incident - which could have been far worse had the bombs the shooters planted gone off - could have been prevented.
But as important as stopping bullying is, it is the lack of intellectual safety for our students that is my greatest concern.
Please note, I said my greatest concern, because a key function of school is inellecual development.
Please note the order in which I list my concerns for safety - I am in a sense following Maslow's hierarchy of needs as expressed in a school setting.
When I say I want my students to be physically safe, that includes both nutrition and medical/dental care. That includes that they now they have a safe place to return to at the end of the school day, that they will have clean clothes to wear.
Our school offers a free breakfast to all of our students, even though "only" abou 90% are on free or reduced lunch. Although we hvae a problem with pests and rodents in the building, we are changing our approach to allow students to eat in their first period - to many are unable to get to school in time to eat before 1st period starts for reasons we cannot control. We are glad to have them present, and cannot expect them to concentrate on learning if they are still hungry. We have to meet our students where they are, and that includes the physical needs with which they arrive.
we also have to meet their emotional needs. That may mean a hug. Earlier this week one of my more difficult young men came into my room during lunch. He was clearly in need of something. Finally I put my arm out toward him and as he came toward me, put it around him. He grabbed me around my legs and hugged. He just needed to be reassured that I did not reject him, and words were insufficient.
But physical and emotional safety, while necessary, are insufficient.
I became a teacher not because I wanted to peel back skulls and pour in information.
I became a teacher because learning is exciting, and I want others to experience it.
I want my students to be empowered to own their own learning.
I do not want them embarrassed with their struggles or supposed deficits.
I want to honor them for their achievements, and encourage them to keep trying, even to go beyond where I can help them.
Intellectual safety requires an environment where students can take risks and be wrong, and learn from their mistakes.
An approach to education where we measure everything by convergent thinking - getting the one 'right" answer from a preselected group of four or five choices - it not teaching how to learn, or even how to problem-solve. Instead, we should be teaching our students how to form their own questions.
I think the most destructive thing in American education is the insistence of imposing "standards" via the blunt instrument of high-stakes testing.
Real education is far more like mentorship, apprenticeship. Yes, there are things we think students should know, but we should start with where they are, and not assume there is something wrong if they are not at some artificially determined level of performance in a domain at a certain age or grade level.
I am not going to go down the rabbit-hole of international comparisons. They are meaningless.
My task as a teacher is the students before me, where they are, and helping them move on. A student who will not read aloud because s/he cannot pronounce words but whose writing shows insight - should I be marking her down for her refusal to read aloud or find a way that she can continue to develop and perhaps eventually overcome her fear?
If I have a student who cannot spell even with the words before him, should I be focusing on that when he is trying to find ways to express the thoughts in his mind when such a focus serves as a barrier to his opening up and engaging with the world?
I can remember teachers who made reading and writing a form of punishment. How counterproductive to real learning. Reading and writing should be a reward, a delight.
Most people who read me would say I am a reasonably skillful writer, even as I still on occasions make a mess of the thoughts I am trying to express. Trust me, when I first started her around 9 years ago, I was not a particularly effective writer. Meteor Blades saw something in my jumbled expressions and encouraged me to keep at it. I became a decent writer by writing, by working at it, by finding my own voice. That empowered me.
That is what we as teachers should be doing for our students, empowering them.
Yes, they will need to be able to support themselves. That doe not necessarily mean we should be preparing them for what the corporate world thinks it wants. If our students are truly empowered they will be able to set up their own businesses, or become creative producers and performers.
Safety in schools is about so much more than preventing gun violence.
Safety in schools should be first and foremost about our students having the chance to explore who they really are, to try out the various possibilities of who they can become.
For that intellectual safety is critical.
For that, a safe space in which to make mistakes and then learn lessons from those mistakes is critical.
For that, an educational approach that values them for who they are rather than imposing upon them a hierarchy of values crated by people who have never met them is critical.
For that, our approach to education must be of educating the whole child, even if much of what we are doing is not easily ascertained in mass-produced and standardized tests.
Today is the first of 16 days of winter break. I have perhaps one day of paper grading/correcting to do, and at least 3-4 days of planning for lessons when we return (I need to have detailed lessons for at least two weeks, even as I know that I will be changing each of the planned lessons based on what happens in my classroom and with my students both within and outside of school).
I need time as a teacher, most of all to know my students, so I can help create a space, an environment, in which they can feel safe in being wrong so that they will be willing to take intellectual risks.
Many of my students have problems with controlling their emotions, words, and actions. They are beginning to learn that if I look at them a certain way they need to stop and think about what they just did or said. They are beginning to learn to self correct on those behaviors. They are beginning to prompt one another. And every now and then they sometimes self-correct even without an external prompt from me or a classmate.
They are learning - from their mistakes.
Just as I, their teacher, am learning from the mistakes I have made in dealing with them.
I have to model that for them.
I have to assure them that it is okay to sometimes get things wrong.
I have to support them as they learn how to learn, most of all, how to learn from their mistakes.
For that they need an environment that is safe.
it must be physically safe.
It must be emotionally safe.
Only then can it be intellectually safe.
Only then will real and deep learning be going on.
Peace.