When a Butterfly Flaps its Wings . . . In a School

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Gino Bondi

Teaching is a lot like faith: you really don’t know how it’s all going to end. Just as one engages in prayer hoping to never affirm Peggy Lee’s lament in “Is That All There Is,” educators hope that in some way they can positively impact the lives of the students who are ever so briefly in their care. The reality, however, is that just as none of us will ever encounter a burning bush let alone scale the Mountain of Horeb, so too will the majority of educators never have former students tell them about the difference they made in their lives. This is our reality and one more reason as to why I am fond of saying that education is not a profession but a vocation. 

Most students, as adults, do at some point speak of their teachers. I can tell you that
when I get together with my friends from high school, we’ll talk about how Mr. Cooke had the best Pinteresque pauses when he was on the P.A.; we’ll laugh at how Mr. Charlton working himself up in an Oxfordian rage would not, in stereotypical Englishman style, suffer ignorance and smile but rather declare us all, the whole lot, ignorami; we would laugh at how I went through half of grade 8 in Mr. Oswald’s class thinking that Renaissance Man was one guy; and who could forget Mr. Modjeski saying, “Ok, two plus one is three . . . and for you Italians in the class, two plus one is three.” Yah, we laugh and our teachers are part of our good time. They made a difference because we still talk about them fondly. They shaped our adolescence and they were a part of our extended family. Their thanks comes in the form of smiles and “do you remember” stories shared with friends during post Friday night hoops / hot wings and beverage evenings. 

But what if each of us could share with a teacher an impact story. What if we could tell Mr. or Ms. School Teacher how they made of us feel like we mattered? Well, let me share one that I heard this weekend. I was shopping at Costco (don’t ask me why) and from behind me in the cereal aisle I heard an inquisitive, “Mr. Bondi?” I turned and recognized the face but couldn’t put a name to it (this is when I usually quietly recite my social insurance number to prove that I am not losing my memory). 

The woman is Anna, a retired custodian from the first school I worked in. She gives me a Portuguese kiss on both cheeks that serves to immediately envelop me in her old world charm. She asks me if I’m still a school counsellor and I respond, “Pretty much except now they call it Principal.” 

After a few minutes, she pulls out a piece of paper from her purse: it’s neatly folded but the creases are well worn and the corners of the paper are curled. She shows me the paper and asks, “Do you remember this?”

I looked at it and it all comes back. As a counsellor at Gladstone Secondary, I would, in May, ask all of my students to write thank you notes to adults in the building who had made a difference for them over the year. Upon completion, they would place the notes in envelopes and I would deliver them to the respective teacher’s letterboxes. Anna’s folded paper was one of these letters. It went something like this:

Hi Ms. _ _ _ _ _. You probably don’t remember me but a couple of months ago I was in the washroom combing my hair and crying. I was having a really bad day. I didn’t know what to do. You came in to clean the floors and you saw me. I always like when you come in to the washroom because you’re always happy. You saw me and didn’t say anything. You put your arms around me and gave me a hug and then took my brush and started combing my hair. You said that someone as beautiful as me had no reason to cry. I just wanted to say thank you. You made me feel really special.

I looked up at Anna with misty eyes and although long retired, she still knew what to do – she threw her arms around me in front of the Cheerios! She told me that for the past eight years she has kept that letter in her purse and that she values it more than her union pension. To know that she made a difference, that she was part of a community, that she was an important thread in the fabric of a young girl’s life. Beautiful.

And the letter writer? I remember Julie well: an edgy girl, extremely bright but not wanting anyone to know it. She challenged authority because she knew right from wrong. She received a moment of unconditional love and in acknowledging it, by saying thank you, she forever enriched Anna’s life.

As teachers we realize that few students ever do come back and tell us about how we impacted them; however, when they do, it can be, as Anna revealed, a truly transformative experience My hope is that those who are reading this will take the time to reach out and thank that significant educator. My hope is that each of us receives and gives an “Anna moment”. My hope is that we start sharing these stories and move our present narrative away from “education is going to Hell in a basket” to one that focuses on the redemptive powers inherent in our profession.

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Living in the Ever-Present: The Man Who Quit Money (#10 in 52)

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Gino Bondi

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately; to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

                                                         Henry David Thoreau

This past week, as part of the 52 in 52 project, I read Mark Sundeen’s, The Man Who Quit
Money. If there is any man alive whose life captures the essence of Thoreau’s words, it is Daniel Suelo.  In placing his last $30 in a phone booth in the year 2000 and living penniless, off of the grid, Suelo has indeed gone in to the woods, lived deliberately and to this day continues to learn what it is that life on this Earth has to teach him.

Daniel Suelo was raised a Christian Fundamentalist. An important fact in that his quest to live moneyless is inexorably linked with his passion, at times mystical, to get behind the purpose of life.  According to Damian Nash, Suelo’s best friend, The Man Who Quit Money “captures the highlights of each major stage in Daniel’s spiritual journey, showing his growth from an enthusiastic fundamentalist to a serious Old Testament scholar to a mystical cultural anthropologist to a gifted student of world religion to a disillusioned social worker to a desert naturalist to a beloved hobo to a profound visionary in our troubled economic times.”

Having given up money and living in a cave in Moab, Utah, Daniel is far from a hermit. He has his own blog and website, Moneyless World – Free World – Priceless World and Living Without Money, that he maintains out of a public library. He volunteers at a community garden and a domestic violence shelter, has many friends, a family that loves him and displays a knack at engaging people from all walks of life.  The details of how he survives serve to furnish a plot for the biography. What drives this book however are Daniel’s economic, philosophical and religious ruminations. In speaking of his unique life choice at the outset of the book, the explanation of his “path” seems to weave together all three of these themes (a common refrain throughout the book):

If we’re following our path, then worrying about what could or should happen is a worse illness than what could or should happen. And it’s more likely we’re going to be out of balance if we worry. The idea is that the future will take care of itself if we remain in the present. I really don’t know what I’ll do and I don’t think about it that much. Some might call that irresponsible. But that’s part of the path I’m on.

It is the ever-present and being in it that drives Daniel Suelo. He explains:

“Before, my hardships were long-term, complex anxieties,” he says: “What am I going to do with my life, how am I going to pay rent or pay insurance, what’s retirement going to be like, what am I going to do for a career, what are people going to think if I do this or that? To me that stuff is actually unbearable. And I think most people are dealing with it. Now my hardships are simple and immediate: food, shelter, and clothing. They’re manageable because they’re in the present.”

In making his life manageable by giving up money, Daniel is able to peel away the artifices of consumerism and in doing so live within the “eternal present,” the place where he deems true enlightenment can be achieved:

“The only way for him to live ethically in this corrupt world, he felt – the only way to access that eternal present that he’d found in the monastery – was to abandon money. Suelo wanted neither to own nor to be owed. In the words of Christianity, he wanted the Lord to forgive him his debts, and he forgave his debtors. In the words of the Bhagavad Gita, he wanted to release himself from the fruits of this labor. To give freely without expectation of receiving. Only then could he break free of the Western concept of linear time. Credit and debt kept us fixated on the past and the future. In the words of the Buddha, Suelo wanted to cut the tangle of attachments, to break the circle of reincarnation and dwell in the eternal present.”

The biography is well written and Mark Sundeen in his non-intrusive analysis raises broader questions about our own relationship to work, compensation and happiness.  I especially like the fact that when the book is about to take off into the nether world of New Age mysticism, the author himself keeps us grounded with his light touch and humorous anecdotes:

After our Qigong Session as we sat outside the cave and watched the sun hover over the opposite cliffs, I pulled lunch from my pack. I had brought cheese and crackers and chocolate and an avocado. I watched Suelo closely. With all the talk about Jesus and ancient Hindus, I expected him to grind rice-grass seeds into flour with a mortar and pestle and then bake unleavened bread.

            He revealed a clear plastic jar with an aquamarine lid that I recognized as the vessel for Skippy peanut butter. Instead of brown goop it was filed with brightly colored gemstones, red and yellow and orange and green. Crystals? He unscrewed the lid and extended the jar.

            “Gummi bear?”

The narrative around how Daniel Suelo lives without money is indeed fascinating; however, as mentioned, it is the philosophy, the why behind what he does, that proves to be so enlightening. I appreciate that through Suelo I am introduced to the Feminine Theory behind the Holy Spirit; that I am now reading Pierre Tilhard de Chardin’s, The Phenomenon of Man; that I’m beginning to see that living in a minimalist fashion does indeed help us appreciate the immediacy of our lives.

Living in the present. It means that your awareness is completely centered on the here and now. You are not worrying about the future or thinking about the past. You are doing what you have to do now and doing it well which in turn guarantees a good future. Call it providence, call it the back packer’s guide to survival, call it what you will; however, Suelo’s story shows us that we can live in the present and his life echoes the 10 tips that Joshua Becker puts forward as the requisites for this type of existence: 

  1. Remove unneeded possessions.
  2. Smile
  3. Fully appreciate the moments of today. 
  4. Forgive past hurts. 
  5. Love your job. 
  6. Dream about the future, but work hard today. 
  7. Don’t dwell on past accomplishments. 
  8. Stop worrying. 
  9. Think beyond old solutions to problems. 
  10. Conquer addictions. 

How much was I moved by this book? I now have a folder in my Google Reader entitled Living Ever-Presently.

The Man Who Quit Money: to date, it’s my book of the year.

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Rethinking Education for the Collective Good (#9 in 52)

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Gino Bondi

The more things change . . . This week, as part of my 52 in 52 project, I picked up Dr.
Philip Gang’s, Rethinking Education, and was immediately transfixed. The year of publication is 1989 and yet the first line of the Introduction rings a familiar tune:  Transitions. It seems that many of us are contemplating or experiencing transitions in our lives as we approach the last decade of the 20th century. Gang poses the question that as educators we continue to wrestle with today:

What about education? Can we continue to prepare the rising generation according to old principles and old guidelines? What form or structure must education take? What is the nature of adolescence and what special role is there for secondary education?

Gang explores the very issue that has recently arisen with the publication of the BC Education Plan: how can we design experiential learning strategies that enable students to interface academic learning with practical application? He puts forward the premise that it is the doing (one could argue, the personalizing) that actualizes the experience and demonstrates the relationship between body and mind. It is an actualization that has embedded within it an emphasis on the reality of living in a state of flux. Gang explains:

The teacher who explains, “This is what we know about the universe today, but tomorrow a new discovery may come which will transform our viewpoint,” is helping to prepare students for change and adaptability.

In order to address this emerging paradigm (interesting because 24 years later we’re still doing it), Gang introduces a new conceptual framework based on a holistic, experiential, democratic and humanistic philosophy.  With the emergence of this new paradigm there is an emphasis on a “systems view” of life. The systems view looks at the world in terms of relationships and integration. He draws upon physics to reinforce his point:

Quantum and relativity theory emphasize relationships rather than isolated entities, and perceive these relationships as being inherently dynamic.

Rather than review Gang’s exploration of all four philosophical threads, I will write about his belief around democracy in education (and then you can decide if you want to read the book).  In a statement that lays bare the why behind public education, Gang writes that “education must enable the rising generation to embody the democratic ideal.” Therefore, he proposes the following goals for democratic education (as you read them, ask yourself if this serves as the foundation for what you do as an educator – it should):

  • To enable students to experience freedom of choice in an atmosphere that emphasizes personal responsibility.

Education is not a series of adult impositions on the child but a conquest of freedom secured by the learner.  To be free individuals need to develop and exercise their freedom and recognize their responsibilities. The school environment should therefore encourage personal choice in an atmosphere that holds the children accountable for their activities.

  • To encourage self-respect and respect for others, underscoring the meaning of “all people are created equal.”

Self-respect is an outgrowth of family and school experiences that dignify the opinions and attitudes of the individual. It emanates from a caring-loving environment wherein adults recognize the worth of the child. One does not educate for self-respect, but enables self-respect to develop. Students will have difficulty valuing the contributions of others unless they feel their own worth, so the family and school must provide the first steps towards developing respect for others, by valuing the worth of the individual.

  • To provide opportunities whereby children develop self-direction and independent thinking.

Education for democratic citizenship means teaching young people about the ways of society and enabling them to participate. This evolves when the educational process stimulates self-direction and independent thinking. Young people are to be encouraged to make choices and to reap both the positive and negative consequences of those choices. It is in this atmosphere that mistakes become opportunities for further learning.

Independent thinking is the consequence of self-directed behavior. Schools that are socially and academically alive permit students to engage in dynamic interaction at all levels of the school community; that is, student to student, student to faculty, and student to administration. Through active participation, young people test out newly acquired capacities and develop the skills necessary for functioning in a democratic society.

  • To help students understand that a variety of solutions maybe valid in any particular circumstance.

Students should emerge from formal schooling with an open mind – one that can appreciate a range of solutions for a set of given circumstances. Individuals so educated, are not stuck with linear logic; they are not just focused on their own idea, their own solution, but can appreciate other points of view. This leads toward collaboration and cooperation with other human beings which is the foundation of a democratic society.

With all of the talk about new directions and the political furor that seems to impact us
daily here in B.C., it was refreshing to pick up this book and reacquaint myself with the things that really matter in education and in life.  We often talk about personalizing
education and the individual experience but we must always remember that the personal only develops gravitas within a group context.  Perhaps one of the best quotes in the book, one that brings home this truth, is attributed to the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead:

There is a proverb about the difficulty of seeing the wood because of the trees . . . The problem of education is to make the pupil see the wood by means of the trees.

In the end, if we change the word problem to goal, we have our life long mission statement as educators.

Dr. Philip S. Gang’s, Rethinking Education: a great read that you don’t even have to buy – it’s online.

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Time Off With An Easy Read: An Irish Country Doctor (#8 in 52)

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Gino Bondi

Four-day weekends like the recent Easter Holiday are a great opportunity to step away from daily work routines, reconnect with family and recharge for the final two months of school.  In terms of reading and continuing with the 52 in 52 project, I look for something light – something that after I’ve had to put down to deal with child to child name calling, lovingly supportive requests from my wife to take out the trash and “Oh, so now you call me” phone conversations with my mother I can pick up, once again seamlessly immerse myself and read effortlessly.  Really, what I’m looking for is a nice “hallmark special” type read: humour, quirky characters without much baggage, cultural charm and a Hollywood ending that wraps everything up in a feel good, ‘gee it’s great to be alive’, kind of way.

Well, I found that book: Patrick Taylor’s, An Irish Country Doctor. The novel is based on the author’s journals when he was a practicing doctor in Northern Ireland. The time is the mid-1960’s and Barry Laverty, a recent graduate of medical school, is on his way to an interview as an assistant to an established general practitioner in the small village of Ballybucklebo. However, he quickly realizes that Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly is not your typical small town doctor. As Barry approaches the Fingal’s residence, the door swings open:

                  The large man swung the smaller one to and fro in every increasing excursions, then released his grip. Barry gaped as the little victim’s upward flight and keening were both cut short by a rapid descent into the nearest rosebush.

                  “Buck eejit,” the giant roared and hurled a shoe and a sock after the ejectee.

                  Barry flinched. He held his black bag in front of himself.

                  “The next time, Seamus Galvin, you dirty little bugger . . . The next tie you come here after hours on my half day and want me to look at your sore ankle, wash your bloody feet! Do you hear me, Seamus Galvin?”

From this point on, Fingal gives Barry an education in patient care that he never learned from his textbooks or residency. “…stick with me, son.” O’Reilly says. “You’ll learn a thing or two the books don’t teach you” 

In a matter of a couple of weeks, Barry gradually receives the trust of the people of Ballybucklebo. He comes to appreciate and respect Fingal, not just as the learned village doctor, but as a well-read man who throws about literary allusions yet still genuinely connects with, cares for and appreciates his fellow villagers.  Along the way, Barry engages with the quirky citizens and enters into a romantic relationship with the independent Patricia, an engineering student who has a limp due to a bout with polio. Of all the characters, however, it is Fingal’s vast black Labrador, frequently getting drunk on Smithwick’s Bitter, who serves as the novel’s scene-stealer:

“I call him Arthur Guinness because he’s Irish, black, and has a great head on him . . . just like the stout.”

“Yarf,” said Arthur, as he wound his front paws around Barry’s leg and started to hump like a demented pile driver. Keep that up, dog, Barry thought, as he tried and failed to hold the besotted beast at bay. Keep that up, and your next litter will be Labrador-corduroy crossbreed.

The plot, overall, is very simplistic; however, the local charm and the details of life in Northern Ireland in the 60’s make this a pleasant read. In the end, the novel recounts only a few weeks’ worth of experiences, weaving together the stories of several families and individuals and neatly bringing closure to almost all of them. It’s a little too good to be true, but it’s “holiday” fiction, and a happy ending all around is pleasing. 

An Irish Country Doctor, a recommended novel if you’re looking for something light and easy to read on the beach or during a long weekend (or in preparation for dinner at mom’s place!).

 

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Supporting The Three New Pillars of 21st Century Learning

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Gino Bondi

In the April copy of District Administration, I came across a great article by Rob Mancabelli: The Three New Pillars of 21st Century Learning. He writes of the three pillars of modern-day schooling (the textbook, the lecturer and the classroom) and explains their historical rationale:

The textbook was invented because information was scarce, the lecturer because teachers were few and the classroom because learning was local. 

However, times have changed:

There’s just one catch – these problems don’t exist anymore. In the 21st Century, the Internet has ushered in an online learning environment where information is abundant, teachers are plentiful and learning is global. If you’re connected, you can select your own content, choose your own teachers and decide the time and place for your learning. It’s a personalized, mobile, student-driven environment that changes the game for educators, but it can’t penetrate the walls of our schools until we knock down the old pillars supporting the current system.

He’s right. We’ve moved (and continue to move):

  • from teacher directed to process and active learning
  • from simple information assignments to individual and collective knowledge construction
  • from classroom learning to networked and global learning
  • from test driven to learning that explores big ideas and concepts
  • from teachers working in isolation to collaborative teaching partnerships

These are Mancabelli’s three new pillars:

Pillar #1: “I’m only one of my students’ teachers, but I’m the most important because I teach them to connect to all the others.” Implication area: Instruction

Pillar #2: “My students should learn from me how to learn without me.” Implication area: Curriculum

Pillar #3: “My students’ knowledge lies not only in their minds but in their networks.” Implication area: Assessment

What I am drawn to is the theme that seems to strengthen the mortar in all three pillars: the power of collaboration. Over the past two years at John Oliver, we have spent countless hours collectively envisioning the role of the teacher in the classroom. The key point in all of these discussions: collaboration in the service of expanding our knowledge base.

It’s very easy for us, like Rob Mancabelli, to say that we want teachers to “create networks that span the globe”.  We want teachers to embrace the roles of facilitator and learning coach; however, let’s not put the cart before the horse.  In a take on the saying, “charity starts at home,” before we start skyping and connecting with a teacher in Helsinki, let’s ask ourselves this: do our teachers in our own buildings collaborate on a daily basis?  Have we, as administrators, provided them the time, the resources and the organizational structure to actually collaborate? Really, how can we ask our students to connect, collaborate and concomitantly expand their own learning experience when they don’t see their teachers or their administrators in their ‘real-time’ physical space doing just this?

One step we’re taking to address these questions (and in so doing modelling the positive impact that collaborative practices can have on learning) is embedded in our new approach to delivering Pre-Calculus 12. What’s the present day issue? Well . . .a new curriculum; a high failure rate; teachers meeting to talk/discuss (when they can find the time) but delivering the actual course in isolation in their own classrooms; an administrator who is not entering the fray and demonstrating educational leadership. Sound familiar? 

So, as a result of teachers and administrators working together (yes, it still happens here in British Columbia) this is what Pre-Calculus 12 and collaboration will look like next year: sixty students scheduled into the same Math block with two teachers.  They will meet every other day and on the weeks that they have a third class, they will have break out tutorials.  Sounds like a first year university course; however, it’s not. It’s much more than that!

In preparation for this course, these two teachers will collaborate and use their collective expertise to create content around their passion for Math.  They will house their content on a LMS and store it on our server where students can access and interact with digital learning objects on demand. They will podcast all of their classes so that students will now come to the lesson with the background knowledge and requisite questions. Class time, with both teachers present as facilitators, will be about real ‘hands on’ learning and analysis. With each podcast, the two teachers will also embed links to sites that will help provide the necessary practice and scaffolding that most of our Math students need (why reinvent the wheel when it’s all out there in the ether). The expectation is that students will contribute to this sharing community by adding their own links and their own podcasted lessons

As the two teachers actively collaborate, so too will the students.  They will video record the hands-on work, review it, reflect upon it and blog it for discussion – deep learning and deep experiences that extend beyond the classroom. You see, in videoing and posting these lessons, we’re not teaching technology, but rather leveraging technology to support and enhance the curriculum and the skill of collaboration while engaging students with their medium of choice – in this case Math.  In terms of assessment, rather than limiting our students to a sit down test/exam format for gauging mastery of learning outcomes, we will also ask them to create digital artifacts to represent their learning in a variety of mediums and share them with the class through an ePortfolio (again that sharing aspect of making knowledge).

All this talk about blended instruction, embedding technology, students leading each other in a labyrinth of inquiry based learning – it all comes down to harnessing the energy inherent within a collaborative culture. It’s about bringing people together to create new ways of doing and yet all I hear is that it can’t be done: we can’t schedule it; we can’t afford it; we need release time; and, worst of all, we don’t have the workbooks for it.  Well, I don’t buy it.  If we’re going to be leaders (in the classroom and/or in admin offices) then let’s start looking at ways to transform our practices. Let’s have the nerve, desire and fortitude to address what is not working and make the necessary changes. Let’s recognize that relationships are the primary medium for success and that in connecting with each other, in truly collaborating, we create networks that enrich us for a lifetime.

In an average size school on the South Side of Vancouver, we’re taking a Math 12 class and transforming that old method (teachers talk a lot, students listen a lot, teachers grade a lot) into a collaborative model of instruction, curriculum and assessement that promotes high quality interactions between teachers, students and peers.  And we’re doing it all with absolutely no budget! So, if we can do it here . . .

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Constructing and Living a Narrative: The Glass Castle (#7 in 52)

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Gino Bondi

It’s funny. Since I started my 52 in 52 project, friends, staff and neighbours have approached me and put forward their recommendations. There’s Wendy Beamish who, upon seeing me enter her classroom, places The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us into my hands.  Here’s Aaron Mueller strongly recommending The Eyre Affair.  And here comes my neighbour, little 6-year-old Suzie, approaching me with her dad sarcastically smiling behind her; “Hey, Mr. Bondi, you should read Snuggle Bunny (I did and loved the hand puppet).  Everybody is a reader!

This week I read Jeannette Wall’s, The Glass Castle. I’ve always found biographies to be
compelling – learning about how other people live, how they’ve coped with the vicissitudes of life.  Walls, through her memoir, makes an excellent contribution to the genre.

The Glass Castle, chronicles the author’s upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents: Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. Motivated by whims and paranoia, they are constantly on the move and the children (Jeannette, her brother, Brian and two sisters, Lori and Maureen) are left largely to their own devices. They suffer but mom says it’s ok:

Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you are young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul.

Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being unsuccessfully pimped by her father at a bar which produces this great line from Jeannette: One thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table.

The memoir is divided into three parts.  The first third follows the Walls family as they live on the West Coast frequently moving between desert towns. In a key scene, Jeannette and Brian, while playing with matches, accidentally set fire to an abandoned shack in the desert.  Rescued by their father, Jeannette (her mom thought the extra ‘n’ looked “more French”) writes of what her father said:

[He] pointed to the top of the fire, where the snapping yellow flames dissolved into an invisible shimmery heat that made the desert beyond seem to waver, like a mirage.  Dad told us that zone was known in physics as the boundary between turbulence and order. “It’s a place where no rules apply, or at least they haven’t figured ‘em out yet,” he said. “You all got a little too close to it today.”

The Walls family spends their life in this zone between turbulence and infrequent order and both the mother and the father are at ease with this reality:

“Things usually work out in the end.”
“What if they don’t?”
“That just means you haven’t come to the end yet.”

Despite the presence of an unemployed father and a creative, educated mother who refuses to work because she wants to be an artist, Jeannette and her siblings, being young
and knowing no better, feel loved despite living in poverty. They get their Christmas trees and toys from the side of the road after Christmas is over. But, there is beauty in this reality as touchingly retold by Walls:

I never believed in Santa Claus. None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn’t afford expensive presents and they didn’t want us to think we weren’t as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus.
Dad had lost his job at the gypsum, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by one.
“Pick out your favorite star”, Dad said.
“I like that one!” I said.
Dad grinned, “that’s Venus”, he said. He explained to me that planets glowed because reflected light was constant and stars twinkled because their light pulsed.
“I like it anyway” I said.
“What the hell,” Dad said. “It’s Christmas. You can have a planet if you want.”
And he gave me Venus.

Venus didn’t have any moons or satellites or even a magnetic field, but it did have an atmosphere sort of similar to Earth’s, except it was super hot-about 500 degrees or more. ”So,” Dad said, “when the sun starts to burn out and Earth turns cold, everyone might want to move to Venus to get warm. And they’ll have to get permission from your descendants first.

We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. “Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten,” Dad said, “you’ll still have your stars.”

Both parents have a disdain for normal society and living inside the confines of the American dream; however, they mismanage both their financial and emotional affairs. Although they inherit the grandmother’s home in Phoenix they eventually fall into that ever-present zone of turbulence, abandon their first decent residence and move to the father’s home town of Welch, West Virginia.

Welch is a depressed, coal-mining town and it is here that Rex begins to drink heavily and Rose Mary begins to drift inwards towards a life of self-absorption and indifference. The family begins to drift apart, particularly Walls’ father, who up to this point, had been worshipped and revered by his daughter. Like Walls’ mom, dad is a dreamer. Throughout the first part of the book, he captures the children’s imagination and draws plans for a “glass castle” promising the family that he will one day construct it.  Once in West Virginia, the kids decide to dig a hole in the ground so that dad can begin construction.  The result of the failed initiative serves as the turning point of the memoir:

Since we couldn’t afford to pay the town’s trash-collection fee, our garbage was really piling up. One day Dad told us to dump it in the hole.

“But that’s for the Glass Castle,” I said.

“It’s a temporary measure,” Dad told me. He explained that he was going to hire a truck to cart the garbage to the dump all at once. But he never got around to that, either, and as Brian and I watched, the hole for the Glass Castle’s foundation slowly filled with garbage.

The idea of the glass castle, as Jeannette herself talks about in an online interview “wasn’t a physical structure, but rather a dream: the hope of a better life.” With hope shattered, and determined not to end up like her parents, she (and eventually all of the other siblings) moves to New York, where the last third of the book unfolds. Jeannette, drawing from one of her dad’s best quotes, hopes for the best:

Anyone who thinks he’s too small to make a difference has never been bit by a mosquito.

Jeannette earns a living working part-time jobs, graduates from college, gains employment as a writer, marries a rich husband, and settles into a Park Avenue apartment. However, her parents, who also move to New York, reject their daughter’s lifestyle and instead choose to be homeless.  Ironically, it is the mother who asks Jeannette, “Where are the values I raised you with?”

The memoir ends with the family having Thanksgiving together at Jeannette’s country home that she shares with her second husband.  Rex, the father, has died and prior to dinner, Rose Mary proposes a toast:

Mom stared at the ceiling, miming perplexed thought. “I’ve got it.” She held up her glass: “Life with your father was never boring.”

We raised our glasses. I could almost hear Dad chuckling at Mom’s comment in the way he always did when he was truly enjoying something. It had grown dark outside. A wind picked up, rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order.”

Turbulence and order: the story of Jeannette Walls and her family.  What is conspicuous in its absence throughout is Jeannette’s own critical reflections; we receive the stories (both humorous and shocking) but little introspection from the author.  We are left to form our own judgments, which is as it should be. Walls herself explains:

Memoir is about handing over your life to someone and saying, “This is what I went through, this is who I am, and maybe you can learn something from it.”

I have always maintained that the function of literature is not to illustrate moral precepts but to illuminate human experience.  Only those works that produce genuine insight into our human predicament can be called works of art.  Jeannette Walls has produced a work of art.  It will inform and lead into new places the flow of your sympathetic consciousness and will leave you thinking about your own identity: the narrative each of us constructs and lives.

The Glass Castle: another great 1 in the 52.

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Picture This

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Gino Bondi

The BC Education Plan.  The VSB Sectoral Review. Personalized education. The flipped classroom. Hybrid courses that blend technology in the service of quality instruction.  The plan, the review and the ideas: all building upon an already exceptional education system here in Vancouver. Now, as a school leader, I look at all of this and in focusing upon my parent community, I begin to see an issue: in putting forward new ideas meant to build upon an already great product, we are asking these parents (at PAC Meetings and weekly updates) to trustingly move from the known to the unknown.  We’re asking them to explore possibilities; however, what I’m finding is that in continually discussing these possibilities we are meandering within a labyrinth of multiple interpretations that serve to divide what should be a critical mass united around supporting and contributing to developing educational programs of distinction.  The whole situation can take on a Pythonesque absurdity:

Forget for a moment that during the Easter long weekend “Life of Brian” is requisite viewing in my household (“Come all ye who call yourself Gourdeness”). Instead focus on the fact that in this scene the subsequent split in direction is predicated on the multiple interpretations put forward by these characters.  The subtext is that personal experience can impact the interpretation of an event and inevitably impact the directions that we take in moving forward with any initiative.

Take this thought and apply it to the sentiments that many parents have towards formal learning. Their ideas of schools and education have been forged through their own years within the system:  “We woke up, went to school, learned a lot and every now and then we had an interesting class.”

How then do we introduce new ways of doing without scaring anyone?

How do we ensure we move future discussions from this can’t be done to wow, I never looked at it that way?

How do we stop meandering in the labyrinth of what could be and start revealing what is?

How do we stop getting caught up in the learning of the new and start doing the now?

A part of the answer lies in the hands of the school-based administrator. In his recent article, Picture This, Robert Dillon makes clear that it is the responsibility of school leaders to “tell compelling stories to promote more authentic pictures of their schools” and in doing so construct a narrative that tells of the real, personally relevant and rewarding learning that is taking place for both students and staff.  Dillon explains:

Images can be powerful tools for change, but without compelling images of the future of education, everyone will be forced to use images of the past. The problem is that schools can’t be built on old images: they must reflect current best practices that infuse technology, relationships, background knowledge, culturally responsive texts, and cooperation and collaboration with partners around the globe.

Dillon sees the role of school leader to include the art of journalism and storytelling.  Principals must

  1. See a story (they happen everyday);
  2. Shape the story (develop narrative threads that go beyond the data to include the stories and success of individuals and groups of students)
  3.  Convey the story (the power of social media)

So, let’s take an outdated perception of a typical high school subject and tell a story of how it’s changed in a way that speaks to personalized learning and technology integration – something that would be extremely foreign to most parents’ own recollections of high school.  Let’s look at a new way of learning that is happening now.

It starts with a story from my past. The year is 1996: my first year of teaching is drawing to a close and I am facing the possibility of a lay-off that is driven by budgetary constraints in Vancouver. In the end, I do not get laid off but my teaching load for the upcoming year includes a block of Grade 9 Girls Physical Education.  How great, I thought.  I’ll be able to go for runs, work out, be active . . . oh, how wrong I was.  I quickly realized that there was nothing more difficult than trying to motivate 30 fourteen-year old girls to be physically active for eighty minutes every other day.  Wrestling? You must be joking!

Now, take that same class composition (30 grade nine girls), the same topic (wrestling) and place them in a class at John Oliver in 2012.  What you will see is something totally different.

Look at the assignment.  The curricular learning outcomes, sixteen years apart, are still the same: the demonstration of one take down, one breakdown from referee’s position, one escape and one turn from prone position.

What has changed for these 14 year old girls is the following:

  • they are not only doing school but are engaged, having fun and putting together a creative “project based learning” product using flipcams, macbooks and imovie;
  • they are becoming effective collaborators and developing the soft skills that are essential if they are to become confident and active participants within the oft-mentioned ‘real world’;
  • they are immersing themselves within the world of technology – critical if we as parents want our children to become engaged and informed 21st century citizens;
  • in posting their movies, they are reframing social networking as academic networking;
  • they are being offered new ways to research, create and learn through the evolving world of Internet communication – blogs, podcasts, wikis, tags, file sharing;
  • they are beginning to realize that the acquisition of knowledge is now an open, transparent, non-hierarchical, interactive and real-time process.

In all these discussions about moving forward, we as school leaders need to remember that we have to combat the misunderstanding that many will have about what schools are really like.  Let’s continue blogging about the learning that is taking place in our schools so that, to borrow from Dillon, we can provide hope, optimism, and clarity about the road forward for the education system as whole.” Let’s stop solely asking parents to explore possibilities with us; let’s start showing them where we are going by letting them see what is happening

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Developing a Theory of Mind: Amaryllis in Blueberry (#6 in 52)

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Gino Bondi

Very recently, Paul Kelly sent me an op-ed piece from the New York Times entitled, Your Brain on Fiction. The thesis is straightforward:

Fiction – with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially rich replica [of life]. Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people’s thoughts and feelings.

The piece continues to explain that as readers, in trying to figure out the thoughts and feelings of fictional characters, we are developing a theory of mind that treats the interactions among these characters as something like real-life encounters.

The novel provides us with an unequaled medium for this exploration of human social and emotional life: an exploration that serves to enrich our socio-emotive development. Dr. Keith Oatley explains:

Fiction is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.

Why do I read fiction?  Well, Dr. Oatley and Dr. Raymond Mar provide perhaps the best answer in this op-ed piece:

Reading great literature . . . enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined . . . individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective.

Today, after having completed a two week reading break on the beaches of Oahu, I share with you Read #6 in my 52 in 52 project: Christina Meldrum’s, Amaryllis in Blueberry.

Not having yet read Barbara Kingsolver’s, The Poisonwood Bible, I came uninitiated to this story about a family and their experiences when their father takes them all to Africa. 

The Slepys are a dysfunctional Catholic family of six: parents Dick and Seena and their daughters, the Marys – Mary Grace, Mary Catherine, and Mary Tessa – and Amaryllis, known as Yllis. After their summer in Michigan, Dick decides to take his family to West Africa where he will serve as a medical missionary.

The story starts with the end – “Dick is dead.” From this point, all six family members share their alternating points of views of the events that have unfolded.  Obsessions, imagination, storytelling, and cross cultural myth making (Greek, African, and Catholic doctrine) are explored. Each of the characters is obsessed with a secret or state of being that is never communicated or shared with anyone. However, the reader, as always, has access and it is the poignancy inherent in these self-reflections wherein Christina Meldrum displays her extraordinary talent as a crafter of powerful fiction – narrative which helps us develop the aforementioned theory of mind.  Just read what Seena thinks about her loveless marriage to Dick, words she cannot share with anyone within her own homo-fictus world:

Even so, Seena mostly complied, let Dick own her on the surface, let him touch nothing beneath. He’d possess her body at times, but that was the surface–another incarnation of taking his name. It was form. Not content. Ritual, not meaning. 

This lack of communication, connection and trust is prevalent within each of the Slepys and their decline as a family and as individuals is exacerbated with the move to West Africa.  It is here where each character is thrust into unfathomable circumstances forcing them to enter a paradigm of uncomfortable soul-searching.

Of all the characters, it is Yllis, the youngest of the four daughters, who in having synesthesia (the ability to see and feel all the emotions of everyone around her) is the most interesting. It is through Yllis that Meldrum produces some of her most incandescent and sublime writing:

People say joy is infectious, but that’s a myth. It’s melancholy that’s infectious. And sneaky. It skulks about, climbing legs, mounting skirts. It’s particularly active when joy is in the room. Joy shows up sort of humming, and melancholy gets the jitters.

Indeed, it is Yllis who provides, in two sentences, the epiphany of the novel:

And I realized: souls don’t stand alone. What makes a soul a soul is the shared burden and pain, the shared joy: it’s the connection between us that carries us on.”

Having just returned from Spring Break and having purposely disconnected from all things technological, I think of these words as I delve back into hashtags like #bced.  I read the tweets here and begin to feel as alienated educationally as the Slepys do emotionally with each other.  I draw solace however in Yllis’ comprehension of the essence of life as something that can ground me in these tumultuous times.

Amaryllis in Blueberry: my copy is sticky from suntan lotion but I’m ready to lend it out.

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Hope and a Song: The Cellist of Sarajevo (#5 in 52)

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Gino Bondi

About a month ago, I committed myself to reading one book a week for a year: the 52 in 52 project.  I must say that I am really enjoying the quiet time, reading in the evenings. Virginia Woolf may have needed 500 pounds and a room of one’s own; I only need my kids to go to sleep!

This week I read #5 of 52: The Cellist of Sarajevo.  Written by Vancouverite, Steve Galloway, the novel follows three characters, Aarow, Dragan and Kenan, over the span of a month during the Siege of Sarajevo (1992 to 1996).  The three characters are tied together by the true story of a cellist who resolves to play Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor on the same square every day for 22 days in honour of the victims of a massacre that took place there.

The story opens with a graphically sparse description of people shuffling about, trying to live their lives as best they can in a besieged city. Their world is devoid of normalcy. As they try to gather food or water or information, they are threatened by mortar shells and indiscriminate snipers who make sport of shooting civilians, young and old, as they move about the streets of the city. 

Sarajevo is a city closed from the world.  Simple amenities we take for granted are a luxury:

Electricity comes on and “light will fill all of the rooms and chase away the perpetual dusk that hides in the corners.  Even if it doesn’t last for long it will make them happy, and for the rest of the day their faces will be tired from smiling.

It’s a world where citizens believe that “it will stay like this forever, that this war isn’t a war, but just how life will be.”  And it is this life in which the three main characters exist, somewhat despondently and definitely filled with fear.  Kenan is a middle-aged man who lives like a hostage in his apartment with his wife and children, venturing out every few days and risking his life to race through intersections and across bridges to get water for his family. Dragan, alone after his wife and son escaped to Italy, is stuck at an intersection targeted by a sniper as he tries to head to the bakery where he works for a meal.  Although they do not meet, each of these men struggles with their fears as they witness the acts of heroism carried out by those around them – acts which they cannot bring themselves to replicate.

Arrow, the third character (the novel starts and ends with her) is the most compelling. A female sniper of extraordinary talent, she is brought in to protect the cellist because, as her commander tells her, they’re not going to bomb him: “It’s not about merely killing him. Shooting him is a statement.”  However, Arrow, unlike other snipers, does not, will not, target civilians (her own code of ethics).   She oftentimes has trouble pulling the trigger and it is through her rationale that the thematic thrust of the novel takes shape:

It’s a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and that it won’t last forever. So when Arrow pulls the trigger and ends the life of one of the soldiers in her sights, she’ll do so not because she wants him dead, although she can’t deny that she does, but because the soldiers have robbed her and almost everyone else in the city of this gift. That life will end has become so self-evident it’s lost all meaning.

However, it is through the cellist and his song that the three characters once again begin to find their love of life; a renewed belief that despite the madness, there is beauty in being alive – there is hope.  Kenan, although still fearful of his own mortality, realizes that he must not only go on but also recapture the humanness of life prior to the siege: 

If this city is to die, it won’t be because of the men on the hills, it will be because of the people in the valley.  When they’re content to live with death, to become what the men on the hills want them to be, then Sarajevo will die.

Dragan, like Kenan, opts for the life pulse.  In a poignant reflection, he muses over the idea of a civilization being a process rather than a product and of life, during war, being a preventative measure:

The city he lives in is full of people who will someday go back to treating each other like humans. The war will end, and when it’s looked back upon it will be with regret, not with fond memories of faded glory. In the meantime he will continue to walk the streets. Streets that will not have dead and discarded bodies lying in them. He will behave now as he hopes everyone will someday behave. Because civilization isn’t’ a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, recreated daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he ever would have thought possible. And if he wishes to live, he must do what he can to prevent the world he wants to live in from fading away. As long as there’s war, life is a preventative measure.

It is Arrow, however, who above all of the other characters, draws my interest and my commitment as a reader – the participant in this very personal and rewarding art of engaging with fiction.  The cellist’s adagio touches her in a very personal way:

The men in the city didn’t have to be murderers. The men in the city didn’t have to lower themselves to fight their attackers. She didn’t have to be filled with hatred. The music demanded that she remember this, that she know to a certainty that the world still held the capacity for goodness. The notes were proof of that.

In the beginning of the novel, we learn that Arrow is not her real name. She uses this pseudonym as a means to deal with her reality of being a sniper:

To hate people because they hated her first, and then to hate them because of what they’ve done to her, has created a desire to separate the part of her that will fight back, that will enjoy fighting back, from the part that never wanted to fight in the first place. Using her real name would make her no different from the men she kills. It would be a death greater than the end of her life. 

Her response to people who wish to know her real name: “I am Arrow, because I hate them. The woman you knew hated nobody.”  Remember this as you read the final four words of the novel – a sentence that will move you to tears and will haunt you as it continues to haunt me, two days after having put the novel down.

Just as Albinoni’s Adagio was re-created from a fragment after the only extant score was firebombed in the Dresden Music Library, the cellist of Sarajevo creates something new and inspiring for the characters within this novel.  Their fictional experiences will remind you, as it did me, that life is worth living and that hope is the eternal driver

The Cellist of Sarajevo: a great read that I have already leant out to my colleague, Thomas Harapnuick.

 

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The Game as a Vehicle: The Miracle of St. Anthony’s (#4 in 52)

Posted on February 27, 2012 by Gino Bondi

The score is 25-23 for the Visitors: 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter and emotions flying high in the gym. Coaching my son’s team and sitting on the Visitor’s bench, I watch as his check drives right and scores the tying basket with 12 seconds left in the game.  I call a timeout.  My son approaches the bench, downtrodden and sad.  I smile and tell him that it’s his turn to shine, he smiles (that beautiful, remind me that fatherhood is the ultimate profession and make me appreciate that life is indeed a gift smile) and the world has been put aright again.  I draw up a half court play and with 2.4 seconds left we shoot, we score and we win 27-25.

Now, according to Patti Wood, a body language expert who teaches at Florida State, there is something called isopraxism, an anthropological explanation of how we pull toward the same energy, that explains why when the person we’re with steps off the curb, we follow him or her into the crosswalk.  In team sports it explains how if one person, especially the leader, gets discouraged or feels defeated, the entire group is affected.  However, when positive, when feeling victorious, when focused on much more than the athletic arena, the feelings can be truly transformative.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of experiencing this powerful sensation as I “supported” my son and coached his teammates in what may have been one of the greatest elementary school games I have ever been involved in. The result, however, is inconsequential to my sentiment.  What is driving my feeling is my hope that the boys on both teams are now beginning to understand that being part of a team can be a life changing experience.

Basketball, like all sports, is a vehicle in which we teach a few skills but also provide comfort and a safe place wherein we can help kids discover their own admirable purposes.  It’s an opportunity for us to help them build capabilities in group interpretation, negotiation of shared meaning and co-construction of problem resolutions.  It’s so much more than just the pursuit of the ‘W.’ It’s about recognizing the profound difference one can make within a group context.  It’s about developing the capacity to show compassion, empathy and understanding so that, one day, when these boys are healthy and emotionally literate men, they will, when called upon, be able to love and in return be loved.  The game may be simple but the lessons learned are layered and complex.

It is basketball and the lessons taught through the game that serve as the basis for this next installment in my 52 in 52 project.  This week I share #4 of 52: Adrian Woinarowski’s, The Miracle of St. Anthony’s.  This work of nonfiction follows a high school basketball team of inner city boys from Jersey City, New Jersey through their 2003-04 undefeated season.  In an area punctured with the horrors of urban blight, hope comes in the form of a tiny brick schoolhouse run by two Felician nuns and Coach Bob Hurley who, through coaching basketball, takes teenagers from the mean streets and teaches them life lessons that are in turn, life changing.

St. Anthony’s High is legendary in terms of what it has done for a community and the students it services.  What I found most enjoyable with this read was that the focus was on more then just the school and it’s quest for a perfect 30-0 season: it’s primary emphasis was chronicling the lives of a misfit group of kids who, unlike former St. Anthony alumni, seemed to be going nowhere and were failing to grasp Hurley’s philosophy.

It is a remarkable success story (over 100 of Coach Hurley’s players receiving Division 1 scholarships and all of them graduating from high school) made even more remarkable by the fact that the school does not have a home gymnasium.  They are a school that consistently wins state titles and are ranked among the nations top high school teams, yet they have had 25 different practice facilities and at one time played their home games in an old bingo hall. In fact, the bingo hall, White Eagle, was so old that Coach Hurley would need to walk around the gym prior to games and hammer down nails that were popping up.

Like Coach Hurley and many others who volunteer their time, I have spent countless hours in gyms and have continued to do so in the past three months coaching both my son and daughter’s basketball teams.  As a coach, I am always keenly aware of my impact as an educator.  Like teachers, coaches must be acutely cognizant of the fact that their words, their coaching style will have significance for their players/students well beyond the immediacy of the basketball court.  My hope is that by the end of their time with me as their coach, my boys will, like Hurley’s boys, continue to hear my voice and the lessons imparted long after the noise of squeaking sneakers dissipates in their respective memories.

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