The Magic Ingredient

Hokusai

Last Friday I attended a Carol Jago talk about "challenging books."  She was, as usual, smart, inspiring, filling with wit and wisdom, filled with reading and ideas.  But there is something more than just smarts and ideas.  She is nice to be around.  You feel better after talking to her.   There's some magic ingredient that she has.

I have been reflecting on that underlying element, which I'll call "enthusiasm" for lack of more accurate word. She has this enthusiasm and positivity that lots of smart and well-informed people I know don't have.  The enthusiasm is NOT just unbridled "can do" attitude.  It's a "purpose-informed" enthusiasm.  

I know a lot of smart, well-read people.  But lots of them, there's the smarts are tainted by a negativity (it's so hard, it's too much, they're against us, they're stupid), or a lack of direction, or a lack of follow-through/engagement, or a self-centeredness (MY role is so hard, other people are mistaken, buy I have it figured out).  

In conversation with Carol, she shared that she was in the first class of Our Lady of Peace and that they were treated like they could/should do important things -- write the school song for one.  She said it was a special time -- 1968 -- and that many of her peers went on to do public spirited things -- public defendants for instance.  

There's part of this in her still... teachers CAN help change kids.  Teaching work is essential work.  

Maybe this quiet enthusiasm is based on a deeply held idea that what teachers do is important.... essential.  It's not merely a job.  (It may not necessarily be a calling... but it's important work.).   

(thinking now:  do we do more than just help kids get jobs?  Bill Walsh talks about "help kids achieve their ideal future... but maybe is more like "you can help change the world".   Curriculum work is important because it frees up your mind to focus on the HOW, rather than the what.   There has been a huge burden on teachers here to figure out both the WHAT we teacher and the HOW.  The WHAT (what skills on this paper? what grammar? do I teach vocabulary?  what words? what's on the final? poems, what short stories) is often what we have endless debates and some conflicts about.  The debate about what the exact grammar skills should be taught in each semester could go on indefinitely... eventually we just need to choose and get to work and be open to adjusting next year.  And often individual teachers don't know the WHAT of the previous or next year. )

Here are the key ideas of her presentation, which I wanted to keep track of...

• The underlying current -- the tone behind everything -- was not "this sucks," but 
• There were never any good old days in teaching.  It's always been hard.
• Still, there are extra challenges today.  
• One is distractedness of kids, There's lots of evidence that kids are being changed by their phones and social media.  (Often, she summarizes a book (with the image on the screen) with a couple sentences). 
• Another is the challenges to books from the left and the right.  Both are wrong.  (Left is about trigger warnings, The right is about topics/books.) There is a great critical center between the two.
• (we read an article about how reading novels really does create empathy with a pen, talk about it together).  You have just done this important thing.  You can use this in the classroom.
• (another "turn and talk" that was about how kids' reading habits are different)

It's hard work.  It's important work.  You can do it.