http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/ If you have questions about democratic education or situations you face in your work, educator Jonah Canner has answers. Go ahead. Ask him something. en jonah.canner@gmail.com Copyright 2010 2010-12-01T16:00:16+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/more_than_school_-_why_i_do_what_i_do_and_how_you_can_help/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/more_than_school_-_why_i_do_what_i_do_and_how_you_can_help/#When:15:00:16Z
My hunch is that most of them are not. Why not? Because while many school reforms are very effective and extremely important, almost by definition school reform efforts are stuck in a paradigm that defines education as learning that happens in school.

Don't get me wrong: I am not saying we should blow up the school system. I'm not even saying we should do away with schools. Schools are very important. And many of them have not been doing a good enough job in providing the kind of education that they are build for. But while making schools better is important, even essential, it is not the only thing we should be talking about and it is certainly not in school reform efforts that we are going to find the next big innovation in education.

The truth is, the world we live in is moving too fast for schools. By their very nature they cannot keep up with the pace of life that this century's children keep. If it was ever true that teachers were the holders of the world's information, that notion today is a joke. I once heard a college professor say that she refused to teach her students anything that they could learn from Google. Which begs the question: If we no longer need to teach information, what should we be teaching?

Yet while the world continues to change faster than you can spell "homework." One of the most popular approaches to solving the "achievement gap" is to say that the thing that children from poor communities and schools with a legacy of failure need is to spend more time in school.

So here is my innovative idea: Schools alone will never be enough to bring the kind of educational equity that we as a society need to begin to live up to the democracy that we aspire to be. And while we certainly need better schools, we also need more than school. We need educational programs, outside of school, that teach confidence, that provide our youth with the opportunity to take on leadership and challenge themselves in ways that they never would have thought possible.

It is my belief that the most overlooked difference between the education that I received as a child and the education that my students, from poor and working class families of color are receiving was that I got to go to summer camp. By the time I was twelve years old I knew how to start a fire, build a shelter and cook my own dinner. I believed that I knew how to survive. I believed that I could do anything. Of course, I couldn't. Of course, if I was really stuck in the wilderness with a single match I wouldn't have lasted through a moderately cold night. But I believed that I could do it. And that belief gave me the confidence and agency to make sure that when I did come up against something that I couldn't do I was going to figure it out.

My students had never been challenged in that way. They didn't walk around with the assumption that they were going to make it work out, whatever it was. They had that belief stolen from them. It was stolen by racism, it was stolen by sexism, and it was stolen by the socio-economic situation that they grew up in. School alone was not going to be enough to help them get it back.

In 2006 I left my job as a high school teacher in the Bronx to start Fertile Grounds Project, a nonprofit education organization that provided summer camp and outdoor educational experiences to New York City youth. I had never started a summer camp before. I had never quit my job before. I had never thought that I would have to do all of the things that I had to learn how to do to start a non-profit organization. I didn't even know that some of the things I needed to learn existed. But as hard as it was, and a lost as I felt, and as mad as I got at the world, I never imagined that it wouldn't happen. And that confidence, that belief that I had in the project I was trying to create comes from being that twelve-year-old boy in the woods, determined to get that fire started no matter what it takes. It is that determination, that belief in one's ideas that I wanted to give to my students.

And that is half of the story. That is the sexy part of the story, the part that someone might want to make a movie out of. The rest of the story is a lot harder. The rest of the story is about facing demons, about being scared out of your mind, about praying for someone to come and rescue you, about wanting to give up. For me the rest of the story is about letting go, about learning that once you put your ideas out into the world, they no longer belong to you. For me the rest of the story is about accepting that if you found yourself alone in the wilderness you wouldn't be able to survive because it is, in fact, the connections with others that drives you, that gives you the determination to keep going.

Fertile Grounds Project has been running Camp Kadia since 2006. This month Fertile Grounds Project is in the running for a Pepsi Refresh Grant that would raise funding to bring 33 new campers to Camp Kadia. Help us continue making this idea a reality. Help support this innovative approach to the education crisis that we are all talking about. Go to www.refresheverything.com and vote for Camp Kadia. Set it as your home page as an easy reminder to vote every day this month.

For more information about Camp Kadia and Fertile Grounds Project visit our website www.fertilegrounds.org
]]> 2010-12-01T15:00:16+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/hey_guys_need_your_help/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/hey_guys_need_your_help/#When:21:33:09Z
Anyway, my drawing instructor brought up an important dilemma about her son today. My school is in a small town, so she had to move to a larger (but still small) town in order to commute without hassle. She had a hard time finding a school with enough resources, and currently her son is in a K-12 school because it at least has two art teachers, and a high-school type of gym and okay facilities. Even still she finds that student creativity is stifled at the school and potentially for her young son. I believe he is in kindergarten. She is attending a conference about whether or not to remove her child. She expressed to our class that she wishes to homeschool him. I have the urge to send her information about unschooling, but I don't quite have a definition (which is okay, but definitions are important for people who don't love looking into this stuff as I do). I was thinking of linking her to http://joyfullyrejoycing.com/unschooling/howunschoolingworks.html; or http://unschool.info/. Then I would tell her about alternative education.

What I really want to know is, what can I say to her without sounding like a ...non-school thumper? That's the last thing that I want, but I am still excited to tell someone new about alternative education.

Thanks,
Zuleika]]> 2010-10-15T21:33:09+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/good_teachers_or_a_good_education/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/good_teachers_or_a_good_education/#When:15:12:43Z
Hi Jonah, I have a question about the teacher tenure debate. I am currently in college and when thinking (back) to my high school experience, two types of teachers stand out in my mind. The first were the teachers that worked really hard, they were often young, inspired and inspiring. I liked being in their classes and I felt like they really taught me things. Then there were the teachers who had become disillusioned with teaching decades ago, used the same lesson plans year after year and seemed to show up just so that they could collect their check. Isn't it "undemocratic” to protect these teachers?

Sebastian R.
Montreal Canada

Thank you for the questions, Sebastian. Teacher tenure is a complex debate with logical arguments on both sides. Teachers do not want to leave their fate in the hands of administrators and policy makers who do not necessarily have the firsthand knowledge of what goes on in the classroom and whose priorities can change with political whims. Administrators and policy makers believe that teachers should be held accountable for their teaching and want to be able to hire and fire teachers based on a teacher's ability to perform up to the standards that the policy makers and administrators set.

There are two major problems with this debate. First, there is very little respect and even less trust between the two sides of this debate. The second problem is that the "debate" itself misses the point.

This debate represents teachers as the sole representative of all that is wrong with our education system. The way this debate is set up, we are made to believe that the problem with our schools is that there are too many bad teachers. The fact is, the problem with our education system runs much deeper than the quality of teachers we have. When we put the entire onus to “fix” this system on the teachers, we are ignoring the responsibility that we all have to demand better structures and more innovative thinking around educating our future generations.

Too often when we think about our educational experiences we think about that one great English teacher we had in high school, or that middle school Science teacher who opened up worlds of exploration for us. These special teachers stand out in our minds and the lessons we learned from them stay with us all our lives. But we also remember them because our time with them stands apart from the majority of our school experience.

In fact, many of us disregard the majority of our schooling and refer only to these stand-out teachers when we think back on those years and what school did for us. We excuse the hours of boredom, wishing only that we had more classes with that one great teacher, wishing that more teachers could be like her.

When we grow up and hear about “bad” schools and students who are “failing,” it is easy for us to think that the solution to the education crisis is better teachers. We think, “If only those students could have had my 9th grade history teacher; he was so inspiring, I bet he could get them to graduate.”

So we say, “Let's pay teachers more so 'better' teachers will go work in 'bad' schools.” We say, “Let's grade teachers and hold them accountable for their students' test scores." We say, “Let's fire bad teachers who don't meet these standards.” And then we don't say anything else. Now I'm not against having high expectations for our teachers; we need to create better teacher training and ongoing professional development that raises the bar of the profession. And I am certainly not against paying teachers more.

The problem I have is that we stop the conversation at the role and responsibility of the individual teacher. We forget to talk about everything else that makes up our educational experiences. We forget to talk about school structure. We forget to talk about after school programs, sports teams and summer camps. We forget to talk about our families. And we forget to talk about all of the informal, unstructured relationships we had with peers and mentors. All of these things are part of our educational experiences, not just our one or two great classroom teachers. So if we want to create a better educational system we need to talk about all of those components of a valuable education.

Keep the questions coming,

Jonah

-I(tm)d rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers
]]> 2010-06-18T15:12:43+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/whats_up_with_june_anyway/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/whats_up_with_june_anyway/#When:14:35:38Z Question: According to the calendar there are still two and a half weeks of school left, but according to my students school ended the second the temperature in my classroom reached 90 degrees two weeks ago. I'm usually a laid back teacher who has a very good relationship with her students but at the end of the year they start bouncing off the wall and reverting to behaviors they haven't shown in months. Is there anything I can do about this or should I just suck it up and pray that nothing goes terribly wrong over the next two weeks?

- Anonymous Middle School Teacher


Endings are hard. They might be the hardest thing to do well. Don't believe me? Go watch a movie. How many times have you come out of the movie theater and said, "The first two thirds of that movie were great, but the ending sucked"? If you're anything like me it's more often than not. And there is a reason for that. Endings are hard. They are the last part of something that we will experience. They come with so many expectations. We want everything we do to be wrapped up in a nice little bow. We want one shot to summarize the entire experience and blow our minds, both at once. We want all of our movies to have an ending as great as The Usual Suspects does. But nine times out of ten that doesn't happen. Mostly, by the time we get to the end of something we are so exhausted that we just roll over and fade out.

The same is true with the school year. After nine long tedious months we get to June and have so many expectations, so many ideas of what we could do to end the year with a bang, but nine times out of ten we are so exhausted and the students are so antsy that we all just roll over and fade out. But the issue also runs deeper than that. It's not a regular "I've worked really hard and now I'm tired" kind of exhaustion. It is an emotionally overwhelming exhaustion. And the thing that we forget is that the students are feeling it, too. Summer means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The end of the school year means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. No matter what the specific issue is, endings are not easy and thye need to be paid a lot more attention than we may think.

On the last day of my first year as a teacher, I was sitting in a classroom with several other teachers while students came in to collect their report cards, eat a doughnut and say goodbye for the summer. This was supposed to be a light day. We had no expectation that the students would stay for the whole day, and we didn't even want them to. Come in, get your report card and go home. That was the schedule. The doughnuts were an added bonus that one of the teachers had thought up for his students. The day was going very smoothly. The biggest incident up to this point was one of my students running up and down the hallway hugging everyone because for the first time in years he did not have to go to summer school.

Then another one of my students, Natalie, walked in to get her report card. She had done very well, so I was expecting this to be a rather smooth interaction with one of our more volatile students. Instead she walked in and started yelling at me. She recounted every single "unfair" thing that had happened to her at the school all year. Issues that had been resolved months earlier came back up as if they had just happened. She was yelling, she was crying, and she was ruining what was supposed to be a pleasant experience. She had barely looked at her report card and didn't even touch her doughnut.

After yelling at me for a good ten minutes, she just walked out. I sat back down with the other teachers having no idea what had just happened. This student really liked me. I had stood by her during some very difficult times during the year. Why was she turning on me on the very last day of school? We weren't going to see each other for a whole two months. Why would she want to leave on such a sour note?

And then it hit me. Leaving on a sour note was exactly what she wanted. School, as crazy of a place as it could be, was a safe space for her. We were a constant, maybe the only one, in her otherwise tumultuous life, and as her adviser I was the clearest representation of this safety. As much as Natalie talked about hating school and wanting to transfer, she actually loved the community that we had created there. It was the one place in her life where should could be sure that no matter what she said or did, she would be supported. Sometimes that support included being called out for her appropriate behaviors, but even when we were not accepting of her actions, we were accepting of her. And for that, she really loved us and came to depend on us.

So when the last day of school came around, it was too much for her to handle. What was she going to do for the next two months? How was she going to show us how much she appreciated what we had done for her? She couldn't. She didn't yet have the tools to express any of that. All she could do was get mad. If she was mad at the school, if she was mad at me, then she could deal with not seeing us for two months. It's a lot easier to say goodbye to people if you are mad at them. It's a lot easier to be away from people if you are the one choosing to be away from them. By reminding herself of all of the times that she was mad at the school and mad at me, she was able to convince herself that she didn't want to see us. By getting into a fight with me on the last day of school, she was able to convince herself that she was glad to be away from school for the next two months.

Saying goodbye is never easy. It's even harder when it's not your choice. It's also something that nobody teaches us how to do. We all know that from time to time we will have to say goodbye to things and people that we love and depend on. For many young people today, particularly in marginalized communities, summer means hours upon hours of unstructured time, stuck in a small, hot apartment with nothing to do.

If you want to make the next two and a half weeks of school worthwhile, throw out the curriculum and spend some time teaching your students how to say goodbye. Teach them that even though you will not see them for the next two months, it doesn't mean that you will forget about them. Teach them that even if you never see them again, it doesn't mean that you didn't care about them; it doesn't mean that the experiences that they had with you were not real and valuable; it doesn't mean that they cannot take what they have gotten out of the last year with them for the rest of their lives. New research has shown that reflection is an essential component in learning. Spend the next two weeks giving your students opportunities to reflect and relax. They may be resistant. Taking time to be reflective is not an easy thing to do, especially when you are dealing with such an emotionally charged time as the end of the year, but we do our young people a disservice when we rush through things and do not challenge them to do the hard emotional work of reflection and saying a proper goodbye.

And on that note, I will say goodbye.

Until next time.

Keep the questions coming,

Jonah

- I'd rather have some of the questions than know all of the answers]]> Students, Teaching 2010-06-09T14:35:38+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/you_say_you_want_a_revolution/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/you_say_you_want_a_revolution/#When:13:10:46Z I am a teacher in New York City working in a very poor community with mostly youth of color. Every day I see the effects of centuries of racism and class oppression show up on my students' faces. On some days I have hope that we will be able to create a just future and I want their schools to be better. Some days are harder and I think the only way out is for their schools to be destroyed. What does IDEA have to offer me?

Anonymous Teacher - The Bronx, NY

Thank you for the question. First of all, I do not have an answer for you. Your question very much hits home for me, and the best I can do in this situation is to tell you how I have figured out to live with those conflicting thoughts and what role I see IDEA playing in my own life.

Eight years ago I decided to become a public school teacher in New York City, not because I wanted to be a teacher, and not because I wanted to work in a school. As a young person myself I was somewhat of an activist. Because of my own experiences in public school; the school system was a regular target of my activism. School was an oppressive institution. It was a mechanism of a society whose rules and systems were based in racism, sexism and oppression of the poor. I wanted nothing to do with it, and I railed against it at every opportunity I got.

Once I was away from school, these issues of justice very much became a driving force behind my decision to make my life's work connected to education. I began to see that tearing the system down in a violent revolution would only leave us with chaos and no mechanism for creating something better. After working as a summer camp counselor, I found that my talent was in working with young people and supporting them as they made their own discoveries about the world. I became fascinated with the inner workings of young people's minds and began to see that we all struggle with issues of justice.

I have always been curious. I have always asked questions. But as a camp counselor I began to realize that this curiosity, this inquisitiveness was not only my area of strength; it was my activism. By asking questions I could get young people to challenge the assumptions that were put into their heads. In your question you speak about "seeing the effects of centuries of racism… on [your] students' faces.” Those are the assumptions that I am talking about. When a girl thinks she has to be quiet, when a poor child thinks he cannot be smart, when anyone on the margins of society feels that they do not belong, when a person born into privilege feels guilty or bad about themselves… these are all assumptions that are driven into our heads from a very early age. Augusto Boal calls them “cops in the head.” The revolution I want to be a part of is the one that destroys all of the bad thoughts we have about ourselves that keep us from living fully.

So what does IDEA have to do with any of this?

What I value about democratic education is its emphasis on encouraging young people to follow their curiosity. Implicit in democratic education is the belief that people, if left to their own devices, are intelligent, capable, and good. The problem is, we are seldom left to our own devices. Democratic schools do a very good job of creating environments where young people can be free to follow their curiosities. But for young people growing up in our most marginalized communities, the messages of oppression come in strong and fast. IDEA understands that in an imperfect world such as this one, we need to be encouraging many different approaches to tackle the many different kinds of oppression that people face.

Young people want to learn. All people want to learn. All people want to be free of oppression. IDEA promotes that belief and supports those of us who are committed to it by providing us with resources, lesson plans, research, connections to others doing this work, support for local organizing and a space to share our stories and questions,

The days that you have hope… the days that you see the potential for creating that just society… those are the days that you're not listening to the cops in your head. What does IDEA have to offer you? The notion that as we keep working, as we who are doing this work continue to find each other, we will have more days when our heads are clear.

Keep the questions coming,


Jonah

I'd rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers.
]]> About IDEA , DemEd in Real Life, Social Justice 2010-05-10T13:10:46+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/education_or_indoctrination/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/education_or_indoctrination/#When:13:52:42Z
Hi Jonah, I saw that you were presenting a workshop at the Left Forum in New York this weekend entitled "Fertile Grounds Project: Spaces for Youth to be Youth/Education over Indoctrination." I will not be able to attend the session myself, but I was wondering what you meant the difference between "Education" and "Indoctrination" to be. Even if you are "educating" people towards democracy or social justice, isn't there still a certain level of indoctrination going on?

-Anne M., Toronto


Hi Anne,

Not only is this is a great question, it is in fact the assumption at the crux of the workshop I will be presenting at Left Forum this weekend. When I talk about the education that I do the term I often use is democratic education. Before going into the difference between education and indoctrination I will explain what education is to me.

When I talk about democratic education, I am talking about a few things. I am talking about structures that empower young people to take ownership over their educational experiences. I am talking about offering young people support, encouragement, and sometimes a little push to follow their innate curiosity and passions. I am talking about modeling a truly respectful discourse that will lead to sticky and unpredictable conversations. And above all I am talking about engaging in an experiment in which the processes of exploration, conversation, and learning are at the core of educational experience.

The difference between education and indoctrination is that education opens the mind, while indoctrination closes it. Education is a process-driven approach to engaging in the knowledge and ideas of the world. Education is playful, experimental, mysterious. Education opens doors of intellectual exploration and equips its students with the tools they will need to dissect, analyze, and interpret the information that they find.

Indoctrination, on the other hand, is a results-driven approach that aims to instill in people a set of habits and beliefs that align with an ideology or political agenda. Indoctrination narrows the lens through which we are able to see the world and insures that all of the information we receive is interpreted through the filter of the promoted ideology. The problem lies in the fact that the majority of spaces, institutions and philosophies that we call educational are, in fact, examples of indoctrination.

Educational institutions throughout human history have been used to promote social and political agendas. This is most obvious when we look at the history of totalitarian regimes who, upon gaining power, immediately revise educational policy and curricula to reflect the party platform. It can also be seen in the education debate today. Earlier this month the Texas school board decided to rewrite American History so that it included more of the people that they agreed with and eliminated the study of historic figures who promoted ideas and policy that they disliked.

In both of these cases the "education" system is being used to indoctrinate. A preconceived notion or belief is used to set education policy that ends up promoting a particular political agenda. But these are extreme examples and if I stopped here I could be rightfully accused of writing a posting that in itself is more indoctrination than education. As a presenter at the "Left Forum" I have, in my examples, compared "right wing" Texans to totalitarian dictators. Sounds like there's a bias there, doesn't it? Well there might be, but I also know my audience. Indoctrination is not a strategy with partisan leanings. We all use it.

The original question gets at this exact point. If I go into a classroom, or after-school program, Sunday school, or summer camp and start changing the curriculum to focus on reading Marx or even replace all history books with Howard Zinn's work and begin pushing a left leaning, "social justice" based agenda, isn't that just indoctrination of another kind? If I go into a classroom and say, "We are now going to function as a democracy; here are the rules," isn't that just indoctrination of another kind? If I go into my youth group meeting and say, "Everyone must now treat each other equally," is that indoctrination?

Short answer: yes. Any time the purpose of an educational activity is to make a point or teach a lesson, there is some indoctrination going on. When we use movies to show the horrors of slavery, we are indoctrinating people to believe that slavery is bad. And there are times that we should do that. Indoctrination brings order, and for society to function there needs to be a certain level of order. But the important thing is to call things what they are.

It can feel dangerous when we allow young people to follow their curiosity, to make decisions, to live outside of the beliefs and habits that we have all been indoctrinated with. Most of us have not developed the courage or confidence necessary to subject ourselves to the unpredictable minds of our not yet fully indoctrinated youth. Most of us are still afraid of the chaos that would ensue if we let our children truly play in and explore the vast knowledge of the world. But I would argue that it is our responsibility to try. Educational settings are the one place in society where we should be encouraged to explore without bias, without leading questions, without the assumptions made by our ancestors filtering the world we see.

I will end with a reference to two very old stories. In the story of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and with them the future of humanity, are punished when Eve picks fruit from the forbidden tree. In the story of Pandora's Box, Pandora, opens the box (or jar) that she was forced to carry, and in doing so releases evil into the world. These stories have a few striking similarities. In each story the main character is the first woman in the world, and in following her curiosity she introduces "evil" into the world. But there is something else going on in these stories. The tree in question in Eve's story is the Tree of Knowledge and humanity is banished from paradise because she became curious, explored and learned on her own. Pandora was also curious, and when she opened her box, along with evil and suffering, hope was introduced to the world.

The interpretations of these stories can tell us more than the stories themselves. The story of Eve is told as humanity's fall from paradise. Pandora's story is told as the beginning of human suffering. In each case we remember the negativity. We remember the fall from paradise and the beginning of suffering, but we forget the introduction of knowledge and hope. We remember the actions of these women as having negative consequences but we omit the boldness of their curiosity and the beauty that their actions brought to the world.

Is it any surprise, then, that we live in a world where women are continuously sent the message that they are inferior and told that they are stupid? Is it a surprise that we discourage and even punish curiosity?

In the story of Eve I see a strong, bold woman, exploring the world around her and saying, "I would rather know some of the questions than have a limited number of answers forced down my throat." I see the first woman saying "I choose education," and I see her "teacher" saying, "I am going to punish you because I am afraid that I can no longer control you."

Knowledge and hope are two of the most beautiful parts of the world. Our ability to experience them is what makes us human. We must begin to get comfortable with the messy conversations that come with truly empowering all people to pursue them.

Keep the questions coming,

Jonah

- I'd rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers.]]> Philosophy of Education 2010-03-19T13:52:42+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/resistance_hope_democracy/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/resistance_hope_democracy/#When:18:46:22Z I used to direct an after-school program, which was housed in a public school classroom, and I tried to implement a democratic meeting with my middle school students (a diverse group in terms of race and family income). As well-intentioned as I was, the students didn't respect me as a leader because I was offering them decision-making power. They seemed so used to an authoritarian school day that they didn't know what to do with an unexpected dose of freedom. It was also just a drop in the bucket compared to the way they spent the majority of their time. How would you have handled this situation?
- Redwood City, CA

I have a few thoughts regarding your situation but first I must say: Kudos for trying to bring democratic meetings to your after-school program. It is hard to do anything with middle schoolers, let alone something that could unleash the awesome power of their uncontrollable energy. The thoughts I will share have to do with resistance. The advice I have to give has to do with scaffolding and modeling democracy.

Democracy is a system that is at the heart of our human nature. If you observe toddlers on a playground, they interact in a very democratic way. They share their toys, they decide together what game they are going to play next, and when one of them gets upset or feels that he has been treated unfairly, he lets the others know. Then, most of the time, the system is disrupted by parents swooping in and "taking control" of the situation. But on the rare occasions that the adult acts as a mediator instead of an "authority," the young people are able to resolve the conflict and their hurt feelings.

Then we enter school and it all gets thrown out the window. For a healthy child growing up in a positive home, entering kindergarten could be the most disempowering experience of her life. We all have our stories of that traumatic first day of school; left alone in a room full of strangers while our mommy tells us that it will be okay and hands us over to this strange grown up teacher person with an overzealous smile.

How can it possibly be okay? Here I am in this strange place with this strange lady telling my to come sit on the carpet so I can meet the other children. What if I don't want to sit on the carpet? What if I don't want to meet the other children? What if I want to explore, to create, to be curious? What if I want to figure it out for myself?

Eventually we get used to it. We learn the culture of school. We learn that when you come to school you put your things in your cubby and you go sit on the carpet for the morning meeting so that the teacher can tell you what you will be doing that day. After a while, it seems natural enough.

What you are supposed to forget is that all of these school things that we do are learned behaviors. As human beings it is not natural for us to gravitate to a large institutional building, into a specific classroom (which aside from the number on the door looks like every other room in the building), onto a carpet or an assigned chair at an assigned desk, to wait for the instructions of a person called a teacher so that we can begin our day. A human being begins their day when they wake up. A school child's day begins when the teacher says, "Good morning, class."

There is a natural resistance on the part of children to the idea and the structure of school. As human beings, we do not naturally want to learn about history every day at 11:00 or Math at 2:00. As school children we are not supposed to have curiosities that go beyond the "subject" that we are supposed to be studying. We are not supposed to make connections between science and history or the language of math and the study of literature. If we change the "subject" we are labeled disruptive; if we continue to make connections, we are told that we have a short attention span; if we have curiosities that go beyond the material that we are studying we have trouble focusing; and if we are uncomfortable sitting in a chair all day long, we suddenly have Attention-Deficit-Disorder and need to be medicated.

So what happens to that resistance? Does it disappear? Do we lose it as we assimilate to the culture of school? Some of us do. The least successful students fall victim to that resistance. They can't set it aside and their resistant actions get them the label of "the bad kid." Many of them don't make it through high school. Some of them barely get by. A lot of them end up in prison.

The most successful students bury it. They decide early on that the best thing to do to is to get on board. They calculate that their lives will go better if they find a way of adapting to this new, unnatural structure. And throughout their schooling that decision serves them well. They are showered with praise, they graduate high school, go on to college, and build "successful" lives. The rest of us find ways of channeling our resistance. And it is this category of the rest of us that I will talk about.

Young people figure out quickly who will tolerate what kind of resistance. Substitute teachers have no agency, and many of them will tolerate anything short of an armed revolt as long as they can get through the day. On the other hand, strict and scary teachers require a more subtle form of resistance: a note passed to a crush, graffiti on an adjacent desk, an eye roll behind their back. When I was in high school, we subverted the intimidating authority of one teacher by having an ongoing tally throughout the year of the number of times he used the compound word "what-have-you" in his lectures. With a week left to go in the school year, he reached 500. The class immediately broke into applause and we handed him a card congratulating him on the feat.

Your middle schoolers are no different than my classmates and I were. School, as it exists today, is a game. And you broke the rules. The rules of the game clearly state that you (the adult) are supposed to impose authority. This rule goes all the way back to that first day of kindergarten. The teacher calls the students to the carpet for the meeting. The teacher starts the day by saying "good morning, class." The teacher gives the assignment. The teacher does the grading. The rules also state that they (the "kids") are supposed to do whatever they can get away with to disrupt you. They are resistance fighters, and you are an oppressor in a totalitarian regime.

So when you come in and say, "Ok, guys, now you get to make decisions," you are either really bad at the game or worse; breaking the rules. If you are bad at the game, then it's simple, they pounce. It's a students dream come true. An opportunity to take all of that pent up resistance and manifest it into an all-out war against this undermatched opponent.

But if you are breaking the rules, if you are acting intentionally, then you are dangerous to the system. And as much as they want to resist the system, they have grown dependent upon it and are unwilling to let one "class-traitor" upset the balance.

It is even more than that. They are afraid. If you are for real, then it is possible that you represent a respit, that you represnt hope. But hope is dangerous. Hope opens the door to disapointment. What if you don't come back? What if you fail? What if "they" find out what you are doing? What if you're not for real? And so they resist. They resist because they are scared. They resist because they want to see if you can take it. They resist because that's what they know how to do.

Offering Democracy isn't enough; you have to be able to back it up. That is where scaffolding and modeling come in. Start your democratic process slowly. Begin by offering choices. Build relationships. Remember that democracy, at its core, is about people coming together to figure out the best way to organize themselves. Remember that it is an organic process, and remember that you are in an artificial environment.

Change is scary, and you are not going to get a group of middle schoolers to be participatory democrats overnight. If they need you to be "in charge," then you need to be "in charge." Show them what it looks like to be in charge respectfully. Show them what it looks like to be confident. And by doing that, you get to challenge them to take control of their own lives, one step at a time.

Keep the questions coming,


Jonah



I'd rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers.

]]> DemEd in Real Life, Students, Teaching 2010-02-24T18:46:22+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/the_tyranny_of_report_cards/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/the_tyranny_of_report_cards/#When:23:14:54Z I want to teach in a classroom where children will learn important things without a lot of well-meaning intervention. I want a classroom in which students have choice, and can pursue their own projects that involve clay and blocks and paint and weaving and cooking and hammer and nailing. But I don't think I know how. I've been teaching for 10 years and I think all I know how to do is control children. I've been "in the system" long enough to know about "behavior management" and allotting equal time for Math time and Reading time, Writing time and Science time, etc.

How does one become a teacher who is comfortable enough with the chaos of learning to let students study bridges or snowy owls for 3 months at a time? And how does one do it without getting fired? Aren't all schools, even private progressive democratic schools subject to the tyranny of report cards?

- Peter, Elementary School Teacher, Minneapolis

Wow! What a way to start off the new semester. You have captured, in two short paragraphs, the dilemma of today's teacher. The system that you mentioned is not designed to give you the freedom to truly educate. I could spend the entirety of this post on that last sentence, but I would rather focus on what you as a teacher, working within this particular system, can do to bring some real tyranny-free education to the young people in your charge.

The first thing I will say is that you are not alone. Over the last ten year the one thing that has struck me more than any other is the number of people I have met who have, in so many words, expressed that same struggle. The field of education is full of well meaning and inspired people looking for a place to do some good in the world. It sounds cliche, maybe even naïve, but the idea of “giving back,” of “helping the next generation” is alive and well in the hearts and minds of so many of our nation's teachers. Unfortunately there is one thing, Peter, that sets you apart from so many of the teachers that I have come across. The majority of people who enter the field of teaching do not last longer than three years. Three years! And when you ask them why they leave, it is not because of the children, or the hours of grading and lesson planning, or even the lack of respect and low salaries in the field. They are leaving because the system does not allow them to do the work that brought them into teaching in the first place. The system does not allow them to be educators.

Now that I've spent two paragraphs telling you how much I agree with and recognize the struggle you face on a daily basis, I'd like to try to say something that could be useful. It seems clear to me that you know the kind of teacher that you want to be. You want to be in education. You want to guide the young people you work with in the direction of each of their own curiosities. You want them to be learners, explorers, inventors, and you want be their supporter, their guide, the narrator that leads them each through their individual educational journeys.

As the commercial says, “Just Do It.” If you're not yet comfortable with chaos, get comfortable with it. If you're used to controlling children, let them loose. If you want to get to a place where you can guide your students through their own processes of educational exploration, then you need to take yourself through that process. Become an expert in your own learning, in your own interests. Recognize the ways that you learn, understand that some of your students will learn that way, and some of them won't. Become an expert on your students. Study them, learn who they are as people, understand what drives them, find out what their interests are, get to know their parents, let the parents tell you what they see from their children. When we take the time to get to know the young people we work with, when we think about them as people, full people, we will learn how to reach them.

I will end with a story from my life. It is a story of two parent teacher conferences. When I was in school, the third grade curriculum spent a lot of time focusing on spelling. The fourth grade was dedicated to geography. When my parents showed up for my third grade conference, my teacher expressed to them how surprised she was when she found out that I was the co-chess champion of the class. "I didn't even know he played chess," she commented.

The next year, at the parent, teacher conference, my fourth grade teachers sat down with my parents, checked them out to see if they would get what she was about to say and said, “Jonah is a little eccentric, isn't he?" “Wow,” my parents said to each other later, “finally, a teacher who gets our kid.”

To this day I am a terrible speller, and I love traveling and geography. I think we can all do the math on that one.

Keep the questions coming.

Jonah

I'd rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers.
]]> 2010-01-30T23:14:54+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/remembering_joy/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/remembering_joy/#When:18:41:28Z
I'll begin with a story. I spent the last four days on a small hostel/ranch/community center/aspiring eco-destination called Rancho Esperanza in the isolated fishing village of Jiquilillo. The owner of the ranch, Nato (Nate), was born in Maine and has been involved with the village for eleven years, living there full time for the last eight.

Six years ago Nate began an after school program for the youth of Jiquilillo. They work with young people ages three to seventeen every day from noon to 4:00. It runs in practice as a democratic educational space. The young people show up when they want to and use the community center's resources to create art projects, learn English, teach visiting tourists Spanish, and play.

Last night before leaving the ranch I was talking with Nate and Stephanie (who is the only other full-time resident of the ranch and community center staff) about their program, the community and the young people that they work with. We spoke about the changes to the local economy. Due to new fishing methods (blowing up dynamite in the water to kill more fish at once), there are less fish in the area, competition for a reasonable market share is getting tighter, and the future of local fishing is looking less promising.

We spoke about the potential influx of a tourist industry that could take over the community; the community still has a chance to create a locally controlled tourist industry that they can benefit from. We spoke about isolation in the community, and the struggle the local community has organizing around these issues. We spoke about the future the children of the community have to look forward to; when asked about their future, most girls talk about wanting to be mothers (and many of them are before the age of 15), while boys talk about wanting to be fishermen (though fishing jobs are getting harder to come by).

To be honest, the conversation got me pretty hopeless. So I asked Nate, "Do you have goals for these kids that come to the community center? What is it that you hope to accomplish here?"

Now before I get to Nate's response I need to insert a bit of a disclaimer. I am from New York. I spent seven years as a teacher in the New York City public schools, and I continue to work with them today. I say this because for better or worse (and I happen to believe it is both) spending time in the New York City public schools can't help but bring out your inner pragmatist. I have to be clear here that I do not mean to juxtapose pragmatism with idealism. In fact, my ideals about what education should look like takes no back seat to my pragmatism. That being said ,I have become more interested in being able to show people that what I value about education works and is what should be valued. I have certainly learned how to talk about the practical gains that come from the education that I practice, and I have learned the language to present it in (leadership development, cultivating creativity, life skills, college or "real world" readiness).

Nate did not study educational philosophy. He has never heard of democratic education. He has no use for any of the ed world jargon that I so often refer to. He simply looked at me and, as though with my own voice, said, "I just think that it's really important for young people to have a place to play, to enjoy life, to have someone pay attention to them. And that's what I want to do here. I want to give them a place where they can experience joy."

It was a gentle shock to my system. Somehow being out of my everyday context, in the midst of a different kind of poverty, I fell into the exact trap that I spend much of my time fighting against. I became overwhelmed by what I saw as a lack of options for the young people in this community. And while it is certainly true that they have fewer options open in front of them, I forgot what I believe about people and education.

There are no answers. There is no one best way to live. Nobody has figured it all out. As the song goes, "We're just babies..." And as long as people are working together, caring about each other and finding joy... yo tengo esperanza.

The word "esperanza" means "hope."

And Nate's hostel/community center, El Rancho Esperanza, (El Rancho de Nato as the locals called) is certainly a place of hope.

-Jonah

P.S. As much as I love asking questions, I'd really like to start responding to yours. Please start sending them in jcanner@democraticeducation.org, and don't forget to tell your friends.

"I'd rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers..."]]> Global Education, DemEd in Real Life, Social Justice, Youth Leadership 2009-12-27T18:41:28+00:00 http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/lightening_the_load/ http://democraticeducation.org/index.php/blog/article/lightening_the_load/#When:14:03:33Z
Erika M., Chicago IL - High School Teacher and Adviser

I have a few initial thoughts and also some questions that would help me get a better sense of your group. My first thought is that it is a very stressful time of year. The middle of November is generally a difficult time for students. The excitement that comes with the beginning of the school year is over, the holiday season is right around the corner, and that brings with it its own stress that can derail even the most close-knit and functional groups. You mentioned college applications -- am I right to assume that these are high school seniors? If that is the case, then it is not only the stress of applying to college; it is the stress of years of being told how important college is all coming down to the wire. Not to mention that they are wrestling with the fact that the era of their lives defined by K-12 schooling is coming to an end and they are terrified of what comes next, especially because they don't yet know what that will be. I say all of this not because I think you don't know it, nor to overwhelm you, but because it is important for us as educators to step back and look at the world from our students' perspective.

School is stressful, holidays are stressful, college and college applications are stressful. As we get more stressed we lose our ability to think clearly, we (as you have noticed) pull away, not because we don't want help but because we feel like we can't be helped, like there is too much going on, like it is too much to explain. We feel that if we wait it out, the stress will go away.

From your email, It seems that you guys are on the right track. The best thing you can do for the group is to try to get them out of their heads. Whether you do it through physical activities, group bonding exercises or even board games, the important thing is to create a space that is a haven from all of the stress. I don't know your group, so I cannot say what activity will work best for them. But I can say that the goal should be to get them laughing. Laughter is the perfect remedy for stress. It is disarming. It is hopeful. It reminds us that things are not as bad as they feel. Most importantly laughter opens us up so that we can think. Once you get the group laughing and relaxed, you will then be able to address all of the things that are causing the stress.

As for how to get them laughing, the human knot is a great activity but if the group is not ready it can backfire and create more stress. I would start with something simpler. Have the group sit in a circle. In the middle of the circle there is a chocolate bar on a plate, a knife and fork, a hat, sunglasses, a bathrobe, two mittens and a belt (you can use any clothing you like, but the mittens are important because it is really funny to watch someone try to eat with a knife and fork while wearing mittens). Pass a die around the circle. Each participant rolls the die one time and then passes it to the person on their right. If someone rolls a "6" they go into the middle, put on the clothes and have to try to eat the chocolate bar with the knife and fork (no eating with your hands). All the while the die is being passed around. As soon as the next "6" is rolled, the person in the middle must stop no matter how much (if any) chocolate they have been able to get to. This is a great game because it is simple, funny, and you get to eat chocolate. But most importantly it takes students' minds away from all of the stress. You just want to make sure that when you end the game you have enough chocolate to go around, because the best way to get them right back into their heads is to have someone complain about fairness.

There are tons of other games like this that you could play. A great resource is Augusto Boal's "Games for Actors and Non-Actors." You just want the games to be interactive and get them engaged and laughing with each other. The only other thing is to make sure that you and the other facilitators don't believe the stress. The truth is that the students want to be there, they like you, and they like each other. As long as you remember that, keep it light, and don't take their stress personally (i.e. don't feel rejected when they are negative), you will see progress in the group.

Please write back to let me know how it goes or if you have any other questions.

I hope my thoughts were helpful.

Good Luck!

And keep the questions coming,

Jonah

- I'd rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers.

]]> DemEd in Real Life, Teaching 2009-11-25T14:03:33+00:00