I Must Be Missing Something

We all see the world through certain lenses. Our viewpoints are created by our experiences and as such, we are limited to what we choose to go out and see. As educators we work to open children's minds and encourage them to develop a deep understanding of the world. I have had the privilege to work and live in a variety of settings, Kalamazoo, the Detroit suburbs, and the Chicago suburbs. I have seen people drive their children in Ferrari's to school and hop off the back of the field truck after they finished in the fields as the school bus dropped their children off at the migrant farm. I have seen individuals with MBA's from big universities become house poor as the economy tanked and single unmarried parents working a shift at the Family Dollar followed by a shift at Target just to make the rent. What I seem to be missing is the large chunk of society who isn't trying to figure out how to make it day by day. I've spent twenty-two years working with families and communities and somehow I can only name two incidents of families that weren't working hard to try to be productive members of society for their own family. In both cases, there were significant mental health concerns that churches and community organizations were trying to figure out a way to help.

Now, I realize that I have only seen a small slice of America. From pre-student teaching to my current role, I've been in seven school districts. In each community, either through church or religion, I have seen service learning projects. Students and adults, families and congregants, going out and trying to help individuals and families that have fallen get up. When I've talked to those that are there, those who work and those who need help, many are victims of circumstances including abuse and neglect. Some suffer significant mental illness, frequently untreated, and some are truly lost in the world.

In the United States, 21% of children, over 15,000,000, kids live with families earning less than the Federal poverty line. This is down from 16,387,000 in 2011. This is a pretty large number. These children are spread everywhere. They live in cities, in suburbs, and in small towns. I have worked with many and their families. The funny thing is, their peers understand that their families are working to make it. They ask what does your mom do. The children share the jobs she's working. Their friends ask who is home when you get home. Sometimes its no one. Sometimes its an aunt, a grandma, or dad's friend. Frequently the conversations end with wow, you parent works a lot. These same kids, those in poverty and those that are not, often join in for a used coat drive "we are just sharing it with the next family that needs it," or helping make lunches at the local social service, "I may not be able to share the food, but I can help make the meal."

So, I must be missing something. I have yet to meet these denizens of leeches working the system to avoid their societal responsibility. These individuals and families that are conscientiously working the government over while playing their iPhones. Is their corruption and manipulation? Of course there must be. Am I saying that everyone is pure and innocent? No. Simply, I see greater empathy from our students and our families, those who have and those who don't than from our leaders. I am proud of the social service our children lead, our teachers lead, and our congregations lead. I wonder why those at the top are the ones who see these large bands of leeches, I'm here in the trenches and struggling to find them.

So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World

Call On Me Brother

Mornings in our house are not easy. Each of us wakes up differently. I pop out of bed at 5am. Bright-eyed, ready to take on the world. Shower, dress, check the news on the Internet, and begin packing the backpacks for school. About 6, I try to wake up everyone else. Logan groggily dresses himself, Cameron cocoons himself back in the blankets, my bride strives to sleep just a little longer. It's a morning. Soon the chaos begins to reign. I ask who wants something for breakfast. Sometimes there's a response, sometimes there's a screech from one brother at another, sometimes I'm completely ignored, and sometimes strange grunts occur. Fifty-five minutes later there is invariably shouting as we try to shuttle us out the door. Yet, there we are, out the door, dressed, fed, and ready to go. Somehow the dog gets walked. Somehow lunches are packed. Somehow everyone has had there breakfast and medicine. Somehow we are helping each other get what needs to get done so that at 7am we are out the door.

It is often hard to understand how interdependent our lives are. Without someone grabbing a bag, the other child wouldn't have his stuff for school. There are times in nice weather, when the oldest one walks to his brother's school to take him home after school. This is true in nuclear families, communities, work groups, and societies. Currently I have the privilege to work in a shared office. Seven of us share the same open space. There are many times that only some of us are there. However, frequently when we are, we bounce ideas off of each other. Individuals ask each other, what do you think of this, how could I approach this, or could you share with me what you have tried when this happens? We share and grow together, and frequently it is more than ideas. Sometimes someone takes on another person's load, helps with a responsibility, or simply shows up with a Diet Coke or a coffee to make their colleague's day better.

In situations in which we go it alone, the more we realize we are alone. In these situations we often feel the fate of the world upon us. I look at our students. We live in a society that frequently pushes individual achievement, but those accolades are often reduced to meaningless when put in perspective of the whole. Kris Bryant's first words to the media after winning the World Series was that he had one many individual awards but nothing ever as a team as his smile brimmed ear to ear. In class, we look at who aces the test consistently, but in the work environment, that person is often useless unless they can work and communicate with others. The best products come when we set aside our egos and work together to understand how we can make a better whole.

That's the overall goal. Not to be the best student, not to be the best school, and not to be the best city, but rather to work with other students, other schools, and other cities to raise the bar for all of us. Do we need to have individual success at times? Absolutely! However, in the end, we are all interdependent. It's not one brother who wins and one brother who loses, but rather when we find wins for both of us together, we come out on top and then off to school we go in a much happier way.

Lean on Me

With A Little Help From My Friends

The Avalanche

It happens to most of us. It begins with something small, like a person cutting you off on the highway or the patron before you grabbing the last chocolate babka. Suddenly the spiral begins. Things begin to go wrong at work. Things begin to go wrong at school. Things begin to go wrong at home. A little incident builds and suddenly we fill as if at emotional avalanche is falling upon us.

With these avalanches, the pressure increases moment to moment. We question our decisions, we question our relationships, and we question our actions. It is in these times, we often face the darkest of times, wondering how it is we got here and how it is we can get out.

fortune from Keen Eddie

Just like the avalanche of awfulness beginning with a single event, the repairing of spirit and life can begin with a single event also. We can and do make a difference. In the book FISH!, we learn about how employees at a fish market is Seattle, Washington create energy by doing little things to make their customer's lives better. Whether it's making silly jokes, engaging them in some fish tossing, or simple being present to listen to them authentically, they engage others to make their day. By doing a little thing to make someone's life better, suddenly we may help them through something challenging. We may have done that slight action that turns their day from an avalanche of awfulness to a spirit of kindness.

The funny thing is, in helping others, we are really helping ourselves. Kindness and positivity are shared feelings. It is the kind of energy that builds, engages, and promotes. By helping someone else, whether it's putting their cart away, going ahead at the grocery store, or letting them leave a little early, there is a shared energy that helps us begin an avalanche of success.

Love Smith, former Bear's football coach and current coach at University of Illinois, used to speak of stacking victories. One victory builds to the next and then to the next. Our little acts of kindness can restart our path to success and bring others on their journeys forward. The avalanche, that starts with the smallest event, can be one of sorrow or one of joy. We have the power to impact it.

The Continental Crack-Up

Letting Go

I looked around the room on Thursday and there they sat, nearly 25 talented relatively new teachers. Some of them had been through the mischief and mayhem of the first semester, some had been with us barely a couple of weeks. I looked carefully, and had to double take. There is always that moment that sets in each year when you realize how young everyone is in the room. Nicely, it is often conveniently  followed by the realization of how talented everyone is in the room also.

In many places, many professions, professional development has been to learn to do as I do. Schools are no exception. We talk about the methodology of guided release. I do then you do. Model first, then guided practice, followed by independent practice in the classroom, and then practice on your own at home. Think about it, most of us "learned" this way.

While this is terrific for learning specific skills such as sewing a blind stitch or parallel parking, it can limit the creativity and depth of understanding of the learner. If we told each of our teachers this is exactly what to teach and how to teach it, providing every specific activity and script, we would get exactly that for every child. Very little would be built upon student interest and student capabilities. There would be a 4th grade program aimed at 4th graders. However it would capitalize very little on the capacities of those 4th graders.

In order to maximize our learning opportunities, more often we need to empower our principals, our teachers, and our students with the capacity to create and adapt. We can set up challenges, teach skills, as necessary, listen to them as they collaborate and explore. This requires trust in our teams and support when possible. It is true at every level of the relationship, curriculum leader to principals and coaches, principals and coaches to teachers, and teachers and parents to students. We set up the next challenge, give the team the opportunity to explore and then let them solve the challenge providing supporting guidance as necessary. Letting go allows for greater ownership and creativity as the learner masters the next challenge.

Last night, I was reminded of this. My son turned on the 1977 classic, Star Wars - A New Hope. There was Obi Wan Kenobi, not telling his pupil to do this step first and this step next, but rather letting him explore as he learned to conquer the next challenge. Letting go is not a new idea, but one from a long time a go and perhaps a galaxy far, far away.

Lightsaber Training

Moments of Kindness

It was a few months ago, I was in the Costco food court line and the individual in front of me said, "Do you want my drinks? We aren't going to use them." A simple gesture of kindness. Passing on to someone else something they may need and you don't. My oldest son looked at me afterwards and said, "that was nice." A moment in time. An individual doing something not in self-interest, not necessary, but taking a few seconds of that person's time to try to brighten another's day.

We are about to enter the winter shopping season. I've actually appreciated not seeing internet videos of freaked out Black Friday shoppers raging against the lines. I've enjoyed the Facebook posts of people sharing moments at the parade rather than great shopping finds they have discovered online. I've liked the pictures of those choosing to #optoutside on Black Friday and take hikes with their kids or fish in a lake. I am sure the angry shopper videos will come, the great deals will be shared, and the shopping adventures will occur. However, I think perhaps as a society we are discovering that taking the moments to spend the time with each other throughout the silly season and the year are of at least equal importance to the discoveries we make to show our appreciation of each other.

Being kind is something children learn from all of us. It may be an individual holding a door for a stranger, someone offering to take their empty shopping cart to the cart return, or paying for the next person's drink at the coffee drive-through line. Kindness is an activity we can teach anyone by simply doing it in our own life. We show our own kids this when we take time to listen to a clerk's story regarding their favorite Thanksgiving stuffing or giving up our place in line to someone with 4 young kids dying to get their McNuggets. Kindness is learned and can come from the most odd and unique places.

Kindness is based on an awareness of others. A willingness to give up just a little bit of yourself in terms of time, energy, attention, money, or items to make someone else's day a little brighter. We teach our children this by simply doing this within our lives while they are present. It's easy to do if we are doing it anyways. We teach other people's children it also by simply doing it in their presence. Easy enough if we are doing it anyways. Sooner than you know it, you'll see your children doing it to. So this summer I learned a new habit to. I pass on my soda cups at Costco when we aren't using them also. A big thanks to the mysterious stranger who taught me a simple act of kindness.

Kindness can come from the smallest places

Our Fears and Learning to Be Brave

In schools, we learn how to succeed. We learn to take little steps, complete things, identify the directions, create manageable goals, and work together to win. We talk about "Fail" as the "first attempt in learning." As a professional community, educators have learned to focus deeply on social-emotional learning. Yet in all of this, one aspect we rarely touch on in school is fear and the anxiety it produces.

Hollywood has focused on this forever. They have given us mortals who have confronted the supernatural such as Geena Davis in "The Fly." They have given us young Jedi preparing to confront great evils. Even monsters afraid of young children. While the big screen has capitalized on the theme of confronting one's fears, how much preparation and training have we done for our adults and our children.

In 1949, George Orwell wrote about a society which was always told to be afraid of the people and leaders of other societies. In the 60's, 70's, 80's we learned to fear the Evil Empire.  These were big untouchable fears. But real fears grew closer to home. Maybe it was being afraid of bees, poison ivy, dogs, failing, losing a job, or losing a loved one. Each individual has fears and how often have we as a society worked to give our children and our adults the tools.

As a parent, and a young adult, I have begun to realize how real fears are. Whether in working with new dads anticipating their first baby, adults who've lost loved ones, young men and women who have lost their first job, it dawns on me that these fears are real. The lack of control is real. The feeling of helplessness is real. How do we give each of us, adults and children, the skills and capacities to address these situations, challenges they feel they can't control, and provide the ability to move forward.

This need became obvious to me on Wednesday night. The unbelievable had happened. First, it was the Cubs in the World Series. Something I had never seen. Something my father, my aunt, and my uncle had never seen. There were moments that felt so Cub. Falling down 3 games to 1. Facing a former Cy Young winner in the final game. Giving up two runs on a wild pitch in the 5th. There we were, generations connected from Scottsdale to Scotland, Madison to Chicago to Ann Arbor, from the oldest grandparent to the youngest infant. Anticipating, fearing, dreading, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

My dad couldn't watch until the final out. I listened in my bedroom to Pat and Ron on the call, as Aroldis Chapman gave up the home run to Rajai Davis, assuredly surrendering the lead. We didn't have the courage to watch. Too ingrained the annual fears of failure. The memories of generation failures upon us. My brother, my cousins, they were there like Cub fans across the world anxiously awaiting an outcome they couldn't control. 

I think of the learnings we can teach. I think of a kindergarten classroom in our district, where on the wall there is a simple phrase, "Be Brave." I think of how unusual it is that we address this and how powerful the tools are that are being taught in this room. A phrase and a focus that needs to spread. For if we raise children, not to not have fears, but rather how to be brave, then in those uncontrollable moments, we might not feel the collective anxiety and react rashly but rather with that bazillion dollar smile as Kris Bryant approached that final out, grabbing the ball and ending the burden of Cubs fandom.

We must learn how all of us can "be brave."

The Out

Symbol of Hope

One of my roles at work is to work with students who have been identified as "Limited English Proficient," their teachers, and their families. These children are often the children or grandchildren of immigrants. Like my great-grandparents, their families came to this country from wherever they had lived before filled with dreams, desire, a strong work ethic, and a willingness to make it as a family. For each family, it's not easy. They come from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. They have native languages in Gujarati, Malayalam, Serbian, Spanish, Tamil, and others. Many work two shifts to make ends meet. Sometimes the children understand why their parents or grandparents made this journey and sometimes they don't. In the end, the children and their families simply want to be welcomed, make friends, and lead good lives. As I work with the teachers that support these students and their families, they share stories of the worry and anxiety that this election cycle has had. The vast majority of our families are legal immigrants, however, the broad brushes of politics have stirred feelings that have made these students and families feel unwelcome.

I live in Chicago and for most of a century, the Chicago Cubs have been pretty dreadful. We tell stories of 1969 when a team filled with Hall of Famers, Willams, Jenkins, and Santo, fell out of contention. We remember the ball going through Leon Durhams legs in the '84 playoffs. We share stories of Steve Bartman, a fan who was blamed for the collapse of the '03 Cubs by manager Dusty Baker, and rarely talk about about moments prior shortstop Alex Gonzales error that led to the collapse. Through all of this, Cub fans have been extremely resilient. From the Die-Hards like of previous generations like my Grandfather Rudy, Uncle Al, and Aunt Bea, to the friends that have consistently crowded the bleachers whether they were winning 70 or 90. For Cubs fans, even in the darkest of times, there has always been hope.

This month, my television has turned into a nationwide version of the Jerry Springer show. Debates and political campaigns, regardless of your political ideology, have become more spectacle than policy discussion. Growing up, political dialogue I would expect to see on the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour or hear from Milton Friedman, now has references from Wikileaks and Access Hollywood.   Like the historic observer of the Cubs, regardless of the side of the aisle you sit, it can feel like we have reached a point where there is no hope. Our families with Limited English Proficient students certainly feel this way. In Field of Dreams, Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones) reminds Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) through the seas of change that have swept our country, one constant remains, Baseball. This is no truer than now. While we watch one of the ugliest elections of our time, the Chicago Cubs seem to have risen from the ashes. With the best infield since Tinkers to Evers to Chance, America is being swept from a northside ray of hope. With a hashtag #nomorenextyears the lovable Cubs are providing some positive all of us need.

In times of darkness, each of us needs a symbol. A reminder of what is good in this world and the difference each of us can make. A silly positive moment, to remind us of what can be, to see the good, and believe in each other. As we work with students and their families that feel the negative swings whether from their own lives or from a national dialogue, sharing symbols of hope and a positive future. Helping them find ways where they, or more appropriately we, can make a difference. That is the guidance all of us need.

Symbol of Hope