Rock, folk, blues, country (oh, these labels!) singer Lucinda Williams has a lyric in her song “Reason to Cry” that goes, “When nothing makes any sense, you got a reason to cry.” The line’s been working my brain like a koan ever since I’ve heard it. I’ve been noticing a strong correlation between sensations of senselessness (does that make sense?) and crying, so to speak.
In school settings, you often see both figurative and literal tears shed by teachers who are, for whatever reason, having trouble making sense of the pressure they feel in the current climate of intense accountability. This pressure comes in many forms, and is worth a whole national debate over many years of time. Can sense be made in the meantime? Can teacher (and by extension student) tears be wiped away? Can didactic despair be transformed into pedagogical joy?
I have glimpsed rays of hope penetrating the canopy of our dark forest. All of them involve meaningful collaborative planning and ample classroom support. One of them in particular has recently captured my imagination as well as the fancies of nearly all of the teachers who have engaged with it: The International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IBPYP).
It’s been my recent good fortune to be able to pitch in with three New York City public schools in quest of accreditation by this progressive and visionary program(me). In every case, when I have worked with teams developing what is called their “programme of inquiry” and planning their “units of inquiry,” I have heard the healthy laughter of people finding meaning in their work. In our reflections at the end of a day’s planning teachers have written, “We got a lot accomplished. We expressed ourselves freely,” or “This was productive. We established solid foundations. The themes are great,” or “We worked well together. We agreed. We aligned the units meaningfully with the comprehension strategies and writing units,” or “I like working with colleagues on what the grade will be learning, as opposed to being told what to teach.”
One of my favorites, from 4th Grade Teacher Anna Luciano at PS 151 Q Global Communication and Foreign Language Magnet School, ran along like this: “This was fruitful, the first brick on a huge skyscraper. Everyone was enlightened on a different scale. We paid the utmost attention to detail, and to the wellbeing of the children.”
How do you explain such reviews? (And I assure you nearly all of the others are equally positive.)
The answer is not simple. The teachers are treated like professionals; the teachers collaborate in teams; a larger purpose pervades the work – these are the first notions that come to mind. It helps that the IBPYP requires collaboration and the empowerment of teachers, and the focus on a progressive mission, the center of which is the wellbeing of the children. It is also understood by all to be a long-term effort, a solid edifice, like that skyscraper to be constructed from one blueprint by many hands.
What are the details to which the utmost attention must be paid? Might our answer be found, like the devil, among them? Detail A: The school’s mission must be congruent with the International Baccalaureate’s mission of internationalism, peace, caring and compassion. Detail B: The Programme of Inquiry must be constructed of units that address six “transdisciplinary themes” that are explored and built upon each year. Detail C: Each unit revolves around a “central idea” (an “enduring understanding” in backwards planning parlance). Detail D: The summative task of each unit is usually a project involving student-generated action. Detail E: Each unit embodies foundational “key concepts” such as form, function, causation, change and the like. Detail F: The units are driven by carefully crafted teacher questions and “provocations” that set up student questions to be organized into “lines of inquiry….”
And these are just a few of the details. Plenty of hidey-holes for the devil here! Which is, indeed, why the utmost care needs to be paid.
The details come in many dimensions. To list them all would be to trivialize them. One dimension worth delving into, though, is the “student profile.” Planning is undertaken to assure that students become inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced and reflective.
Tellingly, the teachers are expected to exemplify and model these attributes. It’s much easier to make sense of things when you can ask questions, think for yourself, take risks and find balance in your life. So I reflect, anyway.
The unmentioned secret to all of this is that it’s often fun. A teacher “provocation” (known in the New York metropolitan area as a “motivation”) that I enjoyed imagining was the one where a classroom, to begin a study of earthquakes, was turned topsy-turvy, desks thrown over and books scattered about. When the students arrived and saw the disaster, they were shocked into the beginning of true understanding.
Another enjoyable aspect is the generation of student questions. Here are a few I recently gathered that would set anyone’s brain in motion: “Why is everything made in China?” “What is Spam?” “Did you know we have tiny little hairs on our tongues?” “How did the baby get out of her?”
Of course there is a disquieting side to this that must be addressed as well, no denying it. How does a teacher answer the question, “Will we get suspended for writing about someone getting stabbed?”
Wisely, I suggest. And not by answering, so much as by turning it into a “line of inquiry” into the roots of violence. Wouldn’t that be a sensible way for teachers to help the students handle their reasons to cry, and bring them around step by detailed step to healing action and the hopeful joys of learning?
A Voice From The Classroom 