Mother Moon

I've been wondering why the moon seems to be out for so long the last few days. It hangs in roughly the same plane as the sun, so shouldn't 6 hrs sunlight mean about the same for the moon? Then I realized: DUH, when it's full, the moon is on the opposite side of us from the sun, so the same tilt that shortens the days up here by leaning us away from the sun has the inverse effect on our exposure to the full moon--ie, Alaska is leaning toward it. Ergo, 6 hrs sunlight = 18 hrs moonlight. Hello mother!

The beginning

I need to begin telling the 'whole' story, but I keep putting it off because I don't know where to start. When in doubt, begin at the beginning.

I did my student teaching this past fall in Big Bay, as most of those likely to see this already know. Early in the semester, Carrie got an email from our old friend Arica, who had taught in the Bush for a year before moving to Marquette. It was a forwarded message from her old administrator, who obviously thought the world of her, asking if she knew anyone who might be interested in a tutoring position starting in January. Carrie and I talked it over and agreed it was at least worth looking into, and when we had more information--dates, location, pay, conditions--we agreed it was a good idea.

Not an easy decision, as it meant me being away for three solid months, but ultimately the benefits outweighed the costs. Personally, it would be a marvelous opportunity for growth, discovery, and adventure, as well as a chance to help kids who really needed it. Professionally, it would be invaluable, both in terms of experience and practice, and in terms of subsequent resume building. And the kicker, for the sake of our young and growing family: it would pay off nearly my entire student loan in one fell swoop.

So we decided to go for it, and a few short months later I was in Anchorage taking pictures of a moose at a range of about two yards; welcome to Alaska! I have lived in the UP for several years and have only ever seen tracks, but one day in Anchorage (when I was supposed to be grocery shopping) and I had a real close encounter.

I am now the new 'intervention' teacher at Ignatius Beans Memorial School in Mountain Village, Alaska, a town of less than a thousand on the mighty Yukon River in southwestern Alaska. Google maps will not tell you how far away I am or how to get here because there are no roads that lead here. If you want to go to a nearby village, you take a snowmobile, and if you want to go further than that, you fly. The tundra is spacious and beautiful, but also a little monotonous.

'Intervention' means I'm a tutor. I am working exclusively in reading and math, and mainly with students who are likely to fall short of 'proficient' on their state tests in one or both subjects without some extra help. In the last two weeks I have learned all about Alaska's official education standards (Grade Level Expectations) and how they are reflected in standardized tests. I despise standardized tests. But they do give me lots of information about what my students need to learn and practice. So from within the Belly of the Beast I work to help the individuals being processed there. Broadly speaking, this is exactly what I want to do with my life. Spread the love.

Some things I've encountered have meshed well with what I imagined a little school in the Bush might be like. My classroom has no windows and can be stiflingly hot, so I asked around to see if a fan might be had; another teacher loaned me a nice big one, but it has no shield on the front, so I had to put up on a filing cabinet out of reach. Many of my students are indeed quite poor, and live in very small houses with very large families. On the other hand, the school itself is startlingly well provided for. I have a fancy new printer/copier and five brand new Dell computers with 19" flat screens and wireless keyboard and mouse--pretty fancy! The building is quite new as well, half of it built only two years ago, with triple-pane windows whose handles turn ninety degrees to swing open from the side, or 180 degrees to open from the bottom.

I didn't know what to expect from the people, either native or newcomer, but I have been pleasantly surprised on all fronts. The teachers, by and large, are caring and idealistic. The principal is passionately devoted to his students' success, both in school and in life. And the students! Well, they are active, certainly, but also sweet, receptive, willing to work hard and to learn. They've made me feel right at home. I love them already.

on AK

Well, since I already have a blog that I haven't used lately, I may as well simply resume. Appropriate, I guess, since I am here for educational purposes. So here's blog post number one from Mountain Village: I had cereal for breakfast. Good old flaky, somewhat sweetened, cold cereal with organic whole milk. The milk I brought from Anchorage with me; the cereal I picked up at the store here in Mountain. It's a pretty nice little convenience store with prices not as bad as expected--expensive, but not absurd. So I will indeed place a bush order with Fred Meyer for all my staples, but I'm happy to know that I won't have to use powdered milk the whole time I'm here. And even more important, I won't have to use 'creamer' in my coffee because (drum roll) they have heavy whipping cream at the store. WOOHOO!

And now I'm off to plan lessons. Yay.

feeling and thinking

Initial thoughts on emotion:

We like to think of ourselves as rational beings occasionally subject to emotional sway. I think we're actually emotional beings capable of rationalizing our feelings. What I mean is that we rarely use our intellect to arrive objectively at logical opinions; rather, we take opinions that have arisen unnoticed from our emotional core, and use intellect to justify them and make them seem logical.

My gut reaction is to condemn this (perceived) reality and rave against the damnable human ignorance that gives rise to it. But when I think about it, I'm not sure I know whether this emotional core (as opposed to rational core) is a good or a bad thing. After all, perhaps it is our unique combination of the emotional and the rational that makes us truly human. A purely rational, logical person would be an awfully boring friend. A whole society of such people would be, well, dead.

Now, as I process these ideas, I wonder if perhaps the development of emotional intelligence (wisdom?) is as important as that of rational intelligence--maybe even more so. Maybe that's the key--to stop pretending this emotional core doesn't exist, stop fighting tooth and nail to prove we're right about everything, and instead to engage our emotional core and work to make it smarter. I certainly think this is important for teachers; we clearly need both brains AND heart.

Albert Einstein said, "It has become appaulingly clear that our technology has outstripped our humanity."

Seth Bernard claims his mom said, "Feel! Feel, boy, feel! Make muscle in your head, and use it to fuel your heart..."

Perspective

There is a bill at hand that could give a huge boost to local agriculture and local economies.

Our economy continues to struggle, while the national debt is at a crisis point.

Corporate spending on elections has been utterly set loose.

Government agencies are preparing to set fire to the Gulf of Mexico.

It's finals week.

Among all these worthwhile topics, which one do you suppose has my nearly undivided attention?  What's really important? It always depends on how you look at it.

Reform and improvement?

At the beginning of February, the Obama administration released the new proposed budget for next year. We can take it for granted that almost anything involving politics and money will inevitably be controversial, and so I imagine every little detail of the proposal is probably getting heat from somewhere. What caught my attention, thanks to a recent NCTE newsletter, was a cut in funding for the National Writing Project, a highly successful nationwide professional development program that has been praised as "one of the big success stories in professional development" in Education Week. NWP funding, if any, will now have to come through states, who must engage in a competitive funding race for federal money that has already begun to create a cut-throat, antagonistic atmosphere amongst educational institutions. Now any given local NWP site can only hope that its state will win the funding race, and then hope that state officials will see fit to allocate some of those funds to NWP. For all intents and purposes, this will be the end of the "national" in the National Writing Project.

Of course we have limited funds to draw from, so of course we can't give unlimited funding to every educational program. But it seems to me that our efforts at redesigning educational budgets should be directed toward eliminating or reforming failing programs, those that use money poorly. If we eliminate the funding of successful programs, overall educational quality cannot help but suffer.

How to save the world, by Matt Fiocchi

For one of my classes I was supposed to write a quick blurb about my educational philosophy as it applies to students with special needs. I got a little carried away, and now I feel like sharing. Enjoy or ignore, as you please. Feedback always welcome.

Educational philosophy

My educational philosophy basically equates to my whole worldview. The main idea is to help. The best way to help is to teach. And the best thing to teach is life—knowing yourself, knowing the world, ultimately the same thing. Ours is a troubled world, yes, but most of our troubles we inflict on ourselves and on each other. We behave in ways that are harmful to ourselves and others and the world—that is, harmful to the whole. And we do this because of ignorance, because we don’t know any better; we wouldn’t have to hold rallies to protect the rain-forest if the people destroying it simply knew better (an extreme simplification, but it gets the point across). Thus, the problem is individual ignorance on a massive scale, and in my view the only realistic solution is individual awakening on an equally massive scale.

One very large and obvious complication with this is that you can’t manufacture genuine human awakening on an industrial scale; hence the term individual. And of course, you can’t force it on anyone. To force one’s own worldview on another is not awakening, it’s brainwashing, which is antithetical to awakening and leads to conformity and thence to violence in a self-perpetuating cycle. Awakening can’t be made to happen by force; all you can do is work to remain alert and compassionate and create appropriate circumstances—with prolonged contact and profound trust one can eventually hope to make a connection. Well, keeping company in the classroom day after day seems to fit the bill.

So the best way (in my humble opinion) to make the world a better place, long term, big picture, is to teach. To make contact with individual minds and help them learn how to learn about themselves and the world. I don’t want to put my ideas in students’ heads; I want to help them discover their own.

I’ve had this notion in my head for years, and it hasn’t changed much, so I figure either it’s an accurate reflection of my deepest motivations, or else I’m just very very stubborn.

As a learner, I feel like I’ve often fallen through the cracks or slipped by unnoticed. Because I did okay in school and didn’t make a fuss, it was easy for teachers to ignore me and focus on other things. I honestly think I could have gotten a lot more out of school if someone had looked into my eyes and noticed I was in there--curious, interested, watching--and taken the trouble to engage with me. I think I was a pretty special kid, and I could have been involved and inspired in school, and I wasn’t.

But here’s the more important thing: All kids are special. All kids can be involved and inspired. The whole point of teaching is to try to give all students the opportunity to engage and develop to their greatest potential.

So what about students with special needs? Every student has unique needs—some just have needs that are relatively unusual. The variety of individual personalities, requirements, and perspectives makes the classroom a richer and potentially more rewarding environment for all. As for how I will incorporate students with unusual needs into my classroom, I hope I’ll do it in the same way I’ll incorporate all of my students—with an understanding and appreciation of the unique needs and gifts of every single individual human being.

I must confess that one of my greatest fears is that I will apply my own quiet prejudices to my students without realizing it. All I can do to address this danger is try to keep paying attention to my students, to the classroom environment, to the community, and above all to myself.