tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53312889782628480852024-03-05T19:17:35.178-08:00Salon_EdSalon/Ed is a gathering of people who have begun to revision education . It is a think tank of diverse voices working towards the common dream of forge new paths and universal designs of learning .Salon_Edhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05787943365553649095noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-18746339314907261292013-02-05T04:41:00.000-08:002013-02-05T04:41:04.459-08:00The Truth About Charters<br />
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<span class="entry-title" id="yui_3_5_1_22_1360067680788_273">School turnarounds prompt community backlash</span></h1>
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Drastic school turnarounds prompt community backlash, rash of civil rights complaints</h2>
<cite class="byline vcard" id="yui_3_5_1_22_1360067680788_272" style="color: #7d7d7d; display: inline-block !important; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 11.818181991577148px; font-style: normal; line-height: 2.2em; vertical-align: middle;">By <span class="author vcard" id="yui_3_5_1_22_1360067680788_291">Christina Hoag, Associated Press</span> | <span class="provider org" id="yui_3_5_1_22_1360067680788_271">Associated Press</span> – <abbr class="updated" style="border: 0px;" title="2013-02-04T13:34:05Z">23 hrs ago</abbr></cite></div>
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<img alt="<p> In this photo taken Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013, The Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy explains the need to transform Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles starting in the next academic year, after the board approved a drastic overhaul during a board meeting in Los Angeles. LAUSD's Crenshaw High School is currently one of California's lowest performing high schools. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)" class="lightboxf90aad2e505316eb9f21ad667b8fcc7f" height="472" id="yui_3_5_1_22_1360067680788_257" src="http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/zf2KcK6qVmd5xWmgxr_nUg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9MjQ0ODtjcj0xO2N3PTMwMDA7ZHg9MDtkeT0wO2ZpPXVsY3JvcDtoPTQ3MjtxPTg1O3c9NTc5/http://globalfinance.zenfs.com/images/US_AHTTP_AP_FINANCIALTIMES/8cc311c11e967a04280f6a706700f5bb_original.jpg" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; display: block; margin: 0px auto;" title="<p> In this photo taken Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013, The Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy explains the need to transform Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles starting in the next academic year, after the board approved a drastic overhaul during a board meeting in Los Angeles. LAUSD's Crenshaw High School is currently one of California's lowest performing high schools. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)" width="579" /></div>
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In this photo taken Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013, The Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy explains the need to transform Crenshaw<span class="expandable-text" id="yui_3_5_1_1_1360067680788_898"><span class="more-text"> …<a class="more-text-link" href="" style="color: #005790; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold;">more<b style="background-image: url(http://l.yimg.com/os/mit/media/m/article/images/sprite-article-163287.png); background-position: 0px 6px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; margin-left: 3px; padding-left: 10px;"> </b></a></span></span></div>
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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The federal government's push for drastic reforms at chronically low achieving schools has led to takeovers by charter operators, overhauls of staff and curriculum, and even school shutdowns across the country.</div>
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It's also generated a growing backlash among the mostly low-income, minority communities where some see the reforms as not only disruptive in struggling neighborhoods, but also as <span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1359984910_4" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #366388; cursor: pointer;">civil rights</span> violations since turnaround efforts primarily affect black and Latino students.</div>
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"Our concern is that these reforms have further destabilized our communities," said Jitu Brown, education organizer of Chicago's Kenwood-Oakwood Community Organization. "It's clear there's a different set of rules for African-American and Latino children than for their white counterparts."</div>
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The U.S. Department of Education's civil rights office has opened investigations into 33 complaints from parents and community members, representing 29 school districts ranging from big city systems such as Chicago, Detroit and Washington D.C. to smaller cities including Wichita and Ambler, Penn., said spokesman Daren Briscoe. Two additional complaints are under evaluation, and more cities, including<span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1359984910_0" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #366388; cursor: pointer;">Los Angeles</span>, are preparing their filings.</div>
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Last week, Secretary Arne Duncan fielded complaints at a public forum in Washington. The forum was attended by some 250 people who boarded buses, vans and planes from around the country to demand a moratorium on school closings and present a reform model that calls for more community input, among other items.</div>
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The recurrent theme is that communities are fed up with substandard education, but want solutions that will not create upheaval at the schools, which are often seen as pillars of stability in neighborhoods where social fabric is fragile.</div>
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Instead of focusing on dramatically changing the structure of a school, officials should invest in improving teaching, learning, equipment, and community engagement, which happens more often at schools in white, affluent neighborhoods, Brown said.</div>
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"But the response of the school district is to throw a grenade into our schools," Brown said.</div>
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Reformers say civil rights complaints are misguided because school failure disproportionately impacts minorities in the first place. Turnarounds are efforts to improve that, said Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank.</div>
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However, he noted that turnarounds are often a "Band-Aid solution. Most of the turnarounds aren't going to succeed because the school continues to exist in a dysfunctional school system. Radical change at the district may be what's needed."</div>
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Federal officials said they are open to working with communities to lessen the impact of turnarounds.</div>
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"On the ground, these policies can have an impact we don't see," Briscoe said. "But there's no promise that we'll be able to satisfy all people."</div>
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Overhauling the nation's 5,000 lowest-performing schools is a cornerstone of the Obama administration's education policy. To do that, the federal government revamped the existing School Improvement Grant program, boosting it from a $125 million annual initiative in 2007 to $535 million for the current school year.</div>
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Under the renewed program, which launched in 2010 with a onetime $3.5 billion infusion, districts receive grants to institute one of four school jumpstart models. They can turn the school over to a charter or other operator, replace at least half of the staff and principal, transform the school with a new principal and learning strategy, or simply close the school. Improvement schools can receive up to $2 million annually for three years.</div>
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Results have been mixed.</div>
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In Chicago, where the nation's third largest school system has undertaken one of the more extensive turnaround programs, a study of 36 schools by the University of Chicago found some improvement in academic achievement in elementary and middle schools but not until the second or third year of either a principal or staff replacement or a charter conversion.</div>
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"They're closing the gap but it's taking some time to do so," said Marisa de la Torre, who directed the study.</div>
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With high schools, researchers did not have academic data to parse, so instead looked at attendance rates, which are often a good indicator of performance, de la Torre said. Attendance rates improved in the first year of a turnaround, but then reverted to pre-turnaround rates. "We can't really say if the glass is half full or half empty," de la Torre said.</div>
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A study released last May found graduation rates and college-prep course participation increased dramatically at a Los Angeles high school in the Watts section taken over by charter Green Dot Public Schools in 2008. The National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing called the new Locke High School "an impressive success story in many ways," but noted overall achievement remains low.</div>
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To boost academic performance, Green Dot now plans to revamp its ninth-grade curriculum to offer more remedial help and open a <span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1359984910_3" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #366388; cursor: pointer;">middle school</span> to better prepare kids for <span class="yshortcuts cs4-ndcor" id="lw_1359984910_8" style="cursor: pointer;">high school</span>.</div>
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With no guarantee that turnarounds produce solid results quickly, some question whether drastic reform is worth the disruption, and whether less radical changes could work as well given adequate time and funding.</div>
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"We take issue with experimental reforms such as these when it is only children of color who are the subject of the experiment and especially when the experiment has already failed," wrote Jonathan Stith of Empower DC in his federal complaint about Washington D.C. schools.</div>
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Staff replacements have proven especially problematic at schools where teachers have to reapply for their jobs. Many don't reapply out of resentment and it's hard to find experienced teachers who want to work in an urban classroom.</div>
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A study by the National Education Policy Center found that in turnaround schools in Louisville, Ken., 40 percent of teachers were fresh out of college. Other reformed schools have had to start off with substitutes.</div>
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"Teachers are like their surrogate parents," said Christina Lewis, a special education teacher at<span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1359984910_5" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #366388; cursor: pointer;">Crenshaw High School</span> in <span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1359984910_1" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #366388; cursor: pointer;">Los Angeles</span>, where teachers will have to reapply for jobs in the fall when the school is converted to a magnet. "I'm so afraid that teachers who have put their hearts and souls into their jobs won't return next year. We just need stability and resources."</div>
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Experts also note that impoverished children often rely on schools for meals, positive role models, and mentors for personal issues, as well as education. Trust built with familiar faces in the school community gets severed by drastic reforms, said John Rogers, director at the University of California Los Angeles' Institute for Democracy, Education and Access.</div>
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Several students at <span class="yshortcuts cs4-ndcor" id="lw_1359984910_6" style="cursor: pointer;">Crenshaw High School</span> in Los Angeles, where teachers must reapply for their jobs when the school is converted to a magnet program next fall, said it was disconcerting not to know who or what to expect.</div>
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"We have a lot of kids in foster care. Their lives are changing all the time," said Crenshaw student Anita Parker. "We have teachers who ask me if I need to talk. We have teachers who care about us."</div>
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The prospect of a <span class="yshortcuts cs4-visible" id="lw_1359984910_2" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(54, 99, 136); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 2px; color: #366388; cursor: pointer;">civil rights</span> complaint does not faze Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy, who has several high schools on his turnaround list. For Deasy, the real civil rights issue is that these schools have been allowed to fail for so long.</div>
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Crenshaw High School, the turnaround that is spurring community advocates to file the complaint, is the lowest performing school in the nation's second-largest system, a fact that Deasy called "immoral" at a recent <span class="yshortcuts cs4-ndcor" id="lw_1359984910_7" style="cursor: pointer;">school board</span> meeting.</div>
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Just three percent of students are proficient in math and 17 percent in reading. Just 37 percent of students attend school 96 percent of the time. Just half of the class of 2012 graduated.</div>
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"Students aren't learning. Students aren't graduating," he said. "The purpose of this decision is to make sure Crenshaw gets dramatically and fundamentally better."</div>
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School board member Marguerite P. LaMotte, the board's only black member who represents the Crenshaw area, said she was angry that every effort to reform Crenshaw had gone nowhere and civil rights was about improving the school: "We have got to change something at Crenshaw for the better."</div>
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collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-17949025825830280462013-02-05T04:31:00.002-08:002013-02-05T04:31:59.846-08:00The Truth About Chartershttp://news.yahoo.com/school-turnarounds-prompt-community-backlash-133405967.htmlcollettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-87935521986616362142011-06-08T11:25:00.000-07:002011-06-08T11:29:26.848-07:00The Power of Language<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"">Why I am no longer a teacher… but an educator.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"">educate</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3";mso-hansi-font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-bidi-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3""> |ˈej</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">ə</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3";mso-hansi-font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-bidi-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">ˌk</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">ā</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3";mso-hansi-font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-bidi-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">t|</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Baskerville Semibold";mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3""><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">verb [ trans. ] (often <b>be educated</b>)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to (someone, esp. a child), typically at a school or university <i>: she was educated at a boarding school.</i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="font-size:18.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">ORIGIN </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family: "Baskerville Semibold";mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">late Middle English : from Latin <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">educat- </span></i></span></b><b><i><span style="font-size:22.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold";mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">‘led out,</span></i></b><b><i><span style="font-size:20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold";mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">’ </span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">from the verb <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">educare</span></i>, related to <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">educere </span></i></span></b><b><i><span style="font-size:22.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold";mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">‘lead out’</span></i></b><b><i><span style="font-size:20.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold";mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3""> </span></i></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">(see <span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold">educe </span>).</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"">teacher</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3";mso-hansi-font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-bidi-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3""> |ˈt</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">ē</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3";mso-hansi-font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-bidi-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3""> ch </span><span style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">ə</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3";mso-hansi-font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-bidi-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">r|</span><span style="font-size:16.0pt; font-family:"Baskerville Semibold";mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3""><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">noun<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3"">a person who teaches, esp. in a school.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Baskerville Semibold"; mso-fareast-font-family:"ヒラギノ明朝 Pro W3""><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <!--EndFragment-->collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-56413715402161560062011-06-08T11:02:00.000-07:002011-06-08T11:03:18.956-07:00<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Helvetica; color: #3e83b4"><span style="font: 11.0px Helvetica">dailycensored.com </span>http://dailycensored.com/2011/05/27/how -do-teachers-matter-not-as-cause-agents-but-as-learning-opportunities/</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 19.0px Helvetica">How Do Teachers Matter? Not as Cause Agents But as</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 19.0px Helvetica">Learning Opportunities</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 8.5px Helvetica; color: #c8c8c8">Written by Paul Thomas</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Lost in the exaggerated claims of “bad” teachers being at the core of all that ails education and the</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">concurrent calls for greater teacher accountability, often linked to student test scores, is a careful</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">consideration of why we have universal public education in a free society and what the role of the teacher is</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">within that purpose.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Debates about teacher quality and education reform are doomed to fail if we do not first place both within our</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">purposes for and beliefs about education, human nature, and our culture. Universal public education, in its</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">essence, must rest upon a commitment to human agency and autonomy as well as a full and complex faith in</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">and support for democratic principles.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Once we embrace human agency and autonomy–everyone is born equal, including the rights of life, liberty,</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">and the pursuit of happiness–we have chosen a definition of “education” that rejects indoctrination and</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">enculturation, although these two purposes have dominated how and why our schools have functioned for</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">over a century. A people who believe in individual freedom must cherish the empowerment of every human</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">mind. To distrust human autonomy is to reject freedom and to call for some authority to determine the lives</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">of others–and thus either to diminish some people’s access to education or to reduce a system of schooling</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">to oppression through indoctrination and enculturation.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">If, then, we are truly a people who believe in human freedom and thus appreciate the role of universal public</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">education as an opportunity for individual empowerment, agency, and autonomy, we must acknowledge the</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">complex and important role of a teacher within a commitment to individual freedom and democracy.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Let me clarify here that I have been a teacher from the middle school level through graduate education for</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">27 years now. In that time, I have taught thousands of students of nearly every possible ability, background,</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">and level of commitment. For the record, I have not caused a single one of those students to learn.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Teachers in an education system designed for a free society and people are not cause agents but</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">mechanisms for designing, providing, and enhancing learning experiences for every student regardless of</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">that student’s station in life. Ultimately, a student who is free is the final determinant of whether or not</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">learning occurs–as long as that student’s life allows that choice.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Calls for teacher accountability tied to student outcomes, such as tests, misrepresent the ethical role of a</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">teacher in a free society. Few people take the time to consider that viewing a teacher as a cause agent</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">(holding a teacher accountable for the behavior of another free human) and viewing learning as the mere</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">transmission of knowledge from a teacher-authority to a passive class of students are antithetical to our</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">beliefs in individual freedom and democracy.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Can a teacher through coercion, threat, bribe, or force of personality demand from a student a behavior that</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">appears to match a learning outcome? Of course.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">But that is indoctrination/enculturation–not education. It denies the dignity and humanity of the teacher and</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">the student; it rejects the sacred faith in individual freedom and democratic principles.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Teachers of free people cannot and should not cause learning to happen; thus, we must focus our concern</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">for teacher quality exclusively on the characteristics of that teacher and the quality of the learning</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">opportunities that teacher provides. [As well, the pursuit of teacher quality must be situated appropriately in</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">the larger picture of what influences impact student learning, acknowledging that the quality of the teacher is</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">a small percentage (about 14%-33%) of those influences that are dominated by factors beyond the walls and</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">control of the teacher or the school.]</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">So, how do teachers matter, and how should we seek higher quality teachers, holding them accountable for</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">providing every child access to the learning opportunities all humans deserve at birth?</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Teachers must possess and constantly enhance their knowledge base–the content they teach and their</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">pedagogy–by being life-long learners in formal classroom settings, such as graduate courses and degrees,</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">and by being scholars, actively engaged with the fields that they teach (the first is typical of K-12 educators</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">and the latter, of professors, but both should be elements of all teachers).</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Teachers must be reflective and transparent practitioners of their craft, and here is a key element of the</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">debate about teacher quality that we are consistently failing to recognize. Teacher quality is not revealed in</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">student outcomes; in fact, student outcomes tend to mask and distort the quality and role of the teacher.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Teacher quality is best revealed in the act of teaching itself–although complicated and time consuming to</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">capture and evaluate, the act of teaching is the single best evidence of the opportunities a teacher provides</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">for all students. And those opportunities are the only rightful things for which teachers can and should be</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">held accountable because it is the act of teaching and creating learning opportunities that is within the</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">teacher’s power to control (although our bureaucratic approach to schooling has historically denied teachers</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">the exact autonomy that would support that accountability).</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Rightful accountability must be limited to that which a person controls–all other accountability is unethical,</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">oppressive, and corrosive.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Yes, every child deserves a high quality teacher, one who is in a constant process of growth as a teacher</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">and not fixed at the moment of attaining a prescribed quality or goal. One truism that should guide how we</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">evaluate teacher quality is seeking ways to determine the difference between a teacher who teaches one</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">year twenty times and a teacher who teaches twenty years, informed by an equal commitment to being a</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">scholar.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Focusing on prescriptive and external data points (student test scores) works to insure that we create and</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">reward the worst sort of teachers–fixed at a point in their growth, teaching one year twenty times. Teacher</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">accountability linked to student outcomes reduces teacher quality to raising test scores–a misleading and</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">minimal expectation for teacher quality in a free society.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Teacher quality matters, and we can identify and foster better teachers. But that process, if we truly value</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">individual freedom and democracy, must exist in a spirit of community and with a commitment to human</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">dignity and empowerment–for both teachers and students.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">A system of self-evaluation, peer-evaluation, and supervisor-based evaluation–designed to support and not</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">punish or reward–that addresses teacher competence (content and pedagogy) and, above all else, the</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">quality of the educational opportunities offered to students regardless of their background is the sort of</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">teacher accountability and education reform we must seek.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">However, any commitment to teacher quality and education reform for individual freedom and democracy will</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">not produce the results we seek for our children if we continue to see raising teacher and school quality as a</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">silver bullet and as an isolated avenue to social reform. Social reform must precede or occur simultaneously</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">with proper care for teacher quality or we will persist in our greatest failure of all–pointing an accusatory</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">finger at teachers and schools while the rest of society crumbles over our shoulders.</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">Finally, while clichés can fail us, let’s consider and revise a familiar one as we face teacher quality:</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">You can lead a horse to water, but can’t make it drink. And if you do find a way to force the horse to drink,</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">and the horses die from drinking poisoned water, it may be time to stop focusing on who’s leading the horse</p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica">and attend to the source of the poisoned water.</p>collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-25887178337161414012011-06-04T17:30:00.000-07:002011-06-04T17:37:11.931-07:00When did it get so complicated?<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3aVbJhg23Ao" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><div><br /></div><div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;">This is my pedagogical model for teaching. Be authentic, and engaging. Be both a learner and teacher.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;">And never ever forget to “get to know” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">your</i> student’s. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-73382011015809047172011-03-12T15:45:00.000-08:002011-03-12T16:07:17.531-08:00Teacher I Need You<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtQoF1LuWZnkfL41W86ST-cAI_bOvTfagO9tJd6c5BA8cudD9E57W8Ieau9pJu-j1Zo88IK9D1dNbVbWLYBu1D87Oct0GbYPmtnRbW1KpH6LKCgfUG-Riaf_gQFz0tQJ0kNAH74Z9WFAOa/s1600/511f239e0b8fe6371a9f97db249178b91545d6a8.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 96px; height: 96px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtQoF1LuWZnkfL41W86ST-cAI_bOvTfagO9tJd6c5BA8cudD9E57W8Ieau9pJu-j1Zo88IK9D1dNbVbWLYBu1D87Oct0GbYPmtnRbW1KpH6LKCgfUG-Riaf_gQFz0tQJ0kNAH74Z9WFAOa/s400/511f239e0b8fe6371a9f97db249178b91545d6a8.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5583348669908302450" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"All students are rude disengaged lazy</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.” Natalie Munroe</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This comment on her blog by a high school English language arts teacher created a virtual flurry. The water cooler wag went from executive boardrooms to teacher lounges. She was suspended from her job (with pay) while her school district investigated. A debate ensued centering on two themes: 1.) That her comments were unprofessional 2.) That her censure by the board violated her right to free speech<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Natalie will have her provoked fifteen minutes of fame. The debate will quiet. To me though the essential issue will sit under a rock, still unexamined. The important question (a key concept in learning theory) has not been addressed.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Natalie Munroe asked no question. She stated an opinion, or rather assigned blame. She judged and chastised the individuals to whom she is obliged not only as an educator but as a citizen. Natalie by her action volunteered to be sacrificial lamb to a world that fears for its children and their futures.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">(We are all so overwhelmed that we protect ourselves with ennui yet clearly from the hyperbole surrounding this event we all care, passionately about our children’s education.) <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Natalie has right to voice but the student’s would have been better served had she not laid the blame on them. She may have served cause better had she posed the question, “Why am I not able to motivate, engage the student’s? What are the obstacles? How can I design my instructions to facilitate accountable?’’ Etc. So she set off smoke bombs when what are needed are fireworks and a whole parade.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">In my years as a teacher I often felt shackled to a covert silence. If you say anything, look with too much scrutiny you may violate the sacrosanct system of school or union. We are a family. We do not take our business to the streets. Weird message when our purpose is to serve the intellectual, academic and citizenship needs of our student’s.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:medium;">Natalie is bold in honesty but not in integrity. We teachers must be bolder, braver. We must begin to speak in volume, resolutely to the Dark Ages of education. Too often we have turned our vision askance and silenced our tongue to a system that does not always serve students. School organizations are often paternalistic and have a system of cronyism best reward those who do not dissent. We may not ask too much or illustrate too much.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><div style="text-align: left;">The paradigm must change. We must scrutinize education and the systems charged with this great goal. We must stop assigning blame, on families, the unions, teacher, to the student’s. We must dig deep. We must seek outside the box. We must probe deeply the structure and organization. We must look to the system in the same probing way we do at the CEOs of failing companies. How does the organizational structure affect employees, influence students performance etc.</div><o:p></o:p></span><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We must design for learning, equality. We must equate funding with civil liberties and assure that equal monies and time be spent with and for all student’s. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We must ask thousands of questions about structural inequities. Communication with families and communities must bridge the school experience to the greater world. We must tend to the disconnect. Learning is not something that begins when the bell rings, it begins at birth. Those we have rendered powerless must have voice to their vision and dream. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Teachers are called. We have a vocation. Our expertise and commitment must be solicited on behalf of the organization and those we serve. Our training in the essential skill set of technological literacy should be the cornerstone. We must stretch our thinking. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">When Natalie bellowed her angst perhaps this was our call to action. This is not a time for polarized, politicized posturing. Now is the time to adapt and revision. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It is an emergency…we must react to this eminent disaster…<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Let us all exercise our right to free speech. May we speak resolutely on behalf of children?</span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:20.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-42935377999096432152011-03-03T10:20:00.000-08:002011-03-03T10:29:33.579-08:00The Truth Rings<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyekUbSih5ymdFVaoG5P8xKm8YlK6ys2PX6_ZbUi9naXUI_Pd97L5TneOxrDYoDUnrGWzDQdM4Ledc2532CobEpdNMT_C3TeyOwfMcmBClVVEOdvv_Fckx7IgOHxoK3P4v47XMSMcZgjC/s1600/DSCF2137.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHyekUbSih5ymdFVaoG5P8xKm8YlK6ys2PX6_ZbUi9naXUI_Pd97L5TneOxrDYoDUnrGWzDQdM4Ledc2532CobEpdNMT_C3TeyOwfMcmBClVVEOdvv_Fckx7IgOHxoK3P4v47XMSMcZgjC/s320/DSCF2137.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579920887626796802" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">On February fourteenth 2011 I was proposed to. A banner day on a banner day. The proposal of marriage, an antidote to having been scathed by divorce and the disarming event of looking for love in the cyber age.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">He held my eyes with his, his speckled brown’s looking lucid. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">He locked his look into mine. Steading his ambly gait, he pulled up the slipping strap of his denim coveralls and asked,“Will you marry me?’ He peered intently. My response his mirror.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Looking like ET, he just stared at me. I from a realm alien to him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">I looked to his button eyes, holding his fate with my response. This moment somehow altering my destiny. “Why </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">I believe you are the best offer I’ve had in years.” He handed me the plastic heart shaped ring that had minutes before embellished the holiday cupcake. He had sucked the gooey pink frosting off to clean sparkly trinket. I held the too small ring to my heart. We were sealed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">He knew in that moment that in spite of his age (11), diagnoses, frequent hospitalizations, and the contemporty art wiring of his brain love prevailed. He was loved and loveable. Most important was his tin man heart. He could love. He did love.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">Bursting from him that Valentine Day, (not Cupid’s arrow, or the muse Venus) was the sweet beat of his own heart, palpitating for others. He knew that in spite of being erratically compelled by demonic thoughts and behaviors, light and love dwelled in his heart. (Perhaps he could grow it bigger and bigger till it reigned and edged out the darkness.) .<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">And me, I the tin man as well. I feared I had a hollow heart. I can get stuck on the love channel, that staticy place that whines about others failures. I stockpile till my heart becomes heavy. The silent phone, the empty email in-box my mirrors, measurement of my worth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">But in my years of teaching on that day of love the kids always got it. Children too young, to harden up their heart and stockpile their hurts became love’s gurus. With every candy heart, every block print uppercased “ I LOVE YOU”, they practiced love like sacrament.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">They loved unabashedly, expressively, and expansively. Little fingers stuffing cards in envelopes, doilies, and glitter melty hearts, mushy chocolate. The greatest commandment of all “Is love”…. So my plastic bauble will forever sit among my gilded treasures.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">On Valentines Day my betrothed and all the students I ever had “got it”. They lived on the love channel and sprinkled love about like an ever-flowing font, not seeking anything in return but just the right to say, “I love you”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">As brown-eyed boy (Mr. Coveralls) handed me his most prized possession, asked me to marry him, and told me he loved me, my teacher brain briefly took over. But who am I to bolt the door to hope. I said simply “ I love you too”. (and always shall as you gave me the lesson in love, and you young man were the teacher of that curriculum.)</span></span><o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-3049392720078276632011-02-10T13:51:00.000-08:002011-02-10T14:07:18.685-08:00<div><br /></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“No matter what happens keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start over again, and you will grow stronger until you find you have accomplished a purpose-not one you began with, perhaps but one you glad to remember.” And who shall count the innumerable times that she tried, failed, and conquered.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Helen Keller quote Annie Sullivan in the Biography <o:p></o:p></span></span><u><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Teacher Anne Sullivan Macy</span></span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><u><span style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></u></p><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><u><o:p></o:p></u></p> <!--EndFragment--> <!--EndFragment--> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Gv1uLfF35Uw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div>collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-74130670423337892032011-01-24T19:27:00.000-08:002011-01-24T19:29:05.973-08:00How ever will we survive if we dwell in the box?<!--copy and paste--><object width="334" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/SirKenRobinson_2006-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/SirKenRobinson-2006.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=66&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity;year=2006;theme=master_storytellers;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=how_we_learn;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;event=TED2006;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;" /><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="334" height="326" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/SirKenRobinson_2006-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/SirKenRobinson-2006.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=66&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity;year=2006;theme=master_storytellers;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=how_we_learn;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=bold_predictions_stern_warnings;event=TED2006;"></embed></object>collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-80604545342683718742011-01-24T19:18:00.000-08:002011-01-24T19:22:02.408-08:00Once upon a boy...There is always a backstory.<br />This back-story was horrific. It spanned continents and cultures. It could read like a case study of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) or depression.<br /> This is a story without an ending. It is a story about living, in the dark. It is a story about new beginnings, but never a fresh start.<br />We always want things simple. We long for a hero. We insist upon a villain. A story with a protagonist and antagonist.<br />It would be so much easier if we could just label the good guys and bad guys. If we could just assign everyone we could live comfortably in middle earth.<br />But there is much grey in life and occasional defining moment.<br /><br />This is a story about a boy. Yes he is fifteen. Yes he looks more man than boy but when one has their childhood snatched from them through trauma they must catch up or quit trying. To quit trying is to live dying.<br /><br />This boy lived many sad chapters. Too big for one lifetime chapters. The world his mirror. He understood all his losses to be a reflection of his worthlessness. The world quit him in multiples. It landed him in a land/country where he did not speak the language or the culture. The world quit him when he lost the chance to hear his mother’s heartbeat in his ear as he rested his boy head to her chest. In its very efforts to save him it tried to form him and thus abandoned him. Sometimes his insides got too big and instead of imploding would explode. Scared of himself really scared for his host he got angry and pushed his foster families away. Disillusioned and spent they packed him up. Mystical thinking, maybe he will do better in the next home. They once again were the mirrors he created to his lack of value. His rationale “I will quit before it quits me.”<br />At fourteen he moved yet again to another foster home…foster home number? No fresh start he was followed by the shadow of his clinical depression, the agencies case file and that forever mirror of nothing intact. He was clothed in negative perceptions from forever.<br /><br />We long for a fairy tale ending. We want the story filed in the glossy pages of Readers Digest. We do not like the churning. We do not want to see headlines of terrorist living among us. Instead of looking for those hidden cells of loss and sorrow we become the blind. What we do not see will not hurt us. But how do we change course, how do we digress from this scripted story, broken boy, broken system, unfixable.<br /> This boy man has glowy skin, hidden eyes that avert when you speak with him. He must only see the tarnished mirror, fearing what he sees in your eyes is scarier than what is in his own burnished view. As you look at him he seems to be willing himself small. Almost imperceptibly he can becomes small, a two year old with a binky in a safe corner all curled up. In his new home, just like always he took to the bed, took to the dark, took haven from the world in his own darkness.<br /><br />A dance began. A dance the boy knew well. He was always righteous in the dance. He had been validated in his belief again and again and again. “Worthless” This new foster dad, stubborn, persistent, but still the boy had the power of dark to make this foster dad dance.<br /> <br />“You can’t stay in bed, you must go to school…” A familiar refrain to the boy. He has had this message always…bend…Foster dad…carries on with a refrain. Boy has turned to silence. “ You must go take any step to the light.” Louder, more resolute, a cacophony that boy knew to be the soundtrack to his mirror.<br />This foster dad was highly regarded by the community and the placement agency. He had been the keynote speaker at their yearly banquets. People Magazine had had requested an interview with this dad, who had singularly parented 12 young men. He was to be the cover feature with his United Nation household with children from Iraq, Sudan, Burma, Sudan, Somalia, and the US. He would be saint of the week. Foster dad says “No.”<br /> He is a dad. Not a hero. He does not want his boys lives coopted for some feel good Nano second in the grocery store line. Or an Andy Warhol hero. Fifteen minutes of fame world stays stagnant.<br />But this boy, well no publication is going to come about for this dervish story of spiraling depression. No feel good photo op here.<br /><br />Dad and boy dance the ever-familiar dance. The boy’s despair so deep that dad becomes Orpheus descending to a dark underworld. This place may envelop both.<br />There are others in this home. Young men, incrementally, boldly stepping into adulthood. They just keep doing the next right thing, with dad’s stewardship till it adds up to grownup. Brush you teeth, go to school, take care of your responsibilities, and get a little job…. Until that day when dad and boy man exhale and know flight is more than a notion. A village of men one behavior one boy at a time.<br /><br /> But this boy stymies dad. He upends the house. His behaviors begin to put the household in a position of vulnerability.<br /><br />The boy has been diagnosed with a depressive disorder. A brain chemistry disorder that can be brought on in children by trauma alone. Experts have ascertained a severe clinical depression in this boy. Depression is a land minimalized and misunderstood by people who have not stood at her precipice and lived with the abyss ready to eat them up from the inside out. Debilitating. A place so dark that those who love folks who dwell in this realm are left with a taint of grey on their own persona.<br />Months in this dad have danced too much. He is spent. This boy must leave. The sanctity and ultimately the safety of the household must be preserved. Dad to prepare the household for the ending tells one of the foster brothers He is leaving. This foster/heart brother whose own mountains of loss were so great only one who has climbed the summits in Tibet could know the arduousness of his journey speaks on his foster brothers behalf. Dad, Dad…Give him one more chance. One more chance. (When do we use up our chances?)<br /><br />So instead of dancing, foster dad planted his feet and stood his ground and gave one more chance. Like Orpheus with his music but this was more like a metronome of conscious with no room for navigation in pulsating tempo. “ You will go to school. You rise from that dark womb. I will stand next to you, like a one would with a little fellow who doesn’t yet know not to touch the stove, I will handed you your pill and watch you swallow it. You will stay. I will not cease. I will not give up on you. “<br /><br />And so like those yellow cards on a Monopoly board the chance turned into more than a chance. It altered the outcome of the game. it took some time before the chance kicked in but with the strategy in place it slowly took hold. Boy went to school more. He swallows the pill; maybe he swallows some pride. He tells dad that he has messed up and when the snows came and dad worked late, he stood under the glow of the street light and cleared a path for dad after a day at work. Dad exhales. His breath has been bated forever with hope.<br />He says to this young man one morning when handing him his meds, trying to frame for him how he got from the in jail corner to the “Go” that taking these prescribed meds were helpful. “See how this pill helped you” The boy does not avert his eyes now. He seizes hold of “dad’s “ with an incredulous look. “It’s not the pills.”<br />Dad ceases to breath, think this is the music by which a new dance will begin. Perhaps he is loosing boy to the underworld.<br />Boy holds dad’s gaze. “It was you dad.” You did not give up on me. You kept loving me.<br />So People Magazine just print this.<br />Hero’s are any and all folks who are bold enough to love unabashedly, bold enough to stand in the dark lighting matches, giving glimmers of light to those who dwell n the dark. .collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-55346379458868857772011-01-16T12:36:00.000-08:002011-01-16T12:37:47.200-08:00Are You Listening?<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Gey1PtXYwLI?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Gey1PtXYwLI?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-68368699519208061922011-01-16T12:25:00.000-08:002011-01-16T12:39:19.086-08:00The Research Says<object width="446" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/BreneBrown_2010X-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/BreneBrown-2010X.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=1042&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=brene_brown_on_vulnerability;year=2010;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=a_taste_of_tedx;theme=what_makes_us_happy;event=TEDxHouston;&preAdTag=tconf.ted/embed;tile=1;sz=512x288;" /><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="446" height="326" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/dynamic/BreneBrown_2010X-medium.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/BreneBrown-2010X.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=1042&introDuration=15330&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=830&adKeys=talk=brene_brown_on_vulnerability;year=2010;theme=how_the_mind_works;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=a_taste_of_tedx;theme=what_makes_us_happy;event=TEDxHouston;"></embed></object>collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-81890198633431717262010-09-09T09:54:00.000-07:002010-09-09T09:55:45.724-07:00Alexander Grahm Bell on Great TeachingAlexander Graham Bell once said about Anne’s (Helen Kellers' teacher Anne Sullivan) teaching skills, “You were at least not hampered by preconceived notions of how to proceed with your little pupil and I think that an advantage. You did not take to your task standardized ideas, and your own individuality was so ingrained that you did not try to repress Helen’s. Being a minority of one is hard but stimulating. You must not lay so much stress on what you were not taught by others. What we learn from others is of less value than what we teach ourselves.”collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-50784573094649300072010-08-26T14:38:00.000-07:002010-08-26T14:42:03.958-07:00My opinion re: Jeffrey Arnett NYT magazine article <meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title></title> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.1 (Linux)"> <style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">I emerged as an adult in high school. As an adolescent I lived what I needed on my interior journey. I took only one algebra (which I flunked once and then passed with a D.) I joyfully took took choir as an elective for four years ( which I flunked once for giving the nun grief about the inequities of her practices) and sought for group to belong/connect to. I never gave a thought to the future, and my folks were too busy with eight kids to “helicopter” me. I had little jobs cleaning and being a mothers helper. Mostly I concerned myself with my best friends and who might I kiss ( the adolescents work being learning to belong and intimacy)</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> Now as a mom, an educator and an armchair psychologist I can not help but wonder if adolescents were left to pursue the developmental work they need between ages fourteen and eighteen they might <i>arrive</i> <span style="font-family:URW Chancery L;"> </span>sooner and with less ambivalence. Currently adolescents must concern themselves with four math classes, a diatribe of standardized tests, the constant pressure of “ this will help you get into college” and a media that sexualize them from a most tender age. Parents are too afraid to ask the question “What so good about belonging anyways?.” Further due to our own fears and abashed hopes we pressure them and leaving little room for the essential question “What is my purpose? What is my passion?”</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Jeffrey Anett is asking some valid questions but I think he misses the essential ones.</p> collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-78303128079509800892010-08-26T14:36:00.000-07:002010-08-26T14:38:18.602-07:00New York Times on Twenty Somethings <meta equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title></title> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 3.1 (Linux)"> <style type="text/css"> <!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } H6 { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } --> </style> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></p> <p><a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/08/22/fashion/22adulthood-4.html','22adulthood_4_html','width=597,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 128);"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/08/22/fashion/22adulthood-4/22adulthood-4-articleInline.jpg" name="graphics8" height="183" width="190" align="BOTTOM" border="1" /></span></a><a href="javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/08/22/fashion/22adulthood-4.html','22adulthood_4_html','width=597,height=600,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes')"> <b>What Is It About Twenty Somethings?
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<br /></b></a> </p> <h6><b>Annie Ling</b></h6> <p>This question pops up everywhere, underlying concerns about “failure to launch” and “boomerang kids.” Two new sitcoms feature grown children moving back in with their parents — “$#*! My Dad Says,” starring <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/william_shatner/index.html?inline=nyt-per">William Shatner</a> as a divorced curmudgeon whose 20-something son can’t make it on his own as a blogger, and “Big Lake,” in which a financial whiz kid loses his Wall Street job and moves back home to rural Pennsylvania. A cover of The New Yorker last spring picked up on the zeitgeist: a young man hangs up his new Ph.D. in his boyhood bedroom, the cardboard box at his feet signaling his plans to move back home now that he’s officially overqualified for a job. In the doorway stand his parents, their expressions a mix of resignation, worry, annoyance and perplexity: how exactly did this happen? </p> <p>It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/t/teach_for_america/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Teach for America</a> jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life. </p> <p>The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation. </p> <p>We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/census_bureau/index.html?inline=nyt-org">United States Census Bureau</a>, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s. </p> <p>The whole idea of milestones, of course, is something of an anachronism; it implies a lockstep march toward adulthood that is rare these days. Kids don’t shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace. Some never achieve all five milestones, including those who are single or childless by choice, or unable to marry even if they wanted to because they’re gay. Others reach the milestones completely out of order, advancing professionally before committing to a monogamous relationship, having children young and marrying later, leaving school to go to work and returning to school long after becoming financially secure. </p> <p>Even if some traditional milestones are never reached, one thing is clear: Getting to what we would generally call adulthood is happening later than ever. But why? That’s the subject of lively debate among policy makers and academics. To some, what we’re seeing is a transient epiphenomenon, the byproduct of cultural and economic forces. To others, the longer road to adulthood signifies something deep, durable and maybe better-suited to our neurological hard-wiring. What we’re seeing, they insist, is the dawning of a new life stage — a stage that all of us need to adjust to. </p> <p><strong>JEFFREY JENSEN ARNETT,</strong> a psychology professor at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., is leading the movement to view the 20s as a distinct life stage, which he calls “emerging adulthood.” He says what is happening now is analogous to what happened a century ago, when social and economic changes helped create adolescence — a stage we take for granted but one that had to be recognized by psychologists, accepted by society and accommodated by institutions that served the young. Similar changes at the turn of the 21st century have laid the groundwork for another new stage, Arnett says, between the age of 18 and the late 20s. Among the cultural changes he points to that have led to “emerging adulthood” are the need for more education to survive in an information-based economy; fewer entry-level jobs even after all that schooling; young people feeling less rush to marry because of the general acceptance of premarital sex, cohabitation and birth control; and young women feeling less rush to have babies given their wide range of career options and their access to assisted reproductive technology if they delay pregnancy beyond their most fertile years. </p> <p>Just as adolescence has its particular psychological profile, Arnett says, so does emerging adulthood: identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and a rather poetic characteristic he calls “a sense of possibilities.” A few of these, especially identity exploration, are part of adolescence too, but they take on new depth and urgency in the 20s. The stakes are higher when people are approaching the age when options tend to close off and lifelong commitments must be made. Arnett calls it “the age 30 deadline.” </p> <p>The issue of whether emerging adulthood is a new stage is being debated most forcefully among scholars, in particular psychologists and sociologists. But its resolution has broader implications. Just look at what happened for teenagers. It took some effort, a century ago, for psychologists to make the case that adolescence was a new developmental stage. Once that happened, social institutions were forced to adapt: education, health care, social services and the law all changed to address the particular needs of 12- to 18-year-olds. An understanding of the developmental profile of adolescence led, for instance, to the creation of junior high schools in the early 1900s, separating seventh and eighth graders from the younger children in what used to be called primary school. And it led to the recognition that teenagers between 14 and 18, even though they were legally minors, were mature enough to make their own choice of legal guardian in the event of their parents’ deaths. If emerging adulthood is an analogous stage, analogous changes are in the wings. </p> <p>But what would it look like to extend some of the special status of adolescents to young people in their 20s? Our uncertainty about this question is reflected in our scattershot approach to markers of adulthood. People can vote at 18, but in some states they don’t age out of foster care until 21. They can join the military at 18, but they can’t drink until 21. They can drive at 16, but they can’t rent a car until 25 without some hefty surcharges. If they are full-time students, the Internal Revenue Service considers them dependents until 24; those without health insurance will soon be able to stay on their parents’ plans even if they’re not in school until age 26, or up to 30 in some states. Parents have no access to their child’s college records if the child is over 18, but parents’ income is taken into account when the child applies for financial aid up to age 24. We seem unable to agree when someone is old enough to take on adult responsibilities. But we’re pretty sure it’s not simply a matter of age. </p> <p>If society decides to protect these young people or treat them differently from fully grown adults, how can we do this without becoming all the things that grown children resist — controlling, moralizing, paternalistic? Young people spend their lives lumped into age-related clusters — that’s the basis of K-12 schooling — but as they move through their 20s, they diverge. Some 25-year-olds are married homeowners with good jobs and a couple of kids; others are still living with their parents and working at transient jobs, or not working at all. Does that mean we extend some of the protections and special status of adolescence to all people in their 20s? To some of them? Which ones? Decisions like this matter, because failing to protect and support vulnerable young people can lead them down the wrong path at a critical moment, the one that can determine all subsequent paths. But overprotecting and oversupporting them can sometimes make matters worse, turning the “changing timetable of adulthood” into a self-fulfilling prophecy. </p> <p>The more profound question behind the scholarly intrigue is the one that really captivates parents: whether the prolongation of this unsettled time of life is a good thing or a bad thing. With life spans stretching into the ninth decade, is it better for young people to experiment in their 20s before making choices they’ll have to live with for more than half a century? Or is adulthood now so malleable, with marriage and employment options constantly being reassessed, that young people would be better off just getting started on something, or else they’ll never catch up, consigned to remain always a few steps behind the early bloomers? Is emerging adulthood a rich and varied period for self-discovery, as Arnett says it is? Or is it just another term for self-indulgence? </p> <p><strong>THE DISCOVERY OF </strong>adolescence is generally dated to 1904, with the publication of the massive study “Adolescence,” by G. Stanley Hall, a prominent psychologist and first president of the American Psychological Association. Hall attributed the new stage to social changes at the turn of the 20th century. Child-labor laws kept children under 16 out of the work force, and universal education laws kept them in secondary school, thus prolonging the period of dependence — a dependence that allowed them to address psychological tasks they might have ignored when they took on adult roles straight out of childhood. Hall, the first president of Clark University — the same place, interestingly enough, where Arnett now teaches — described adolescence as a time of “storm and stress,” filled with emotional upheaval, sorrow and rebelliousness. He cited the “curve of despondency” that “starts at 11, rises steadily and rapidly till 15 . . . then falls steadily till 23,” and described other characteristics of adolescence, including an increase in sensation seeking, greater susceptibility to media influences (which in 1904 mostly meant “flash literature” and “penny dreadfuls”) and overreliance on peer relationships. Hall’s book was flawed, but it marked the beginning of the scientific study of adolescence and helped lead to its eventual acceptance as a distinct stage with its own challenges, behaviors and biological profile. </p> <p>In the 1990s, Arnett began to suspect that something similar was taking place with young people in their late teens and early 20s. He was teaching human development and family studies at the University of Missouri, studying college-age students, both at the university and in the community around Columbia, Mo. He asked them questions about their lives and their expectations like, “Do you feel you have reached adulthood?” </p> <p>“I was in my early- to mid-30s myself, and I remember thinking, They’re not a thing like me,” Arnett told me when we met last spring in Worcester. “I realized that there was something special going on.” The young people he spoke to weren’t experiencing the upending physical changes that accompany adolescence, but as an age cohort they did seem to have a psychological makeup different from that of people just a little bit younger or a little bit older. This was not how most psychologists were thinking about development at the time, when the eight-stage model of the psychologist Erik Erikson was in vogue. Erikson, one of the first to focus on psychological development past childhood, divided adulthood into three stages — young (roughly ages 20 to 45), middle (about ages 45 to 65) and late (all the rest) — and defined them by the challenges that individuals in a particular stage encounter and must resolve before moving on to the next stage. In young adulthood, according to his model, the primary psychological challenge is “intimacy versus isolation,” by which Erikson meant deciding whether to commit to a lifelong intimate relationship and choosing the person to commit to. </p> <p>But Arnett said “young adulthood” was too broad a term to apply to a 25-year span that included both him and his college students. The 20s are something different from the 30s and 40s, he remembered thinking. And while he agreed that the struggle for intimacy was one task of this period, he said there were other critical tasks as well. </p> <p>Arnett and I were discussing the evolution of his thinking over lunch at BABA Sushi, a quiet restaurant near his office where he goes so often he knows the sushi chefs by name. He is 53, very tall and wiry, with clipped steel-gray hair and ice-blue eyes, an intense, serious man. He describes himself as a late bloomer, a onetime emerging adult before anyone had given it a name. After graduating from Michigan State University in 1980, he spent two years playing guitar in bars and restaurants and experimented with girlfriends, drugs and general recklessness before going for his doctorate in developmental psychology at the University of Virginia. By 1986 he had his first academic job at Oglethorpe University, a small college in Atlanta. There he met his wife, Lene Jensen, the school’s smartest psych major, who stunned Arnett when she came to his office one day in 1989, shortly after she graduated, and asked him out on a date. Jensen earned a doctorate in psychology, too, and she also teaches at Clark. She and Arnett have 10-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. </p> <p>Arnett spent time at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago before moving to the University of Missouri in 1992, beginning his study of young men and women in the college town of Columbia, gradually broadening his sample to include New Orleans, Los Angeles and San Francisco. He deliberately included working-class young people as well as those who were well off, those who had never gone to college as well as those who were still in school, those who were supporting themselves as well as those whose bills were being paid by their parents. A little more than half of his sample was white, 18 percent African-American, 16 percent Asian-American and 14 percent Latino. </p> <p>More than 300 interviews and 250 survey responses persuaded Arnett that he was onto something new. This was the era of the Gen X slacker, but Arnett felt that his findings applied beyond one generation. He wrote them up in 2000 in American Psychologist, the first time he laid out his theory of “emerging adulthood.” According to Google Scholar, which keeps track of such things, the article has been cited in professional books and journals roughly 1,700 times. This makes it, in the world of academia, practically viral. At the very least, the citations indicate that Arnett had come up with a useful term for describing a particular cohort; at best, that he offered a whole new way of thinking about them. </p> <p><strong>DURING THE PERIOD</strong> he calls emerging adulthood, Arnett says that young men and women are more self-focused than at any other time of life, less certain about the future and yet also more optimistic, no matter what their economic background. This is where the “sense of possibilities” comes in, he says; they have not yet tempered their idealistic visions of what awaits. “The dreary, dead-end jobs, the bitter divorces, the disappointing and disrespectful children . . . none of them imagine that this is what the future holds for them,” he wrote. Ask them if they agree with the statement “I am very sure that someday I will get to where I want to be in life,” and 96 percent of them will say yes. But despite elements that are exciting, even exhilarating, about being this age, there is a downside, too: dread, frustration, uncertainty, a sense of not quite understanding the rules of the game. More than positive or negative feelings, what Arnett heard most often was ambivalence — beginning with his finding that 60 percent of his subjects told him they felt like both grown-ups and not-quite-grown-ups. </p> <p>Some scientists would argue that this ambivalence reflects what is going on in the brain, which is also both grown-up and not-quite-grown-up. Neuroscientists once thought the brain stops growing shortly after puberty, but now they know it keeps maturing well into the 20s. This new understanding comes largely from a longitudinal study of brain development sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, which started following nearly 5,000 children at ages 3 to 16 (the average age at enrollment was about 10). The scientists found the children’s brains were not fully mature until at least 25. “In retrospect I wouldn’t call it shocking, but it was at the time,” Jay Giedd, the director of the study, told me. “The only people who got this right were the car-rental companies.” </p> <p>When the N.I.M.H. study began in 1991, Giedd said he and his colleagues expected to stop when the subjects turned 16. “We figured that by 16 their bodies were pretty big physically,” he said. But every time the children returned, their brains were found still to be changing. The scientists extended the end date of the study to age 18, then 20, then 22. The subjects’ brains were still changing even then. Tellingly, the most significant changes took place in the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum, the regions involved in emotional control and higher-order cognitive function. </p> <p>As the brain matures, one thing that happens is the pruning of the synapses. Synaptic pruning does not occur willy-nilly; it depends largely on how any one brain pathway is used. By cutting off unused pathways, the brain eventually settles into a structure that’s most efficient for the owner of that brain, creating well-worn grooves for the pathways that person uses most. Synaptic pruning intensifies after rapid brain-cell proliferation during childhood and again in the period that encompasses adolescence and the 20s. It is the mechanism of “use it or lose it”: the brains we have are shaped largely in response to the demands made of them. </p> <p>We have come to accept the idea that environmental influences in the first three years of life have long-term consequences for cognition, emotional control, attention and the like. Is it time to place a similar emphasis, with hopes for a similar outcome, on enriching the cognitive environment of people in their 20s? </p> <p>N.I.M.H. scientists also found a time lag between the growth of the limbic system, where emotions originate, and of the prefrontal cortex, which manages those emotions. The limbic system explodes during puberty, but the prefrontal cortex keeps maturing for another 10 years. Giedd said it is logical to suppose — and for now, neuroscientists have to make a lot of logical suppositions — that when the limbic system is fully active but the cortex is still being built, emotions might outweigh rationality. “The prefrontal part is the part that allows you to control your impulses, come up with a long-range strategy, answer the question ‘What am I going to do with my life?’ ” he told me. “That weighing of the future keeps changing into the 20s and 30s.” </p> <p>Among study subjects who enrolled as children, M.R.I. scans have been done so far only to age 25, so scientists have to make another logical supposition about what happens to the brain in the late 20s, the 30s and beyond. Is it possible that the brain just keeps changing and pruning, for years and years? “Guessing from the shape of the growth curves we have,” Giedd’s colleague Philip Shaw wrote in an e-mail message, “it does seem that much of the gray matter,” where synaptic pruning takes place, “seems to have completed its most dramatic structural change” by age 25. For white matter, where insulation that helps impulses travel faster continues to form, “it does look as if the curves are still going up, suggesting continued growth” after age 25, he wrote, though at a slower rate than before. </p> <p>None of this is new, of course; the brains of young people have always been works in progress, even when we didn’t have sophisticated scanning machinery to chart it precisely. Why, then, is the youthful brain only now arising as an explanation for why people in their 20s are seeming a bit unfinished? Maybe there’s an analogy to be found in the hierarchy of needs, a theory put forth in the 1940s by the psychologist Abraham Maslow. According to Maslow, people can pursue more elevated goals only after their basic needs of food, shelter and sex have been met. What if the brain has its own hierarchy of needs? When people are forced to adopt adult responsibilities early, maybe they just do what they have to do, whether or not their brains are ready. Maybe it’s only now, when young people are allowed to forestall adult obligations without fear of public censure, that the rate of societal maturation can finally fall into better sync with the maturation of the brain. </p> <p>Cultural expectations might also reinforce the delay. The “changing timetable for adulthood” has, in many ways, become internalized by 20-somethings and their parents alike. Today young people don’t expect to marry until their late 20s, don’t expect to start a family until their 30s, don’t expect to be on track for a rewarding career until much later than their parents were. So they make decisions about their futures that reflect this wider time horizon. Many of them would not be ready to take on the trappings of adulthood any earlier even if the opportunity arose; they haven’t braced themselves for it. </p> <p>Nor do parents expect their children to grow up right away — and they might not even want them to. Parents might regret having themselves jumped into marriage or a career and hope for more considered choices for their children. Or they might want to hold on to a reassuring connection with their children as the kids leave home. If they were “helicopter parents” — a term that describes heavily invested parents who hover over their children, swooping down to take charge and solve problems at a moment’s notice — they might keep hovering and problem-solving long past the time when their children should be solving problems on their own. This might, in a strange way, be part of what keeps their grown children in the limbo between adolescence and adulthood. It can be hard sometimes to tease out to what extent a child doesn’t quite want to grow up and to what extent a parent doesn’t quite want to let go. </p> <p><strong>IT IS A BIG DEAL IN</strong> developmental psychology to declare the existence of a new stage of life, and Arnett has devoted the past 10 years to making his case. Shortly after his American Psychologist article appeared in 2000, he and Jennifer Lynn Tanner, a developmental psychologist at <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/rutgers_the_state_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Rutgers University</a>, convened the first conference of what they later called the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood. It was held in 2003 at Harvard with an attendance of 75; there have been three more since then, and last year’s conference, in Atlanta, had more than 270 attendees. In 2004 Arnett published a book, “Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens Through the Twenties,” which is still in print and selling well. In 2006 he and Tanner published an edited volume, “Emerging Adults in America: Coming of Age in the 21st Century,” aimed at professionals and academics. Arnett’s college textbook, “Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural Approach,” has been in print since 2000 and is now in its fourth edition. Next year he says he hopes to publish another book, this one for the parents of 20-somethings. </p> <p>If all Arnett’s talk about emerging adulthood sounds vaguely familiar . . . well, it should. Forty years ago, an article appeared in The American Scholar that declared “a new stage of life” for the period between adolescence and young adulthood. This was 1970, when the oldest members of the baby boom generation — the parents of today’s 20-somethings — were 24. Young people of the day “can’t seem to ‘settle down,’ ” wrote the Yale psychologist Kenneth Keniston. He called the new stage of life “youth.” </p> <p>Keniston’s description of “youth” presages Arnett’s description of “emerging adulthood” a generation later. In the late ’60s, Keniston wrote that there was “a growing minority of post-adolescents [who] have not settled the questions whose answers once defined adulthood: questions of relationship to the existing society, questions of vocation, questions of social role and lifestyle.” Whereas once, such aimlessness was seen only in the “unusually creative or unusually disturbed,” he wrote, it was becoming more common and more ordinary in the baby boomers of 1970. Among the salient characteristics of “youth,” Keniston wrote, were “pervasive ambivalence toward self and society,” “the feeling of absolute freedom, of living in a world of pure possibilities” and “the enormous value placed upon change, transformation and movement” — all characteristics that Arnett now ascribes to “emerging adults.” </p> <p>Arnett readily acknowledges his debt to Keniston; he mentions him in almost everything he has written about emerging adulthood. But he considers the ’60s a unique moment, when young people were rebellious and alienated in a way they’ve never been before or since. And Keniston’s views never quite took off, Arnett says, because “youth” wasn’t a very good name for it. He has called the label “ambiguous and confusing,” not nearly as catchy as his own “emerging adulthood.” </p> <p>For whatever reason Keniston’s terminology faded away, it’s revealing to read his old article and hear echoes of what’s going on with kids today. He was describing the parents of today’s young people when they themselves were young — and amazingly, they weren’t all that different from their own children now. Keniston’s article seems a lovely demonstration of the eternal cycle of life, the perennial conflict between the generations, the gradual resolution of those conflicts. It’s reassuring, actually, to think of it as recursive, to imagine that there must always be a cohort of 20-somethings who take their time settling down, just as there must always be a cohort of 50-somethings who worry about it. </p> <p><strong>KENISTON CALLED IT</strong> youth, Arnett calls it emerging adulthood; whatever it’s called, the delayed transition has been observed for years. But it can be in fullest flower only when the young person has some other, nontraditional means of support — which would seem to make the delay something of a luxury item. That’s the impression you get reading Arnett’s case histories in his books and articles, or the essays in “20 Something Manifesto,” an anthology edited by a Los Angeles writer named Christine Hassler. “It’s somewhat terrifying,” writes a 25-year-old named Jennifer, “to think about all the things I’m supposed to be doing in order to ‘get somewhere’ successful: ‘Follow your passions, live your dreams, take risks, network with the right people, find mentors, be financially responsible, volunteer, work, think about or go to grad school, fall in love and maintain personal well-being, mental health and nutrition.’ When is there time to just be and enjoy?” Adds a 24-year-old from Virginia: “There is pressure to make decisions that will form the foundation for the rest of your life in your 20s. It’s almost as if having a range of limited options would be easier.” </p> <p>While the complaints of these young people are heartfelt, they are also the complaints of the privileged. Julie, a 23-year-old New Yorker and contributor to “20 Something Manifesto,” is apparently aware of this. She was coddled her whole life, treated to French horn lessons and summer camp, told she could do anything. “It is a double-edged sword,” she writes, “because on the one hand I am so blessed with my experiences and endless options, but on the other hand, I still feel like a child. I feel like my job isn’t real because I am not where my parents were at my age. Walking home, in the shoes my father bought me, I still feel I have yet to grow up.” </p> <p>Despite these impressions, Arnett insists that emerging adulthood is not limited to young persons of privilege and that it is not simply a period of self-indulgence. He takes pains in “Emerging Adulthood” to describe some case histories of young men and women from hard-luck backgrounds who use the self-focus and identity exploration of their 20s to transform their lives. </p> <p>One of these is the case history of Nicole, a 25-year-old African-American who grew up in a housing project in Oakland, Calif. At age 6, Nicole, the eldest, was forced to take control of the household after her mother’s mental collapse. By 8, she was sweeping stores and baby-sitting for money to help keep her three siblings fed and housed. “I made a couple bucks and helped my mother out, helped my family out,” she told Arnett. She managed to graduate from high school, but with low grades, and got a job as a receptionist at a dermatology clinic. She moved into her own apartment, took night classes at community college and started to excel. “I needed to experience living out of my mother’s home in order to study,” she said. </p> <p>In his book, Arnett presents Nicole as a symbol of all the young people from impoverished backgrounds for whom “emerging adulthood represents an opportunity — maybe a last opportunity — to turn one’s life around.” This is the stage where someone like Nicole can escape an abusive or dysfunctional family and finally pursue her own dreams. Nicole’s dreams are powerful — one course away from an associate degree, she plans to go on for a bachelor’s and then a Ph.D. in psychology — but she has not really left her family behind; few people do. She is still supporting her mother and siblings, which is why she works full time even though her progress through school would be quicker if she found a part-time job. Is it only a grim pessimist like me who sees how many roadblocks there will be on the way to achieving those dreams and who wonders what kind of freewheeling emerging adulthood she is supposed to be having? </p> <p>Of course, Nicole’s case is not representative of society as a whole. And many parents — including those who can’t really afford it — continue to help their kids financially long past the time they expected to. Two years ago Karen Fingerman, a developmental psychologist at Purdue University, asked parents of grown children whether they provided significant assistance to their sons or daughters. Assistance included giving their children money or help with everyday tasks (practical assistance) as well as advice, companionship and an attentive ear. Eighty-six percent said they had provided advice in the previous month; less than half had done so in 1988. Two out of three parents had given a son or daughter practical assistance in the previous month; in 1988, only one in three had. </p> <p>Fingerman took solace in her findings; she said it showed that parents stay connected to their grown children, and she suspects that both parties get something out of it. The survey questions, after all, referred not only to dispensing money but also to offering advice, comfort and friendship. And another of Fingerman’s studies suggests that parents’ sense of well-being depends largely on how close they are to their grown children and how their children are faring — objective support for the adage that you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child. But the expectation that young men and women won’t quite be able to make ends meet on their own, and that parents should be the ones to help bridge the gap, places a terrible burden on parents who might be worrying about their own job security, trying to care for their aging parents or grieving as their retirement plans become more and more of a pipe dream. </p> <p>This dependence on Mom and Dad also means that during the 20s the rift between rich and poor becomes entrenched. According to data gathered by the Network on Transitions to Adulthood, a research consortium supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, American parents give an average of 10 percent of their income to their 18- to 21-year-old children. This percentage is basically the same no matter the family’s total income, meaning that upper-class kids tend to get more than working-class ones. And wealthier kids have other, less obvious, advantages. When they go to four-year colleges or universities, they get supervised dormitory housing, health care and alumni networks not available at community colleges. And they often get a leg up on their careers by using parents’ contacts to help land an entry-level job — or by using parents as a financial backup when they want to take an interesting internship that doesn’t pay. </p> <p>“You get on a pathway, and pathways have momentum,” Jennifer Lynn Tanner of Rutgers told me. “In emerging adulthood, if you spend this time exploring and you get yourself on a pathway that really fits you, then there’s going to be this snowball effect of finding the right fit, the right partner, the right job, the right place to live. The less you have at first, the less you’re going to get this positive effect compounded over time. You’re not going to have the same acceleration.” </p> <p><strong>EVEN ARNETT ADMITS</strong> that not every young person goes through a period of “emerging adulthood.” It’s rare in the developing world, he says, where people have to grow up fast, and it’s often skipped in the industrialized world by the people who marry early, by teenage mothers forced to grow up, by young men or women who go straight from high school to whatever job is available without a chance to dabble until they find the perfect fit. Indeed, the majority of humankind would seem to not go through it at all. The fact that emerging adulthood is not universal is one of the strongest arguments against Arnett’s claim that it is a new developmental stage. If emerging adulthood is so important, why is it even possible to skip it? </p> <p>“The core idea of classical stage theory is that all people — underscore ‘all’ — pass through a series of qualitatively different periods in an invariant and universal sequence in stages that can’t be skipped or reordered,” Richard Lerner, Bergstrom chairman in applied developmental science at Tufts University, told me. Lerner is a close personal friend of Arnett’s; he and his wife, Jacqueline, who is also a psychologist, live 20 miles from Worcester, and they have dinner with Arnett and his wife on a regular basis. </p> <p>“I think the world of Jeff Arnett,” Lerner said. “I think he is a smart, passionate person who is doing great work — not only a smart and productive scholar, but one of the nicest people I ever met in my life.” </p> <p>No matter how much he likes and admires Arnett, however, Lerner says his friend has ignored some of the basic tenets of developmental psychology. According to classical stage theory, he told me, “you must develop what you’re supposed to develop when you’re supposed to develop it or you’ll never adequately develop it.” </p> <p>When I asked Arnett what happens to people who don’t have an emerging adulthood, he said it wasn’t necessarily a big deal. They might face its developmental tasks — identity exploration, self-focus, experimentation in love, work and worldview — at a later time, maybe as a midlife crisis, or they might never face them at all, he said. It depends partly on why they missed emerging adulthood in the first place, whether it was by circumstance or by choice. </p> <p>No, said Lerner, that’s not the way it works. To qualify as a developmental stage, emerging adulthood must be both universal and essential. “If you don’t develop a skill at the right stage, you’ll be working the rest of your life to develop it when you should be moving on,” he said. “The rest of your development will be unfavorably altered.” The fact that Arnett can be so casual about the heterogeneity of emerging adulthood and its existence in some cultures but not in others — indeed, even in some people but not in their neighbors or friends — is what undermines, for many scholars, his insistence that it’s a new life stage. </p> <p>Why does it matter? Because if the delay in achieving adulthood is just a temporary aberration caused by passing social mores and economic gloom, it’s something to struggle through for now, maybe feeling a little sorry for the young people who had the misfortune to come of age in a recession. But if it’s a true life stage, we need to start rethinking our definition of normal development and to create systems of education, health care and social supports that take the new stage into account. </p> <p>The Network on Transitions to Adulthood has been issuing reports about young people since it was formed in 1999 and often ends up recommending more support for 20-somethings. But more of what, exactly? There aren’t institutions set up to serve people in this specific age range; social services from a developmental perspective tend to disappear after adolescence. But it’s possible to envision some that might address the restlessness and mobility that Arnett says are typical at this stage and that might make the experimentation of “emerging adulthood” available to more young people. How about expanding programs like City Year, in which 17- to 24-year-olds from diverse backgrounds spend a year mentoring inner-city children in exchange for a stipend, health insurance, child care, cellphone service and a $5,350 education award? Or a federal program in which a government-sponsored savings account is created for every newborn, to be cashed in at age 21 to support a year’s worth of travel, education or volunteer work — a version of the “baby bonds” program that <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/hillary_rodham_clinton/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Hillary Clinton</a> mentioned during her 2008 primary campaign? Maybe we can encourage a kind of socially sanctioned “rumspringa,” the temporary moratorium from social responsibilities some Amish offer their young people to allow them to experiment before settling down. It requires only a bit of ingenuity — as well as some societal forbearance and financial commitment — to think of ways to expand some of the programs that now work so well for the elite, like the Fulbright fellowship or the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/peace_corps/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Peace Corps</a>, to make the chance for temporary service and self-examination available to a wider range of young people. </p> <p>A century ago, it was helpful to start thinking of adolescents as engaged in the work of growing up rather than as merely lazy or rebellious. Only then could society recognize that the educational, medical, mental-health and social-service needs of this group were unique and that investing in them would have a payoff in the future. Twenty-somethings are engaged in work, too, even if it looks as if they are aimless or failing to pull their weight, Arnett says. But it’s a reflection of our collective attitude toward this period that we devote so few resources to keeping them solvent and granting them some measure of security. </p> <p><strong>THE KIND OF SERVICES</strong> that might be created if emerging adulthood is accepted as a life stage can be seen during a visit to Yellowbrick, a residential program in Evanston, Ill., that calls itself the only psychiatric treatment facility for emerging adults. “Emerging adults really do have unique developmental tasks to focus on,” said Jesse Viner, Yellowbrick’s executive medical director. Viner started Yellowbrick in 2005, when he was working in a group psychiatric practice in Chicago and saw the need for a different way to treat this cohort. He is a soft-spoken man who looks like an accountant and sounds like a New Age prophet, peppering his conversation with phrases like “helping to empower their agency.” </p> <p>“Agency” is a tricky concept when parents are paying the full cost of Yellowbrick’s comprehensive residential program, which comes to $21,000 a month and is not always covered by insurance. Staff members are aware of the paradox of encouraging a child to separate from Mommy and Daddy when it’s on their dime. They address it with a concept they call connected autonomy, which they define as knowing when to stand alone and when to accept help. </p> <p>Patients come to Yellowbrick with a variety of problems: substance abuse, eating disorders, depression, anxiety or one of the more severe mental illnesses, like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, that tend to appear in the late teens or early 20s. The demands of imminent independence can worsen mental-health problems or can create new ones for people who have managed up to that point to perform all the expected roles — son or daughter, boyfriend or girlfriend, student, teammate, friend — but get lost when schooling ends and expected roles disappear. That’s what happened to one patient who had done well at a top <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/ivy_league/index.html?inline=nyt-org">Ivy League</a> college until the last class of the last semester of his last year, when he finished his final paper and could not bring himself to turn it in. </p> <p>The Yellowbrick philosophy is that young people must meet these challenges without coddling or rescue. Up to 16 patients at a time are housed in the Yellowbrick residence, a four-story apartment building Viner owns. They live in the apartments — which are large, sunny and lavishly furnished — in groups of three or four, with staff members always on hand to teach the basics of shopping, cooking, cleaning, scheduling, making commitments and showing up. </p> <p>Viner let me sit in on daily clinical rounds, scheduled that day for C., a young woman who had been at Yellowbrick for three months. Rounds are like the world’s most grueling job interview: the patient sits in front alongside her clinician “advocate,” and a dozen or so staff members are arrayed on couches and armchairs around the room, firing questions. C. seemed nervous but pleased with herself, frequently flashing a huge white smile. She is 22, tall and skinny, and she wore tiny denim shorts and a big T-shirt and vest. She started to fall apart during her junior year at college, plagued by binge drinking and anorexia, and in her first weeks at Yellowbrick her alcohol abuse continued. Most psychiatric facilities would have kicked her out after the first relapse, said Dale Monroe-Cook, Yellowbrick’s vice president of clinical operations. “We’re doing the opposite: we want the behavior to unfold, and we want to be there in that critical moment, to work with that behavior and help the emerging adult transition to greater independence.” </p> <p>The Yellowbrick staff let C. face her demons and decide how to deal with them. After five relapses, C. asked the staff to take away her ID so she couldn’t buy alcohol. Eventually she decided to start going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. </p> <p>At her rounds in June, C. was able to report that she had been alcohol-free for 30 days. Jesse Viner’s wife, Laura Viner, who is a psychologist on staff, started to clap for her, but no one else joined in. “We’re on eggshells here,” Gary Zurawski, a clinical social worker specializing in substance abuse, confessed to C. “We don’t know if we should congratulate you too much.” The staff was sensitive about taking away the young woman’s motivation to improve her life for her own sake, not for the sake of getting praise from someone else. </p> <p>C. took the discussion about the applause in stride and told the staff she had more good news: in two days she was going to graduate. On time. </p> <p><strong>THE 20S ARE LIKE</strong> the stem cell of human development, the pluripotent moment when any of several outcomes is possible. Decisions and actions during this time have lasting ramifications. The 20s are when most people accumulate almost all of their formal education; when most people meet their future spouses and the friends they will keep; when most people start on the careers that they will stay with for many years. This is when adventures, experiments, travels, relationships are embarked on with an abandon that probably will not happen again. </p> <p>Does that mean it’s a good thing to let 20-somethings meander — or even to encourage them to meander — before they settle down? That’s the question that plagues so many of their parents. It’s easy to see the advantages to the delay. There is time enough for adulthood and its attendant obligations; maybe if kids take longer to choose their mates and their careers, they’ll make fewer mistakes and live happier lives. But it’s just as easy to see the drawbacks. As the settling-down sputters along for the “emerging adults,” things can get precarious for the rest of us. Parents are helping pay bills they never counted on paying, and social institutions are missing out on young people contributing to productivity and growth. Of course, the recession complicates things, and even if every 20-something were ready to skip the “emerging” moratorium and act like a grown-up, there wouldn’t necessarily be jobs for them all. So we’re caught in a weird moment, unsure whether to allow young people to keep exploring and questioning or to cut them off and tell them just to find something, anything, to put food on the table and get on with their lives. </p> <p>Arnett would like to see us choose a middle course. “To be a young American today is to experience both excitement and uncertainty, wide-open possibility and confusion, new freedoms and new fears,” he writes in “Emerging Adulthood.” During the timeout they are granted from nonstop, often tedious and dispiriting responsibilities, “emerging adults develop skills for daily living, gain a better understanding of who they are and what they want from life and begin to build a foundation for their adult lives.” If it really works that way, if this longer road to adulthood really leads to more insight and better choices, then Arnett’s vision of an insightful, sensitive, thoughtful, content, well-honed, self-actualizing crop of grown-ups would indeed be something worth waiting for. </p> <p> </p> <p>Robin Marantz Henig is a contributing writer. Her <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/magazine/04anxiety-t.html">last article</a> for the magazine was about anxiety.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></p> collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-53416795668970581112010-07-28T05:36:00.000-07:002010-07-28T05:39:58.007-07:00On Children<span style="font-style: italic;font-size:130%;" > <span style="font-family:lucida grande;">“ Kids show you the way into their world. We show them the way out.” </span></span><br /> Bonnie LaForet re: her special needs daughtercollettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-70826099978309401502010-05-29T17:13:00.000-07:002010-05-29T17:34:57.820-07:00The Bird Dies Again.There are no birds out the window. Instead the vapors of the industrial wasteland make alkali scented Rorschach steam cloud images. <br />I am distracted. Daily. Like an unoiled gear in my own head I hear the incessant moan/drone of machinery emanating from the nearby industrial complex. A Glade Plug In cannot mask the airs stench. Occasionally water spews spilling into our classrooms from the aged infrastructure of this once abandoned building. <br />The soundtrack of our days are the reverberations of a delivery truck,the passing trains or hollers from street basketball .<br /> Often the echo's of some child's sorrows resound through the thin plaster walls of the quiet room where the children are contained during violent episodes at this center program for emotionally impaired children.<br />In our previous school we faced a courtyard. It was home to robins, blue jay's and an occasional family of ducks. The view balmed the teachers and student's alike. It kept us dreaming. <br /> The building beyond redemption was scheduled to be demolished. We were to relocate. It was hard to move, hard to change our world view. I tended to this change by coming up with ideas as to how I would green up our space. I prattled on to my ever patient team teacher about my plans to entice birds to our new schools tarred parking lot. We would adapt the habitat and adapt to the habitat. My promises were like the wind...<br />I began the year in my English Language Arts class by reading to my students' the sixties classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull(Bach). Jonathan in order to reach his potential had to break with the pack. His inner voice kept urging him to swoop, soar, swirl. <br />In the shattered urban world out my window we see only gulls.Though graceful,these squawking birds are referred to as flying rats. They follow garbage, seek discards.<br />We are the discards, these students sequestered away in a school whose setting mirrors that of the Upton Sinclair novel The Jungle.<br />I do not feed the birds. Only gulls will come to leave their droppings. <br /> My brother Chris worked at this factory complex Zug Island,before he had asthma and allergies. He tells me stories of his labourings there. The workers had regular tests done on their breathing and wore protective face masks. <br />“But Chris”, I say “I read about the island and it says there is a wildlife refuge there and there is a protected species of bird .” He laughs a familiar taunt to my younger sister “boy are you stupid days. ” “The chemicals burned their wings. They can not fly,” he tells me.<br /> I think of how the Samuel Zug through some legislative manoeuvrings had managed to finagle the land from the Native Americans. This land once a sacred burial ground now a spewing relic. The non flying birds perhaps a curse?<br />The air quality is so bad that a class action suit resolved in favour of the plaintiff. The settlement required that the monies be spent on windows so the citizens could hermetically seal themselves from the world in efforts to protect themselves from air sewage.<br />This new school is devoid of beauty. I want to see a winged creature out my window. To temper dreams I have my students write their perceptions of what they see out the window. I think I just want them to look skyward. Dream themselves out of this hell hole. Dream themselves away from whatever chapter got them here. Away from what caused them to be so distraught that they squawk and flap, use their behaviour like a sandpiper with a broken wing using hurt to protect themselves from assault.<br />They are the screeching gulls. <br /> I had committed to my team teacher (of fifteen years) that I would court the birds. I was blessed to work with a woman of such grace and equanimity and professionalism. She shares a birthday with my grandma, a woman who also cherished birds. Grandma beautified her decayed neighbourhood by feeding sparrows with the commitment of St. Francis of Assisi.<br />I wanted to replace some of the beauty we had lost. I wanted my friend to have her birds. I researched. I bought special feeders to woo the birds. Alas no birds. Not even a thieving squirrel. <br />Having breeched my commitment to my friend I bought her a garish plastic parrot, from the souvenir counter an inner state truck stop. Every now and then it says it says, “ I love you. I love you . Tweet. Tweet.” It's noise a smoke screen to my broken promise.<br />Every year at the beginning of the year there is always a kid who is terrified of reading, a self proclaimed non reader .Often he bolts from the room bellowing hoping that his noise masks his deficit. Rather than let his elephant live in our classroom, we talk about this. I tell him that we will work as a team. Everyone in the class will help him. They will be his sound slaves. When he gets stuck they will get him out of the jam, move him to the next word. Then I look in his agitated eyes (Kids want to read as much as eat, the ultimate shame is not being literate). I look in to his trepidatious eyes, hoping I can peer with the same steel as my grams. I say, “ If I can not teach you to read I will quit my job.” The pressure is off. If he fails it is on me. We now have everything on the line. His reputation, my career.<br />I have never quit wanting birds out my window or for the child to read.<br />The previous school was once condemned . We had roaches and falling ceiling tiles,and great leaks in the roof. Yet we were anchored in the beauty of the courtyard out our window. As a farewell I wrote a piece about the courtyard. <br />It told about the day I was sitting alone in the group area with the students when a robin kamikazed herself into the glimmer of the window and died. <br />We watched horrified<br />We live chunks of our lives in places that become our world view. We are either teacher or student. The rotation of seasons mark time but much is the same.<br /> Even as it hit the window I knew this dead bird was foreshadowing my mom's death which came a week later.<br />As it slammed into the glass my work/professional self got all mixed up with the kids. I could not breathe, I wanted to run wailing from the room. I wanted to resuscitate the bird. But I had to stay the course. I was the teacher, the grown-up. I had to use my countenance to placate the already bruised children<br /> I have looked out school room windows for 52 years. Dreaming. Running away. Seeking the answer to the teacher query. Always pleased when there is a bird about.<br />With no particular rationale our school recently went under reconstruction. I mean Hollywood “Up in the Air”, George Clooney reorganized. In this movie he comes in all suave and empathetic from an outsourced agency to terminate employees. He says, “I am sorry...” and then decimates ones' livelihood/mission. It was catastrophic. <br />The week of the reorganization I introduced metaphors to my class. Being an abstract concept I knew only a few of my students were ready for lesson but everybody loves when words became songs.<br />Let's play with words. Lets make magic. Let us say what we want to say but make a word picture. It became a game. When you hear me using a metaphor raise your hand. I am always wanting the students to have window, a word to re-see the world with. I want them to pull the hurt words from their core splay it on the paper, purged from their innards. If they have voice they have power , freedom perhaps when they speak out they will not have to act out.<br /> No rational offered I got relocated, reassigned right out of writing, right out of reading. Reassigned is not a metaphor, it is a euphemism... <br />Like the mutated birds on that desolate factory, I have lost my flock. I will no longer team teach with the woman whose own great teaching was my Jonathan Livingston Seagull. She stirred me to ask more of myself as a woman and an educator. I flew better. She the lead swan breaking the air so the rest could move with greater grace and poise.<br /> I was moved to math and science (I have 16 college credits in these two areas I have 30 in ELA (English Language Arts) and am a published author who is currently writing a book on the interior lives of children). Relocation away from my team teacher away from ELA.I have lost two loves...my subject and my beloved co-worker.<br />Last year I circumspectly read to my student's the Caldicott winner The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Selznick) to my students. Hugo,the main character on his epic journey must discern his purpose in life. My purpose is voice. I am aborted from my purpose. <br /> How high do birds fly? In what habitats do souls thrive? Should one become a duck if they are a a swan? <br />Birds. Reading.<br />Now I fear my promises are broken. I will teach no one to read. I promise to quit my job if I can not teach you to read. Is this a promise I made you? Is it a promise I made me? Or is it a sacred contract I made with myself?collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-83861161316973822712010-05-23T13:26:00.000-07:002010-05-23T13:27:46.772-07:00I will sacrifice...if...Let me lay it on the line...<br />I am a veteran teacher of thirty four years, and a union sister for thirty four years. I was a student for 18 years of my life in urban, suburban private, public and prestigious ivy league universities. I have fifty two years of experience in education, collectively as an educator and student. ( We are all experts on education to some degree) I write a blog about my experiences and host Sunday salons called Salon_Ed where we gather to have a public discourse on education. My peer group and play group are educators. Education is my purpose, passion and bliss. <br />As I listen to the resounding debate on charters, unions, The Race To the Top I get agitated. I believe a key question is being neglected. When will funding for our future our students become equitable?<br />I would give up my union, my tenure if and when ALL students receive the same amount of federal and local aid. I would willingly have my salary adjusted when teachers from suburban and urban areas where remunerated for their work equally. In my county, Wayne County, Michigan (home to Detroit) there is a 30.000, 00 dollar differential between suburban and urban pay. <br />Maybe we teachers are part of the problem in education. I am willing to be part of the solution when the tougher questions get asked. Is it fair that some students are allotted more money than others?collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-57403882520579541142010-04-24T10:02:00.000-07:002010-04-24T10:03:21.269-07:00The Student TeachesTa Da<br /><br />I christened him “Ta Da”. He epitomizes the word. Ta Da seems a a verbal exclamation point.<br />He was seven, intense, hyper focused with a gait of a wee man who was slightly tipsy.<br />Grabbing you with his eyes he locked himself on you. Either he had you figured out or dared you to find out who he was behind those talking brown eyes. One had to gaze back as he was not verbal so this staring contest was his main form of communication.<br /> Ta Da (Jimmy) was a summer student in program for cognitively/autistically impaired children. As the summer teacher I had to continue instructions to cement the precarious skills. .<br />In a hot school on a hot summer day the best learning is not done. Jimmy and I had both been on different ends of the learning treadmill for months. We were both a bit weary and spent It was hard to think up motivating activities, harder somehow motivating me than him.<br /> I put together I thought a redundant thematic unit about Summer that I had done many times before. We learned about summer through the senses,smelling cut grass, singing “ You are My Sunshine” cut yellow circle suns etc. Not my proudest moment but it addressed very important skill sets for Jimmy and his classmates. The fine motor skill of cutting and painting could be as challenging as a PhD for some of these physically and cognitively impaired students.<br /> I bring out comes the primary yellow paint. The kids slop it on to the pre-drawn circle with the heavy black line. When the paint draws they are to cut out the sunshines and hang them about the room.<br />Cutting is not easy. Open, shut, can be very hard on little uncoordinated fingers.<br />Well this little fella with the same intensity that he stares into my eyes grasps tightly to the scissors adapted to his little hands, with his tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth, his knuckles near white and he begins to cut. Open, shut. Open, shut. Arduous, laborious are some of the adverbs one could use to describe his efforts with the scissors. I worry about his frustration. Wanting to help him and to save face I offer to cut for him. He rebuffs my offer. With even greater commitment he continues cutting along the dark lines. <br />As he reached the final cut he lifted his sun skyward and speaks. It is the only time I ever heard him vocalize. Perhaps it is the only time he ever shall. “Ta Da!” he says.collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-2813930091657393662010-04-12T04:24:00.000-07:002010-04-12T04:26:38.999-07:00Who shall we blame?Perhaps parents might stay more invested in their child's education if they didn't perceive of a world that throws away their children.collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-67009363694984694602010-03-30T17:04:00.000-07:002010-03-30T17:11:28.984-07:00an observers view...re: the times"Good teachers are loosing their goodness."collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-69096053209081167662010-03-21T18:35:00.000-07:002010-03-21T18:38:58.216-07:00Another Regular School DayOn the school wall<br />cinder blocks gloss <br />He wrote his name in blood .<br />He is not illiterate!<br />But we cannot read. <br />Lower case letters<br />smeared an RIP<br />to the spirit of …<br />Oh patron <br />of lost causes,<br />find the secret.<br />hurt of this boy.<br />Cleanse his sooted heart.<br />Smudge clean his soul.<br /><br />Once regaling us , <br />telling of his lead <br />in the church pageant<br />he spoke to us how<br />“Jesus was born in a Major”<br />Choirs of angels <br />resound<br />“Oh Little Town<br />above the deep.... <br />Dreamless<br />night...”<br />Silent stars cast dark shadow.<br />His signature...<br />laboriously blotted with blood <br />taken from the cavern<br />of the just lost baby tooth.<br />(Blood)<br />writing on the wall...<br />He will see the psychiatrist,<br />get a med eval ,<br />given a new nom de plume<br />from the DSM.<br /><br />(And his name shall be called...)<br />“The everlasting prince...”<br /> blind to this child.<br />This boy the alters lamb,<br />slaughtered and slayed<br />by trauma and tragedy. <br /><br />He is the Precious.<br />Oh angels keep us from despair.<br />Give wings to dreams.<br />and to you who washes away<br />all sin …<br />sinners repent.<br />Go forth and sin no more.<br />Wash the lambs blood.collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-39988197292373701582009-12-11T07:23:00.000-08:002009-12-12T13:14:41.614-08:00The HallowedThe blue dress shimmers. The star garland wrapped me up like a gift. The dollar store stars complete my ensemble. I wave the sparkly wand about. “I am a galaxy. I am a galaxy” My diaphragmatic voice reminiscent of Mrs. Doubtfires. The students are riveted.<br /> Halloween was their day to dress up, to peek at their fears and fantasy’s. A hallowed day to shut away the cacophony of the real world. I stood all a twinkly in front of my classroom of special need students, flailing about like a meteor whose fire is fanned by the unnamed “baby stars”<br /> In honor of Halloween the costumed students trick or treated through the school. We teachers masqueraded as witches, devils, angels, a sixties flower child. Our attire announcing our intentions for our students. Our garb not a mask but a window to our wishes for them.<br />I will put a spell on you. I will bedevil you. I will chant at you. I will flash through your universe until you join me. You the student, we the cataclysmic instrument to the excavation of your essence. <br />Next year I will dress as an archeologist. Let me excavate the gem of you. Come closer, let me spark, engage you, look to the heavens.<br />I had explained to one of my coworkers that my costume was an effort to enchant the students to my land of learning. <br />Frustrated with the No Child Left Behind legislation and some imposed curricular changes I’d begun a blog to express my views and vent my frustrations. My proselytizing put me in the mind of my plumber dad. Ever the rebel, he philosophically aligned with Upton Sinclair and Tolstoy. A religious man, he felt he had a greater master than the boss. He told a story of how one day on the assembly line he tossed a smoke bomb under some machinery. The workers had to clear out for an unexpected coffee break while the source of the smoke was located. His antics push the boundaries. <br />Yet he was a constant, committed laborer. He’d trudge in the door after work his thermos empty of the tepid coffee, he smelled of the refinery. He was not afraid of hard work, dirt or extreme physical labor. He gave his 50 years with gratitude for his skills and opportunity (recessions and unemployment made him aware how blessed work could be.) Critical of “the man” yet he bled and sweated till the age of 75. I put his service pin on my charm bracelet, the one I dangle noisily to get the students attentions.<br />Since the beginnings of my career I have lit my own smoke bombs. Not for my own entertainment but intending to draw attentions, to make noise about inequities. I’d assume the persona of a McBethian Weird sister, stirring the pot, adding an element, intuiting the future .My energy quixotic, my idealism righteous.<br />What is my role really? How shall I cast this story? I have been a magic fairy, a mother superior…but at all times I must remain a judge. I need to scrutinize not only the organization but must examine my performance.<br /> At our core teachers are assessors. Teachers are trained to view in the negative. What skills are lacking and how do remediate them? We must find the specific ingredient to engage each learner, to ignite the spark to induce the alchemy of learning. <br />The critical ingredient, the one I have the most control over is I.<br /> Tis I.I may be a drone worker like the blue collar fellows in Diego Rivera’s mural tribute to workers at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Yet we teachers are not cogs in a wheel. We are charged by design to be the architects’ of learning, the stewards of citizenship, and the custodians of tradition. We navigate ever changing administrations, philosophies, tides and tsunamis.<br />The “system” is the sea, the students the passengers. We are and must be the captains. We appease, delight and steward the students to their destination. We must keep them on their itinerary, expose them to new horizons. We must chart through torrents of change, and the hurdles of history. We are the captains.<br />Though a cliché, Captain Stubbing or perhaps Ahab, we are the stewards. Teaching is the most public of isolated professions. In the end regardless of outside influences a teacher’s domain is their own. It is a one women show. The scrutiny I heave on events and systems, I turn this same eye on me. In the end rightfully the mirror is on me. <br /> “Feed the beast” take care of the paper work, documentation; assessments etc. just do it and get on with the business of teaching. A personal performance inventory, rigorous rubric for self assessments are imperative. How could I adapt the lesson or modulate my performance to best reach the goal. The current public discourse ties merit pay to the student’s performance on standardized test. Perhaps I will get the bonus or perhaps my years of vocal scrutiny will jinx my pocket book.<br /> I cannot let dollars decide. I must inventory what message my demeanor and persona imparted on my students. Did I hear them? Did I find their spark and ignite it? Did I create a space for their voice? Did I look them in the eye and modulate my presentation to their nods of understanding? Was I inclusive? Did I individualize? Did I temper my teaching to their skills and capabilities? <br />We teachers I think have our own unspoken Hippocratic Oath, a code. We must be stellar citizens and kind souls. We must be presents to the essence/spirit of the child. We invite and insist on their attendance in their learning/the classroom. We must push the bar, our expectations of ourselves/myself as a teacher and an employee must be higher than any public standard measure.<br /> “I will quit if you do not learn to read” That is how much should be on the line when it comes to literacy/learning. I must find the route to the child who is lingering behind and is now afraid to join. (It is just easier to quit than be a failure.) <br />We will be Alice through the looking glass, Mary Poppins or in an emergency the wizard behind the curtain …this is us, and channeling whichever Archetype will gather our learners aboard. I think it not the system or the kids where I may dwell. The essential questions must remain focused on me…the educator. I will quit my job when I cease to ask this much of myself…collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-38641536751844873712009-11-03T13:48:00.000-08:002009-11-03T13:51:06.504-08:00<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CBOLI%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CBOLI%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CBOLI%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> 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mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal">The MEAP 2009</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“At any time the state may come out to monitor the MEAP. If there are any transgressions in the protocol and administrations the district could be fined” (punished).These statements were made at our teacher prep meeting prior to the statewide administration of our standardized test. The MEAP.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Fear invoked…mine matches the students. I have to get this right. That is how it is with fear.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span>I have filled out the coding of the names incorrectly. Our teacher consultant kindly rectified my mistake. <span style=""> </span>My students have no such recourse with their missteps.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In my Special Ed classroom of Emotionally Impaired children the students were individually tested in the spring and on the average demonstrated skills that were one to two years below grade level. Rather than addressing this deficit two weeks of instructional time are put aside to participate in the MEAP. The <span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>test not only evaluates the child but is used as a measure of <span style=""> </span>the schools (AYP) adequate yearly progress.(We will not discuss the cultural bias of these test , even though one year it spoke of the Soo Locks in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The students’ frame of reference locks are the dead bolts on the front door)</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So for four days I gather a group of special need sixth graders, corral them into my classroom for this sacrosanct event. The MEAP. The fifty page manual is explicit in the procedures of how to administer the test. Only number two pencils. No one but a certified teacher can give the test. No cell phones. Cover bulletin boards that might give information to the students.<span style=""> </span>The tone in the building is funereal. The students like young souls in an unfamiliar church are restrained and rigid. The event heavy with pomp.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thus begins the MEAP. Once I have read the children the directions no questions can be answered or assistance given. Sighs ,exasperated breathing, muttering, obsessively filling in the circle with pencil number two till lead is flattened then <span style=""> </span>the inevitable hand “ I cannot read this”<span style=""> </span>( I had done a reading assessment on <span style=""> </span>this child who <span style=""> </span>was taking a fifth grade MEAP but read on a second grade level )“ Sorry no questions.” To let myself off the hook I hear myself saying “I am sorry but the government won’t let me help you “Here I am their teacher who has spent the first six weeks of the school year quelling their fears about reading. Progress is doomed if we cannot transcend their fear of failure and their print phobia. Now I abandon them at this very terrifying juncture. “I am sorry I cannot help”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">No longer do they look fearful, but have this piercing look of betrayal, like if you cannot help me what kind of teacher are you?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So goes the MEAP. I am weary, in the way that one gets when splitting their body in a crisis. The students spent chew on their post MEAP snack muttering. One student says audibly “It was a difficult and hard situation. “ These words haunt the classroom. The classroom tainted. The sacred relationship (think Socrates, Annie Sullivan, Mr. Chips, Frank McCourt,) tarnished. I blame the government. The students blame me.</p> collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5331288978262848085.post-77885602044028410982009-10-03T17:37:00.000-07:002009-10-03T17:38:58.908-07:00At the Rainbows End<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CBOLI%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CBOLI%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CBOLI%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> 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mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">A written directive from my principal at the beginning of the 2008/09 school year spurred me to begin this blog. I was further inspired to begin Sunday Salons (basically jaw sessions) at my house (to vent) to reconsider education and learning. My muse was my principal, but not in any gentle creative sense. My momentum was gained with righteous anger and frustration. A myriad of moments like being forced to give the MEAP (Michigan Educational Assessment Profile) to students who had been IEPed out of their regular classroom setting due to a variety of learning issues had left me jaded. Every time I gave the MEAP to these at risk students I could not help but wonder what were the teachers’ of Nazi Germany thinking when a star segregated their students’. Was I not the perpetrator of a madness that did not uphold learning and would ultimately lead to education being privatized? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;"><span style=""> </span>These assessments told us little about the passions, purpose and skills of students. Could they in fact be used as a tool to label schools failing and provide the data necessary to privatize education? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">Blah, Blah you can hear the wheels of angst as they turn in my weary teacher head. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">The directive stated “You are utilize only the purchased basals in your curriculum “(After 20 years of teaching Reading/Lang arts no one sought my input on best practice.) We had money for new books. Books were purchased thus that was our “best practice” Truly I wept. Not for me, I was literate. Self taught really by the light of the hallway under the covers trying to catch up with the big kids in the family. I wept for my students who in spite of their diverse skills, the common theme was print phobia. They had experienced so much failure that they balked at most academics, but particularly reading. All sorts of systems had been thrust upon them, but rarely any that accounted for their learning style or the unique wiring<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">No Caldicott’s, No Newberry’s. Use this cumbersome 813 page text with abridged versions of literature and all sorts of other curricular agendas that tended more to Social Studies and Science that, curriculum. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">(Think on it. Who made you fall in love with reading? It was never a teacher. It was not a plot. But some character that leapt out of the pages and drew you into their world). <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">I a veteran teacher, a published author, a professional so passionate about her subject that I contract with children who view themselves as non-readers. The contract goes like this: “If you do not learn to read I will quit my job”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">My special needs students as assessed by the PIAT(Peabody Individual Achievement Test) have skills scattered from first grade up to the twelfth. These students are in a day treatment for Emotionally Impaired individuals. They have already had much exposure and failure in traditional models of learning.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">A written directive!<span style=""> </span>I am pedantic and reactive to this event. I can carry on about the publishers being the Halliburton of education etc. I can provide anecdotal<span style=""> </span>stories how I have found the holy grail of getting non-readers past their fear, jumping grade levels. I can tell you how after receiving the “directive” I circumspectly read the Caldecott winning ´The Invention of Hugo Cabret”as the students were so stirred by the introduction that they begged me for more.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">This directive caused me to regress to my snarkiest teacher self. When the principal came into my class while my students were” lost in literature”, so absorbed in their self selected <span style=""> </span>ten minute read of their chapter books that they neglected to be their reactive acting out<span style=""> </span>“EI” selves, (tamed by prose). The principal entered my room a secret service energy to her demeanor trying to sniff out any breach of security and says to me, “We cannot have all this reading going on in here” I reply, “ You are so right, why we cannot have all this reading going on in school. “ <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">“Only use the basal.<span style=""> </span>I felt like a kid bouncing about. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! I am cast back to my own powerless childhood. Sr. Marie Irene floating about in a blue habit, her looming voice shaming us into the mastery of diagramming sentences. She swashed through the room, her four-foot teaching aide of a pointer seeming a weapon of sorts while flailing away at her lessons. Though terrorized I covertly hid under my desk Little Women so that I might read the next chapter to see if Jo might ever declare her love to Lurie.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;"><span style=""> </span>Of course I followed the curricular directive but not without researching the prescribed system so that I might conceptually defend my every deed. My goal remained constant, to led them to the love of words, literature.<span style=""> </span>(If they could trust their own voice they may come to esteem others)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">My angst stirred a dormant volcano awakening the frustration I had experienced as a just out of college teacher. At the age of 22-pre tenure I was “officially verbally reprimanded.” Nothing in my file just a chastisement from my administrator for having defaced state property. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;"><span style=""> </span>I was not a willful anarchist but a naïve idealistic new teacher.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoBodyText"><span style="font-size:16pt;">The classroom for my 24 institutionalized “educable/trainable” students was in a 100year old building that was referred to as the chapel. This was the very same location where the Native Americans had been convened each week on the reservation for their Christianization. Prior to becoming the regional center for the “mentally impaired” the center had been a reservation for the indigenous people of the area.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;"><span style=""> </span>I had coursed down a rabbit hole.<span style=""> </span>A coat of paint on the faded peeling walls? From the school district then from the state I got robust chorus of “No’s”. I offered to paint it myself but there was a problem with the paint that the state mandated and its cost.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">So after dutching up my courage and anger at a local watering hole my coworker and I let ourselves into the chapel with the state issued key. She was Sancho to my Don Quixote. We took the crayola paints and made a mural of rainbows and beanstalks reaching to some forever place. We were proactive. We created beauty. <span style=""> </span>The next day Lonnie a student with severe cerebral palsy was so excited when he saw the mural that he managed to lift his atrophied neck muscles and head and in his very slurry speech exclaimed, “Wow!” He was awake to the classroom, so perhaps he would awaken to his own abilities and talents. Wow.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">“You have defaced state property, please remove the paint at once.” We scrubbed away while awash with our own sorrow. It gave us hope though that in spite of much soap and elbow grease the colors glimmered in a dreamy way on the rough surface.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">Wash the wall. Use the basals.Who says that that child needs OT services? So goes the cacophony of how my hopes for my students are restrained and contained by this power greater than myself. The man behind the curtain, in this surreal Land of Oz. My idealism stirs like the oceans tide, it reverberates and resonates. It is in the glimmer of all those eyes peering at me asking me to illumine the dark.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16pt;">So when asked to participate in a retrogressive groove much like my grade school curriculum at the hands of Sr. Marie Irene decades ago, I recoiled. You must know Jo and Joey Pigza and you have to meet Hugo Cabret. So I took to the page and seized a pen and invited folks to gather, to live the truth of what I had been trying to instill in my students for years. “Trust you voice.” Speak. And this is how my nemesis became my muse and how the tsunami aftershocks of No Child Left Behind stirred me to take to my own beanstalk and to reach higher and to reiterate what it is that is my vision. No more the quiet…<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> collettecullenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12360422280426923904noreply@blogger.com0