Collective Biographies

My staff did something super-cool together yesterday.  I want to tell you about it, but first I have to ask:  Have you read Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal?  You should.  It is fantastic.  Amy's work always is.  Was.  The world lost this brilliant and kind soul this past March.  You heard about it, probably, or heard about her, if you happened to read this, which a whole lot of people did, whilst they squeezed their tear ducts and thought about love.

But, yeah, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  My friend Brenda, founder and editor of Choice Literacy, sent me my copy, which makes it super-special, and by now it is all marked up with pencil scratches and post-its.  I’ve read it lots.  After I read it the first time, I had to take a break before a re-read, because it was so rich and good that I needed a minute, like you need a sip of water before you go in for another bite of molten chocolate cake.  

It's yummmmmmm.

But the activity I want to talk about?  It is described on page 158 of Amy's book, or Google might let you cheat here.  

It is called the The Short Collective Biography Experiment.  

Amy suggests doing the activity over dinner, which we certainly weren't able to do; on the contrary, we had just 75 minutes together during part of a district-wide professional development day, and we were crammed sardine-style into a meeting room at our local recreation center. 

I have a very large staff.  Some have been together for a couple decades, while others are newer (even brand-new).  I would describe them as a tight and loyal staff, but like any family, they occasionally snap and snip.  We’re strong and mighty together, but, yeah, you know—we get tired and grumpy sometimes.

I wanted an activity to bring us back to our core, ourselves, our mission. 

So I took Amy's Short Collective Biography idea and this is what I did:

1.  Randomly put teachers in tables of 6-8 based on the color of a “thank you” card I’d handed them as they walked in.  We had an opening writing activity to get us in a thoughtful, grateful mindset— everyone took five minutes to write a thank-you note to someone they cared about.  I told them it could be a note to a neighbor, a colleague, a parent, an old friend, the cashier at their local Starbucks.  I didn’t care who— I just wanted them to take a moment to acknowledge the goodness that someone else brings to their world.

2.  As they wrote, I slipped a large sheet of cardstock and Sharpie on each table. Then I told them we were going to discover new ways we are connected.  I asked for a reporter and recorder.  

3.  I asked them to talk to one another, starting with questions, and create a list of things each member of the group could say are equally true.

3.  I asked them to avoid easy or surface things—“We all love payday” or “We love Fridays” or “College was AWESOME!!!!” 

4.  I gave them 20 minutes. 

5.  The recorder wrote their final list on the cardstock.  Most got really creative and artsy, like elementary teachers tend to do; in the end, each group had a beautiful creation capturing their collectiveness.  

6.  We had a share-out.

It was good.  Really good.  As they worked, the groups were animated and focused.  At times, they laughed so hard I thought they’d fall out of their chairs; other times, they were serious and sad.

Some of the things they came up with in their connective biographies:

We are all siblings to someone.  We have lost a loved one to a sudden death.  Our first year of teaching was very difficult.  We have watched a sunset on the Pacific.  We are mothers of boys.  None of us has ridden a horse.  We prefer sweet to salty.  We’ve never been to Canada. 

Listening to the share-outs brought more laughter, more thinking, more reflection, more conversation. 

Afterwards, I asked them to summarize their takeaway from the activity.  

... We can think we know everything about one another, but we might be missing some of the simplest, basic things.
... We all share experiences that connect us in unique ways, yet we have come to them from hugely different places.
... You never know how you are connected to someone else (student or colleague) unless you ask.
... Start with a question.
... Hearing the biographies will illicit future questioning. conversation, and connection.  
... We have so much to learn about, from, and for each other.
... Starting with gratitude is always a good idea.
... Um... yeah.  This would be a great activity for kids to do together.

I loved this activity together because it was rich and deep and built a unique sense of camaraderie.  We put aside the stressors of our work and the pressure to be curriculum hammers and, instead, just focused on us—as a team, as human beings, as a group working toward the same goal. And the only thing it cost me was $5.99 in green cardstock and a few bucks in note cards.  

Pretty fantastic. 

The Things We Carry

I’ve wondered whether to write about the recent loss of my father-in-law, mostly because I want to be super-sensitive to my husband and his mom, because it’s their story and not mine. It seems inauthentic not to write about it, though, so, in the past week or so, I’ve started writing, and then stopped, then started again— more times than I’ve put on shoes.  And still I’ve gotten nowhere.  It’s tricky, writing about an important death.  Words don’t flow.  It’s hard to identify feelings, because they’re jumbled and dull.  

When someone we love dies, everything fogs.  

There’s nothing to say, really.  Is there?

His death was a shock, and it happened quickly, though with that specific slow-motion that comes with death. 

The simple thing that happened was his heart was tired.   The un-simple thing that happened is so complicated that it would take a handful of medical professionals to get it right.  

It has been a few weeks of strangeness.  Flashes of sadness, the unexpected kind, when I remember that he is gone, and when I think about what this death means for us, his family, his grandchildren, the ones left to think about him.  

Strangely, too, this seems like it has intensified the pain I carry for others.  Being a principal, or any type of leader of people, means you carry the weight of a lot, lot, lot, lot of people. Staff, parents, colleagues, and students—we hear their stories, and because we are the type of people who do this, we lift the story and carry it with us, trying to lessen the burden for someone else. 

Last summer, at a conference in Philadelphia, I met a principal friend for coffee. As we talked, our conversation drifted beyond the management and instructional parts of our work, seeping into the heavy feeling of having people count on us.  On his staff, he had, he guessed, right then, at that moment, more than ten different people who were in some deep, deep shit.  He pulled out his napkin and started to note specific worries he had for members of his staff.  An ill parent.  A spouse struggling with addiction and anger. An adolescent child who cannot seem to find his way.  Foreclosure and bankruptcy from a family business gone wrong.  Social and emotional upheaval.  A mentally disabled sibling, undergoing treatment for illnesses he can’t even understand he has. 

Wow.  Right?  Just… so much.  

There’s no real formula on how to help, either.  People react in all kinds of ways when their lives hurl into crisis mode:  Some tell their friends and colleagues, others carry it privately and alone.   Both are fine, but we can’t predict a person’s reaction to a particular situation—and, thus, we can’t plan how we, ourselves, should respond.  No.  Instead, we just need to honor each person, honor each journey, and, if we can, help carry the burden.

And of course, we have to care of ourselves so we can help.  It’s so hard to do.  I certainly haven’t got it figured out.  I really wish I had a neat, clean, concise bulleted list of suggestions, but I have no such thing.  Instead, I try to just be extra forgiving of myself.  I keep exercising.  I eat right, but don’t get too mad at myself when I get lost in handfuls of MnM’s and pretzles (yes, together).  I try not to worry about the insomnia that robs my sleep night after bloody night.  When I feel the snark and judgment of others, as comes with a job like mine, I try to ride it out and release it into the universe.   It’s okay, I remind myself.  You’re carrying a lot.  

That’s what we do.  Carry all we can, and recognize when it’s getting heavier, heavier, too heavy.

And love to my dear father-in-law—a man with whom I shared a unique and sweet fondness.  Rest in peace, Fred.  xo

Head lice

When I was six years old, the week before Christmas break, my first grade teacher gave my class the lecture about head lice.  It was the “talk-to-the-parent-through-the-kid” approach:  Your parents should clean your hair very well every single night.  They should make sure all sheets, towels, hats, gloves, and clothing is squeaky-clean.  There had been a lice outbreak in our school, and she told us we needed to keep very, very clean.  “We will be doing lice checks on everyone here at school,” she said gravely.  She showed us pictures of lice; she talked about how quickly they reproduce and how they would make us feel itchy and uncomfortable.  As she spoke, dread settled in my stomach and crawl up to my face and then my hairline.  Almost as if I couldn’t control my own hand, I began to scratch the back of my head.  I saw Miss Lehman’s eyes flick over to me.

I don’t know who thought telling a group of six-year-olds how to parent our parents on this issue was a good idea, but, well, whatever.

The school nurse knocked on the classroom door a few minutes later.  “Send them all out, one at a time,” she told Miss Lehman.  “I’ll give them a quick check and send them right back to you.”

Miss Lehman looked right at me.  “Honey?  Why don’t you go first?” she said.  

My face flushed hot as I stood and left the room. 

 

The nurse beckoned to a stool placed right outside the classroom door.  She held a box of wooden toothpicks in her gloved hand; she picked one out and placed the rest of the box on a stool next to the chair.  I felt the pick on my scalp as she weaved it through my long hair.   I listened hard to her breath, hoping it would tell me what she was seeing.

It just took a moment.  “I’m going to have you go in and get your things,” she said.  “Your mother is going to have to come get you and take you home for the rest of the day, all right?”  I nodded numbly.  Her voice was kind, but there was an unmistakable condescending tint, which felt like chastisement.  I imagined a speech bubble above her head:  What a disgusting child you are.  Get out of this school and go clean yourself up.  

I so did not want to go back in the classroom to retrieve my coat and backpack.  Everyone would know I was filthy and itchy; they would whisper about my creepy-crawlies.  My mortification was thick, raw, and ugly.  I thought I might throw up. 

But I was a compliant child, so I pulled myself up from the stool slowly, as if I wore a block of concrete on my feet instead of my raggedy winter boots.   I turned, desperate for a last-minute reprieve.  “Go on,” she said, nodding toward the door.

I went.  It was a very, very long journey to my desk, my cubby, my books and lunchbox, out the door again and toward the office. 

I breathed again when I saw my sisters, sitting side-by-side in the office. It hadn’t occurred to me they would be there, too.   I was so happy to see them I had to hold myself back from crying.   I sat in the empty chair next to my oldest sister.  “It’s okay,” she whispered.  I nodded.

My mother arrived to pick us up and endured the school nurse’s detailed instructions on what to buy and how to treat our hair and clothing.  “Don’t skip any of the steps,” she said, handing over three sealed envelopes, one for each of us.  “This explains when the girls can come back to school.” 

We left the school, bundled in our winter coats.  There was RID, and hot water, and hours at the laundramat.  There was even—this was 35 years ago—a head-dunk in kerosene, because my father wanted to make damned sure the lice was gone forever. 

It’s annoying when a writer tells what she’s trying to say, because a good writer shouldn’t have to explain herself.  But I do it here, just in case, because of course this isn’t about lice, or how much we’ve evolved in the area of lice treatment, or about what’s right or wrong with how we do things.  It’s about the snapshots a child will slip into a lifelong photo album. 

I’ve never forgotten that day.  No one was unkind; no one had ill intentions; no one did anything wrong.  It was just this thing that happened, and I remember it as clearly as I remember anything.  And I think about that, often, as a mother and educator—about those early memories, and how fiercely they grip.  

Children are seeing; they are watching; and they will remember. 

Disciplining the Whole Room

When I was in fourth grade, Mrs. Morris routinely disciplined our class by having us put our heads down on our desks to "think about" what "we" had "done."  I was a painfully compliant child, so these punishments felt mystifying and deeply, deeply wrong.  I would clench my eyes and breathe deeply, smelling the sweat on my arms as my nose compressed into my skin.  I'd listen to the tick-tick-tick of the clock, betting against myself on how many minutes it would take for our sentence to end.  Meanwhile, in the back of the room, Doug Webb and Shane O'Leary snickered and spit, infuriating Mrs. Morris ever more. 

Which explains my huge, gigantic pet peeve:  When a whole group of innocent kids gets punished for the choices of a few.  Or one.

I’ve seen this happen on buses, in classrooms, on sports teams, and, most prominently of all, in the cafeteria at lunch.  Especially older kids.  One or two of them, usually leaders and usually gleeful in their search for trouble, will gather a couple followers in the hunt for ways to get themselves in trouble.  They don’t seem bothered when the grownup in charge resorts to all-group discipline; in fact, it seems to make it all the more fun.

Many years ago, I worked in a middle school where the person in charge of lunch duty would routinely grow infuriated at a group of kids, or a specific table, and she’d lose her mind on the whole room.  She’d shout and holler and work herself into such fury that she had to culminate in a big ol’ consequence.  “For the rest of the period, it will be silent lunch,” she’d hurl out.  “I don’t want to hear a single word.  A single sound.  For the rest of the period.” 

In her defense, lunch duty was a terrible gig, and after years and years, she was sick of it.  There were several hundred students in the room, all packed in with their hunger and hormones and teenaged drama.  It was hard, hard work.  Infuriating work.  Which is why her temper and frustration routinely overwhelmed her and grew too big for her to manage. 

Unfortunately, she’d made herself a target by being so easily provoked into a tizzy; some students found it downright funny to get her. Some even found glee in being punished with silent lunch; after all, it opened up a whole new game:  If they giggled  or snorted while her back was turned, and then wiped their faces clean while she whirled around, it was pretty much impossible to ever get caught.  She’d get madder and madder, watching her beloved silent lunch being chipped away, one too-loud sneeze at a time, until finally everyone would be (literally) saved by the bell and, with the loudest whoops, flee the cafeteria on their way back to class. 

But while a handful of students were playing cat-and-mouse with the teacher, there were of several hundred students who were trying to lie low and do everything right.  They’d come into the room and done precisely what they were told to do.  Get lunch.  Sit.  Eat.  Talk quietly.  Throw trash away.  Wait for the bell. 

It just wasn’t fair.

At the time, I couldn’t do anything about it; I was in no position to intervene or offer solutions.  I couldn’t have done anything anyway; I wouldn’t have any clue how to do it differently or better.  After all, at the time, I was still trying to develop my own articulated beliefs about why the whole thing felt so wrong. 

Now, though, I can; I try to reinforce how deeply unfair it is to punish whole groups of students for the behaviors of one.  I explain how we lose respect from students when we can’t delineate between problem and non-problem behaviors.  I suggest how much easier it is to find the root of the problem and deal with that, specifically, rather than a whole mass of students at once. 

Here’s the thing.  If one kid throws a tater tot across the room, that’s the kid who should have some consequences.  If one kid mouths back, it is that mouth we should deal with.  If three kids start an inappropriate and nasty chant, it is those three kids who should be pulled and dealt with.  Focusing on the kids who did the deed—and letting the others proceed with a peaceful day—will garner far more respect from the larger group that if we spit and snarl our way to all-group discipline. 

Too Tired to Learn

In college, I pulled exactly one all-nighter.  My freshman year, I stayed up to study for a final calculus exam.  I’d never been one to stay up late, so by midnight I was a sloppy, slurry mess; by three a.m. I couldn’t have articulated the difference between an asymptote and a derivative; and by the time I fell into bed for a catnap before the exam, I’d forgotten all the math I’d ever known.  I bombed the exam, and were it not for a compassionate professor, I’d still have a failing grade on my final transcript. 

Thinking clearly is virtually impossible if we are tired.

Several years ago, a student enrolled in our school after an indescribable and difficult journey that led her and her mother to an apartment in our attendance area.  On her first day, Alysia was ghost-like, all dark circles and blank eyes.  She was fierce, though, in everything she did—in her glare as I met her at the front doors, in her combative reaction to peers, in her rude eye-roll to her teacher, in her stomping and flouncing around.  When I stopped by to check in mid-morning, the teacher, a wildly patient and loving soul, looked like she’d been through a tornado.

“Why don’t you let me talk to her,” I told the teacher.  “I’ll sit down with her and see if I can get some ideas for handling the few days while she gets used to being here.”  The teacher nodded, and told me Alysia would come to the office after lunch.

Alas, just as the teacher sent Alysia to my office, I got called to help in another classroom.  My secretary got her settled in a seat until I could get back.   Soon afterwards, I turned into my office and was stopped in my tracks by Alysia, sprawled awkwardly on a chair, sound asleep.

 

I tiptoed out and let her be.

Several hours later, I heard her rustle around and went in.  She was sheepish and sullen as her eyes fluttered open and met mine.

“You were pretty tired,” I said.

She nodded. 

“I don’t blame you one little bit,” I told her.  “I’m glad you found a way to get some rest.”  We chatted awhile, and when I felt she was relaxing a bit, I showed her the picture I’d snapped at her as she slept.  “This is what a tired kid looks like.”  We both smiled.  “You don’t look comfortable there in that chair, but something must have worked for you.”

“I’m pretty tired,” she admitted. 

After school the teacher and I talked about it.  “She’s a sweet kid,” I said.  “She’s just worn out, I think.” 

“What should I do?” the teacher asked. 

“I don’t see that we have a choice,” I told her.  “She is exhausted… and her body needs to heal.  I think we should find a way for her to get some rest.” 

The next morning, the teacher moved a few seats around, making room for a big and fluffy beanbag chair in the dark, calm corner beside the bookshelves.  She told Alysia it was all right for her to rest there anytime.  “Whenever your eyes get heavy, or your mind doesn’t know what to do next, go take a seat on this chair.  It’s a good place to rest,” she said.

For several days, Alysia spent more time asleep at school than she did awake.  By week’s end, though, the teacher felt she was waking up, both figuratively and literally.  She started to participate.  She tentatively found herself among books, learned some characters she loved.  Over time, she recovered from whatever ordeal had worn her out, and started to show interest and willingness to join the class activities.  Day by day, her stamina increased and she revealed herself to be a whip-smart student with creative ideas and a mind like a sponge.

If we are tired—the kind of tired that can only be healed with sleep and time—there really is no sense in trying to push through.  I’m not talking about the typical kid-tired thing, where a little challenge and adrenalin can help them get up and moving; I’m talking about the kind of tired where it’s impossible to think clearly.  The kind of tired that isn’t fixed by a good night’s sleep or a weekend nap.  When the body is ready to shut down, we need to listen and provide a way to give it what it needs.