Yes We Can! Will We Really? Yes We Will!

M. Jamal F. (Modesto, CA)

"What is that?" the boy asked the old man pointing at a spot in the mud. "Looks like a critter track, I bet you left one too." said the old man, looking around at the muddy footprints on the rocks near the boy. The boy looks at his own tracks in the mud and on the rocks and asks, "Who made these?" "That is a good question, I have a book of prints and maybe we can figure it out." The old man and the boy scurry up the rocks out of the creek and head to the house to get the book to see what left the track in the mud. They find the book and take it back to the creek to compare the track to those in the book and figure out that it was a skunk. "I want to tell my mom about the skunk track!" exclaimed the boy. "Good," The old man replied, "let's write it in our journal so we don't forget to tell her tonight when she gets home." They sit down and the boy tells the old man what to write and they construct a few sentences about what they saw and how they figured out what it was. They read the sentences over a couple of times in writing them and then again when they were done so that the boy would be able to read it later that night. They put the Journal away to read to the boy's mom later that night.

This is an example of learning taking place. Curiosity is met with information and then the information is set through writing and later teaching all in an environment of trust and caring. The old man is my grandfather Frank Van Schaick and I am the little boy from the story. My Grandfather was a teacher and a principal who had retired when I was four years old so that he could help take care of me while my mom worked. This was a very special situation and we cannot think that we should or need to replicate the level of understanding and the personal connection between a boy and his grandfather, in a public school setting. We can and should look to the conditions that made this learning experience meaningful and attempt to foster them in our schools.

In this story I was interested in something and had some information that I wanted to expand upon. I had a knowledgeable person who was paying attention to my interests and provided new information and resources for me to use in satisfying my curiosity. Once I had learned something new I was encouraged to pass the information on and given tools and help in doing so. The teacher was using a real world situation to develop my strengths and to help me to use my mind well in an area of interest to me. These are the attributes of effective teaching and learning. Trusting relationships, interest based, student choice, real world application of knowledge, and connections between the learner and their community. We need to support schools in which these attributes of effective teaching and learning are present and or sought.

Thank you!

Nicole H. (Palo Alto, CA)

I have been teaching, formally and informally, for over ten years accumulating many interesting stories and experiences along the way. One of those experiences stands out from all the rest as a lesson and reminder as to why I teach. Unlike most of my teaching experiences this particular one was not planned nor was it in the United States.

Towards the end of a volunteering vacation at a boys orphanage in Guatemala I realized that there was a sluggish pattern to the young boys school days, spend an hour watching an educational video, recite math to the nuns, play soccer for a couple of hours, then color in what were supposed to be educational coloring books. So when one of the nuns asked if I would like to teach the boys numbers in English I jumped at the chance to bring some variety to the day. I put together a quick game and we recited our numbers, 1-10 in both Spanish and English for about an hour after which we went and played our daily soccer game.

It was not until later in the day, during coloring time, that I realized the true impact I could leave the children, and later I realized an impact on the nuns as well. I pulled out some blank paper and started to make Spanish to English number posters for the small room; Uno = One, Dos = Two, etc. As I go to tape the posters on the wall the boys start to read them out loud and they get louder and louder to the point where the nun gets up and leaves the room with a look of indignation on her face. I was convinced I had crossed a line, committed a cultural offense and La Madre Superior was being summoned to ask me to leave.

As La Madre Superior entered the boys immediately quieted themselves as she looked up at the colorful posters with piercing eyes only Mother Superiors can have. In those eyes I saw a small tear and my apologies started immediately, "Lo siento, Lo siento...", she stops me before I can say anything further, hugs me and in broken English says "Thank you. We ask every volunteer to teach our boys English and when they leave both the boys and the nuns forget everything that was taught. Now they can remember and start to learn more."

It was at this point that I not only knew how to be but would be a teacher for the rest of my life.

Beth G

My transformative learning experience took place in an accelerated high school where juniors and seniors were exposed to college-level work and scheduling in a boarding school environment. There were no class rankings, so my 250 classmates and I were free to explore our interests in challenging courses we might otherwise have avoided. And we were freed from competition with one another. Since the stakes were low, we could aim as high as we liked. There were tutorial sessions four nights per week, with professors and classmates available to help.

The work was so challenging that seeking tutoring was seen as the expected norm, rather than stigmatized. We were also socialized to believe we should help one another in formal and informal settings. We were each paired with an adviser who helped us manage our schedules, course requirements and after-school goals. And we were given time away from formal classwork to pursue an interdisciplinary project designed on our personal interests. Seniors exhibited their work in a week when classes were suspended. We were also expected to engage in service as a graduation requirement and to balance our studies with social engagements. The residential staff helped us balance our various commitments and develop life skills I still carry with me today.

So my experience was transformative because learning was project-based, interdisciplinary, tailored to my interests, cooperative, challenging and allowed me to demonstrate my learning, contribute to my community within and outside school and develop balance between competing aspects of my life.

Whitney F (Nashville, TN)

I opened The Creative Fitness Center in 1996 to provide my community with an environment where they could develop the "artist mentality" I had read about in a career book. I did not know where people went to learn this mentality, but I did know (3 years out of U of Mich) that life was much more like a blank canvas than a multiple choice test. The result was an entire community of people who were empowered to create change on the canvas that is their life. I was asked to open a private school based on the supportive, stimulating environment at The Creative Fitness Center. Kids loved it because we respected their own unique expression and made it fun to reach deeper to learn different ways of creating. Our teaching provided them with a foundation on which to build -- what they built was up to them! If you read Dan Pink's book A Whole New Mind, Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future you will see how important it is to "work out" our right brain/creative muscles so that we can follow in your (Obama) footsteps to create change.

Gwendolyn F (Winterville, GA)

I love teaching my students to write because there is no greater pleasure in my life than expressing myself. Over the years, as politicians and other folks push standardized testing, students resent the more formal writing and complain, refuse to participate or do a lousy job to prove how much they hate writing.

Today, I explained to my students that we were going to venture into writing about ourselves - about things that matter to us. Guess what? Not one complaint - not one. We pulled up Inspiration (a software that helps with planning) and students worked through the parts of the document that they needed to include in the writing in order to create a document that they can display with pride.

This writing will be a slow process because students will need to conference constantly with teachers and students; learn new evaluation techniques to help them make decisions about their writing style.

It was wonderful day working with my students because they have already demonstrated their total interest in writing about themselves. Little do they know that there is more ahead.

Hanna N (Portland, OR)

I was trained in school and through my early professional career to write and edit, to think and communicate clearly. Along with that training -- which came packaged in an excellent, challenging education -- I also learned to be a bit of a snob. I read books I was supposed to read, I could define "synecdoche" and follow iambic tetrameter in a poem, and I quietly judged people who didn't punctuate or capitalize in emails.

About two years ago, to escape the loneliness of freelance editing from home, I decided to do some volunteering. I found a group called Write Around Portland that advertised the opportunity to be a volunteer editor. The organization runs writing workshops for people that wouldn't otherwise have an opportunity to write in a community of other writers. Write Around Portland teams up with social service and education agencies, like residential treatment centers for youth with addiction problems, or shelters for battered women, or the VA, or jails, and they offer 10-week writing courses. Many of the people in these workshops had bad experiences in schools. They had been told, in one way or another, that they weren't capable or worthy of achieving much in the way of an education, and some are consequently prone to resisting someone (possibly someone younger than them, with less life experience), standing at the front of the room and instructing them in how to "properly" construct a metaphor. That's just not likely to work for them. And, more to the point, not likely to add in any meaningful way to their eventful lives.

So these workshops are run more like conversations. You sit and write, you share, you talk, you learn from the people around you. You practice, in small but concrete ways, supporting the other people in your group. You learn about them from their writing. You might discover that people have very different ways of using punctuation, but that each way is capable of conveying the singular power of someone's voice or their story. In education circles, it's called "meeting the student where they are," or, more formally, constructivism. In human terms, it's about humility -- recognizing that people, adults and children alike, bring more to the table than they are usually given credit for.

I've never actually been to one of these workshop. I only read what comes out of them. At the end of each 10-week session an anthology is produced, one piece of writing from each of the workshops. I get the finished anthology and I edit it for typos, formatting, grammatical errors -- although the vast majority of these are left untouched, as I evaluate whether they convey a voice, a circumstance, or an intentionality on the part of the author. To do this, I have to suppress every instinct I have about language and completely relearn how I was taught to judge writing. I sit with each anthology for hours over two to three days. I pore over each piece. I make changes, then go back and unmake them, then remake and unmake them again. My training did not prepare me to listen to a writer's voice, no matter how unpolished or untrained. I had to learn that punctuation is much more flexible and powerful a tool than I imagined. I had to unlearn the meaning of "error." Technically, there are errors all over these pieces -- sentences that stretch on exhaustively, like balls of yarn, raps with tortured tenses like this one: "I gone loved you an hate you till the day I die," endless numbers of poems about wizards and goddesses and swirling purple skies of rage. But when you spend an hour with one of these pieces, you begin to be able to unravel its inner logic and catch a glimpse of the person who created it. I begin to feel very lucky to have some knowledge of these people's lives, their stories. The best function of literature, the one that has propelled it along for hundreds of years, is its ability to find the cracks in the world we think know and to widen the chink, bringing us closer to other people -- even complete strangers -- in the process.

I wouldn't have learned half of what I have learned if it weren't for the people doing the writing, and the people who felt it was important to run these workshops. Their deep compassion and love of their work was enough to cause me to rethink my training, to give me pause long enough to consider that this paradigm shift might be worth exploring. Once each anthology is edited and out of my hands, it goes off a printing shop. Three times a year at a church downtown hundreds of people gather, arranging themselves on tightly-packed folding chairs, to listen and support the workshop participants as they read their poems and fiction from the anthology. They are family, they are friends, they are fellow writers, and they are people like me, who only attend church three times a year for this gathering of souls, to feel part of something meaningful and life-changing. There is mmm-hmm-ing, there are confirmations ("Tell it, Sonya, just tell it"), we clap, we laugh, we share Kleenex, we accommodate those around us, we lift up those before us, we feel bigger and better than we did an hour before.

The opportunity to hear and see these people, these voices that I've struggled with and come to admire, is confirmation of the value of my newfound humility. They have no idea how much they have changed me, but I thank them all the same.

Bill M. (VA)

I always thought some school rules were arbitrary. I challenged my high school rule prohibiting boys from wearing jewelry (like earrings) by convincing the school senior class to boycott buying the class ring. School officials freaked. They were forced to create a formal student/faculty process to debate the rules.

Oh, I had fun with another rule about wearing "jacket and tie"...the rule never said "where" to wear the tie (like around your head, leg, as a belt). Heh-heh. They had to change that one, too. Learning to turn the rules on the authority making them was powerful.

Dorothy B (Glendale, AZ)

I am a teacher in a Title I school in Phoenix, AZ. For the past six years, I have been able to raise the funds to take some of my students to the Grand Canyon to take a class called "Dynamic Earth". It is taught by the Park Rangers, who specifically deal with education and align the trips to the AZ State Standards. Many of these students have never been out of their neighborhoods.

When we get to the Flagstaff area and view the San Francisco Peaks (our tallest mountsins -- over 12,000 feet), my students are so excited. Last year there was a thin layer of snow at the rest area. Many had never seen snow. They ran and jumped around it until we had to get back on the bus. Their first view of the canyon was like watching children on Christmas morning or some other special occasion.

The Rangers took us to a fossil bed a 1/4 mile down. They all learned that this area was once an ocean. They also learned the types of animals that lived in the ocean. Next, they hiked along the rim and learned the layers of the Canyon. The Rangers teach them the environmental part, as well. How important it is for them and future generations to take care of this precious part of our Earth.

The final part of the workshop is to sit quietly and reflect on the Canyon. The students get to draw a picture or write a poem or just their thoughts. I feel so very fortunate to be able to be a part of this. When they get back to school, they have writing, science, social studies, and reading experiences to build on. I have past students tell me every year about their favorite part. They also ask me if I am going to take more students this year.

Fieldtrips like this are being taken away from our students. We cannot allow that to happen. These wonderful trips give many of these students possibilities in their lives.

Paul L (Concord, NH)

Last summer, I participated in a graduation gateway exhibition of a young man, "Patrick", at the Monadnock Community Connections School in Surry, NH. Patrick started MC2 four years ago with only one interest, his Supra car! He was able to build on that interest through 4 different internships and mentorships, to graduation with core academic skills. He graduated with 12 credits of post-secondary accounting courses and has gone on to 4 year college. All because he was connected to a school that connected to him. His comment, "I would have ended up in jail if it wasn't for this school!" Bravo, CES and Ted Sizer, for creating and fostering the creation of a wave of schools dedicated to true personalized learning! Bravo!!!

Kirsten O (Brookline, MA)

I am an educational consultant and writer, and the most powerful learning experiences I have are when the folks I am consulting with/learning with have chosen to be part of the group, agree on the nature of the problem, and there is a high degree of trust among group members. So I'm working now in a troubled middle school that won't make AYP this year and might be closed due to underperformance. Many of the teachers and all the school leaders got together at the beginning of the year though and decided they would work on problems of instruction as a way to deal with their underperformance. Because everyone as agreed this would be fruitful, and people have developed a lot of trust with each other about discussing hard things, we are really seeing improvement every day, even in test scores! But all three conditions: trust, agreement on the problem, and choosing to participate are ingredients of making this a powerful learning environment. Thanks for asking!

Sam C (Washington, DC)

I was a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin, and I had just gotten back into school after flunking out my freshman year, so I thought I was ready to get serious, but I wasn't exactly confident about my prospects. I took a course on African-American Music & Literature with Craig Werner, and for the first time, a light went on. He played songs I was listening to on my own time, and showed me how to find the deeper meaning and connect it to a larger meta-narrative that was all around me.

For the first time I saw that the world was far more connected, and complex, than I'd previously imagined. The stories we read opened up new worlds for me, and tapped into my innate curiosity about people, culture and identity. Professor Werner challenged me to fulfill my own intellectual potential, in ways that made me work harder than I'd ever worked as a student. Because of his class, I discovered that I really loved to learn, and that it was possible to combine all of my passions. And I decided to become an educator largely because I wanted to give other people the gift that he had given me.

William O (Newport News, VA)

The year was 1988 and I was a new high school principal in Franklin County, Virginia. The school had problems - a high drop out rate, low percentage of students going on to higher education, and parent and student apathy to name a few. We did a good job of working with the academically talented students, but not all students.

In my five years as principal the faculty (with changes) came around to accept a mission of meeting all students' needs. We started interdisciplinary teaming in 9th grade to ease the middle school transition, set up a mentoring program for at-risk students, and taught interdisciplinary classes (combining 11th grade American Literature and American History so students studied the Civil War as they read the Red Badge of Courage) to make school more meaningful and relevant for student learning. We also reprised the musicals that the drama and music department put on after 20 years of artistic silence in that arena. I met with all new faculty every Friday over pizza and soda to help them last through the first year and be more effective than they might have been otherwise.

At the end of the fifth year our drop out rate had gone from 13.8% to 1.2%. The percentage of students going to higher education went from about 30% to 75%, and there was a true sense of school among community members and faculty. That was a true learning and growing community with which I was honored to share part of my life.

Steven B (New York, NY)

My story is true and from the heart. In the Fall of 2009, I began the journey into my next step of my educational career. After two interviews and glowing recommendations from my supervisors, I was awarded a scholarship to attend Bank Street College of Education to pursue my Leadership in Educational Change degree to become a school leader.

My current position is as a school counselor in the South Bronx working for the New York City Department of Education. I hope to rise up to the position of Secretary of Education after more experience throughout the state and country to assist in supporting and implementing policy that works for our students, staff and country to become globally competitive and close the global achievement gap. My experience so far in the South Bronx was been eye opening. My students respond to the interventions both academic and social/emotional in and out of the classroom. They take with them, these skills and transform their lives in every day life to become productive citizens of the world and bring a message of change to their community. We work hard to gain parental involvement and the parents who come on board are active and willing to help any day of the week. I look forward to more experiences like this in the years to come and toward making an impact on the future of this great country and the students who study and learn in the halls of our schools nationwide.

Jilanne H (San Francisco, CA)

We enrolled our son in a Waldorf-inspired preschool at the age of 2.5. During the next two years, he thrived in an environment that emphasized respect and empathy for his peers that was modeled by his teachers. Electronic media were NEVER used. Children took many nature/outdoor hikes/walks. They helped teachers cook and clean. Learning was also CHILD-DIRECTED, with teachers encouraging children to ask questions and "find out more" whenever possible.

This year, in preparation for public school, we put him in a traditional pre-K. We were appalled at the use of media for the purpose of crowd control (the opiate of the masses) and the lack of respect for children as people. We were also appalled at the mind-numbing "homework" given to 4-5 year-olds. Given this experience, we chose an alternative private school in San Francisco for our son. The school's philosophy emphasizes respect for all people and all things, encourages students to view teachers as resources (not adversaries), and offers creative (not mind-numbing) learning opportunities. If public school could do this, we'd be first in line.

Jeremy N (Jamaica Plain, MA)

I went to traditional NYC public schools and had a fine education but not at all innovative. While getting my Master in Teaching, I was asked to reflect back on an effective teacher and to remember a specific lesson they did. I absolutely could remember nothing...except one teacher, one time having us sit it a circle to have a discussion, which seemed radical at the time. Since then I was fortunate to teach in two small schools who believed in project based hands on curricula that required students to demonstrate mastery of knowledge and skills in exhibitions. The depth of learning shattered anything that could be achieved in a lecture and test, also known as Drill and Kill, environment. The high stakes testing culture of schools today is holding our entire nation back, and to lowered expectations not higher ones.

Tam W (Elon, NC)

I was educated in England and best remember my High School English teacher, a woman who inspired through enthusiasm. She was in love with language and literature, and her unfailing, bouncing enthusiasm and permanent grin enthused us all.

There were no non-participants in that class - the boys at the back of the class sat up, listened, read the texts, and contributed their ideas. Every class was a lively discussion. No ideas were 'wrong', but we were challenged (by both our peers and our teacher), and we did need to be able to explain and justify them. We could challenge our teacher too; we could question what she was saying, and decide for ourselves what we believed.

One idea sparked more, and more... everything was interesting...we wanted to learn, we wanted to discuss, we wanted to write papers! Our exam results were outstanding, but what really mattered was that we had learned to think, analyse, and discuss, and we had developed a love of learning that would last a lifetime.

The key to learning therefore is enthusiasm combined with high expectations. I firmly believe that when high expectations are placed upon children, they rise to meet them.

Years later I moved to North Carolina, had children of my own in public schools, and to my shock found neither teachers, students, nor parents seemed to know that love of learning; that enthusiasm, or that pleasure. Expectations of all 3 groups seemed at rock bottom.

Children were not required to discuss, analyse, criticize, or justify, merely to memorize material, fill in blanks or color in 'bubble' answers. Children recieve an 'A' just for turning work in - it could be incorerect, they could have completely failed to grasp the concept, but so long as they turned in something, they got an 'A'.

What does a child learn from this? Certainly not that an A marks an achievement and is worth working for. Isn't an 'A' supposed to mean 'excellent'?

In my HS English class, if we earned an 'A' we knew that we had worked hard, had thought hard, had explained and justified ourselves; that we had learned something, and that we could take pride in that. In the NC State Schools my children were being robbed of that pride because an "A' meant nothing - it had been devalued, and so had education and learning.

From Easter onward they did nothing but 'practice tests' so that they might pass the EOG Test and become another statistic.

They were bored; they didn't see the 'point' - and no wonder! I thus came to realize what a truly great gift that English teacher had given me. How I wish I could see even one tenth of her enthusiasm, and one tenth of our class's ebullience in my local public schools today.

It is not only our children who are being robbed. Teachers have the 'ease' of checking 'fill in the blank' papers rather than the more time-consuming task of reading individual essays - but what richness they are missing without the joy of reading a student's perceptive essay and having the satisfaction of knowing that a valuable lesson has been learned, and a love of learning passed on. It horrifies me that learning - true learning- seems to have been lost in a morass of 'bubble sheets' and bureaucracy.

Children in our state schools are not taught to write, nor expected to write. A request for a 1 or 2 page essay is met with squeals of dismay about excessively 'long' assignments. And then, having had no practice in writing or expressing ideas, they are suddenly expected to pass a State writing test- a test which again focuses to much on grammar, and not enough on understanding, expression, communication, and the higher order thinking skills.

Above all, I want our children to be taught how to think! This is the greatest gift of education, the gift that my education gave me; a gift, sadly, that is being denied our children today. A generation of children who can color in bubbles but can neither think for themselves, nor express their ideas in writing is truly a national tragedy.