education

Terri

Windows and Mirrors

One of my first years of teaching, I had a student make a comment that has really stuck with me.  My fourth grade students were in book clubs to talk about books they were reading.  James was resistant.  Why, he wanted to know, did we need to talk about the books when the most important thing was how he would think about the book in the future.  He said something to the effect of, “next year something will happen, and I will remember the book and how it helps me understand this thing.”  Out of the mouths of babes. 

I have been thinking about his comment a lot recently for two reasons.

The first reason is personal. For about two months this spring, I traveled in Asia.  Part of my regular travel plan is always to read about the places I am visiting. I read non-fiction books about the places I visit and fiction that is written by authors from those places. I read books for adults and children. These books provide me with a window into the worlds of others. I gain a more nuanced understanding of the experiences of people around the world and build empathy for their lived experiences.  In all the books I read during this journey, a repeated theme was the impact of history on the current lives of people today. As I wandered through markets and streets and rode subways and trains, I wondered how they experienced the tumultuous times through which they have lived. From the 90 year old woman selling sweets in her market stall in Ho Chi Minh City (The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen) to the people my age I saw on the streets and subways of Seoul who lived through the uprisings in Korea against the dictatorship in the early 1980s (Human Acts by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith) and the history of 20th century Korea through Mirinae Lee’s 8 Lives of a Century old Trickster.  These books opened me to thinking about the world in different ways. I keep going back to scenes from them as I go about my daily life.  Reading these books has made my life richer. As James suggested, the power of these reading experiences is that I keep thinking about them in my daily life.

The other reason is how reading and literacy are taught in schools. NYC schools are switching to a mandated literacy curriculum for K-5 students.  The teachers and schools I know in NYC make deliberate efforts to provide varied reading materials that allow students to build knowledge of the world and themselves.  This windows and mirrors approach to literacy teaching is aligned with current research on reading – it builds content knowledge, it allows readers to build empathy and understanding of others, and it helps them develop a self-identity as a learner and valued member of the community. The mandated curriculum will take away the teachers’ ability to help children find books that are meaningful to them, and it will limit the independent reading choices students have.  I worry about the children losing the chance to build meaningful reading lives – lives that are enriched by self-awareness and a strong sense of their own identities and respect for and knowledge of the wider world.

This past winter, I was delivering a donation of books to a school in a high poverty neighborhood. The books featured diverse characters by authors from diverse backgrounds. A group of fifth grade girls was helping me unbox the books and display them. The children’s eyes lit up. On the cover of one book was an illustration of a girl in a head scarf. One girl grabbed this book. I asked if she was Muslim and she nodded. I identified two other books that featured Muslim characters and handed them to her. Her response was a highlight of my year! She beamed, held the books close to her chest and said that she was so excited to read them. Kids (dare I say we all?) need to see their lives reflected in the books they read. They need to have choice and they need to have the time (and instructional support) to sit with these books and read them. Highly scripted curricula restricts the space teachers and children have for this critical work. The conversations I am having with professional colleagues is how to navigate the mandates with respect while also finding space to build mirrors and windows into the classrooms they serve.

Terri

Radical Inclusion

In my reading recently, I came across a reference to the concept of “radical inclusion.” I had an idea of what inclusion referenced but I was really curious about what makes it radical. I was rereading Street Data by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan (2021). Radical inclusion happens when we have a mindset where “we commit to identify and include the voices of those who may have never had a seat at the decision-making table but whose experiences and perspectives matter (p. 77).”

I was intrigued and went on a paper equivalent of clicking through an article to learn more about this idea of radical inclusivity. The first text I found was Radical Inclusion by Dr. David Moinina Sengeh. The Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education of Sierra Leone, Dr. Sengeh tells the story of how he used radical inclusion to more deeply understand an exclusionary policy and then to guide the larger community to a more inclusive educational system. He lists seven principles of radical inclusion: identify the exclusion, listen to understand and learn, define your role and purpose, build a coalition, develop and enact a plan of advocacy and action, adapt to the new normal, and then relaunch the cycle with a new issue.

Change is never easy. It often means that we have to reflect on our own values, think about how those values align with our current actions and opinions and experiences, and understand that the change is unlikely to impact just us — others will have ideas on the proposed change that might differ from ours. If we really believe in the importance of the proposed change, then it behooves us to engage in self-reflection and to seek out the thoughts of others who may agree with us and those who don’t agree with us. More importantly, in order to be radically inclusive, we have to solicit the opinions of those whose voices are often inaudible in the planning and discussion of policy and continue to attend to those voices throughout the change process.

There are lots of exclusionary policies in schools. Even though people might not want to think about it, schools are very political places. What books are selected as texts, what topics to include or not include, enrollment policies and zoning, assessment systems, and mandates from retention policies to school food are all decisions made by policy makers and elected officials. Educators know that schools tend to be impacted by the political election cycle. This results in lots of change — radically inclusive or not. Every time there is a new administration, educators need to prepare for a new set of initiatives. If the elected officials have a big agenda, it may mean that we encounter a lot of change initiatives in a short amount of time. It is my experience that the first 3 or 4 of Sengeh’s actions happen fairly regularly in the schools I know. Because of the number of initiatives, we often don’t have time to move to principle 5 where we implement a solid plan of action nor do we have time to “adapt to the new normal” before another election cycle brings new initiatives.

It takes imaginative leadership to purse the goal of radical inclusivity in our schools. It takes imagination to create a vision of more equitable schooling. It takes imagination to have empathy with others. It takes imagination to generate solution pathways to our goal of greater inclusivity and equity.

Sengeh writes, “Equity is a state, and inclusion is a process to get you toward that state in which everyone enjoys the same opportunity to be present, to participate, to be seen, and to be oneself. Radical inclusion is using all means to ensure constant progress toward that state of equity for all those excluded. Equity is the goal; inclusion is a crucial first step in getting there” (p. 180). As I read Sengeh’s book, I reflected on how change does not happen as a clean cycle — it is iterative. We need to observe and listen with an open mind, heart, and ear to how it is working and then couple those insights with imaginative, creative solutions as we work to achieve our goal of greater equity.

Terri

Snow!

New York City recently had a two year stretch where we had no measurable snow. This is unusual. Thankfully, recent snowfalls have given us all a chance to get outside and play. There wasn’t much snow, but children (and their grown ups) don’t need much to have fun. When I was running in the park, I saw villages of snow people, broken sleds, snowball fights, and sledding. Some sledding was happening on snowy hills (the NYC Parks Department puts hay bales by trees to protect trees and sledders from collision). Some sledding was happening on muddy hills that used to be snowy. There was a lot of laughter and joy. I loved it!

Awesome snow person!
Sledding in Central Park
Snow person village

A snowy day is a reminder of the importance of play.

When our school opened in the 2009-2010 school year, we were in the throes of the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top policy initiatives. We had 50 kindergarteners that first year and a commitment to developmentally appropriate practice. For the first staff book club, we read Vivian Paley’s book, A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play (2005). As a school leader, I quickly realized that it would be hard work to hold on to the idea of play in kindergarten in this particular era. My metaphor of choice was that we were on a sailboat headed towards the island of developmentally appropriate practice but we kept getting blown off course towards the island of “academic rigor” in kindergarten. It took continuous effort to keep our boat on course!

Every year, when I spoke to prospective parents about our school and our program, I emphasized the importance of play. I frequently referenced Dr. Stuart Brown’s book, Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul (2010). I felt like I needed to convince the parents that play in school is a good thing. Heck, if the Google engineers get a Lego room to play in and the Jet Propulsion Lab recognizes the importance of rich play lives and histories for their teams, why don’t we want our kids to engage with it? Play builds social skills, problem solving, and out of the box thinking. It lets us tap into our strengths and gives us joy supporting our mental health. Play invigorates our lives and helps us be better humans.

I chanced upon a book last spring, Cultivating Imagination in Leadership, by Gillian Judson and Meaghan Dougherty (2023). They begin the introduction by clarifying that engaging in imagination is not solely the work of childhood fantasy play. We have to be able to “imagine a future that is different – just and equitable – before we create it.” And they “invite readers to think about imagination as like fertile soil out of which leadership practices grow” as a tool we use to create and articulate our vision for the work and with which we navigate the needs of our communities and the structures and road blocks we encounter as we strive to provide programs and create a culture that will improve the lives of our families and communities. Play, as children and as adults, feeds our ability to imagine.

Terri

Nurturing a “quiet eye”

This year, I have transitioned from my (more than) full time position as a school leader of a public preK to 8 school. That hasn’t meant that I have given up my connections to schools. I still believe that education — particularly public education — is the single most important tool we have to achieve a more just, kind and equitable world. I volunteer weekly at the school where I used to work. I lead a sewing lunch club on Mondays and Fridays where I work with second to eighth graders in the FabLab. I also am a good listener to help out my former colleagues when they face challenges. 

That said, I am grateful to have time and the mental space necessary to nurture my attention. Being a school leader is intense work. Being a school leader during a pandemic and the aftermath, is extra intense. By the time this past September rolled around, my brain was tired. Four months later, I am recuperated and still interested in my life’s work of learning. 

Recently, I have been reading Maryanne Wolf’s book Reader, Come Home. There is a lot to unpack in this book. The first lesson I am taking away is the importance of attention in reading deeply. Maryanne Wolf uses the poetic phrase “a quiet eye” to describe the antidote to the constant movement of our eyes and attention as we navigate a highly distracting world (p 69-70). 

These past few years, my reading has been fairly shallow given all the demands on my time and emotions. Now that I am rested, Dr. Wolf has “prescribed” that I work on reading more thoughtfully and deeply — that I come home to the place of getting lost in a book’s story and ideas and the connections I make and insights I gain from reading the ideas of others. That is hard work. I am doing it on paper with a pen or pencil in hand and a pack of sticky notes at my side. 

The posts from 2023 and earlier on this blog are from my time as a school leader. From this point on, I am going to be using this space to ponder the books I am reading. Hopefully, the reading and writing I do will help me gain important insights into challenges faced by schools and learners and deeper empathy for the experiences of others.