Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Balancing Choreography and Calling in the Classroom...To Thine Own Self Be True

 The following was a blog that was published on Kentucky Teacher recently. You can read the piece in its entirety here, or the see the edited version by following this link...http://www.kentuckyteacher.org/guest-columnist/2014/10/balancing-choreography-and-calling-in-the-classroom/
                        Perhaps I am in the midst of an early onset of a midlife crisis because Sunday night, I did something absolutely ridiculous for any self-respecting teacher. I went to a concert…for fun…on a school night...three hours away. Not to worry, excessive amounts of coffee, overcompensation of enthusiasm, and a lesson plan I’d been anxious to teach for a while got me successfully through Monday, but it was the concert that really got me to thinking about our profession.
                        I saw an artist that I had seen a few other times….years before the world really knew his name. Somewhat of a groupie even before he became famous, I traveled to see him at tiny little venues so small that spectators could end up sitting crisscross applesauce at his feet while he strummed the guitar and met the wee hours with his deep lyrics and raspy melodic voice.  And then experience ran its course…or took its toll.  The records began to sell, the fame began to hit, and the funds began to transform the way he “did concerts.” Sunday night there were lights of every hue, choreography for dancing that simply couldn’t have been the idea of that artist whose name appeared on my ticket, back-up singers and instrumentalists, and all the bells and whistles that could get one nominated for the prestigious entertainer of the year. And yet…something – an authenticity of sorts - seemed to be missing. The part of him that had drawn me to his stage in the first place got lost in the shadow of all the things that were designed to make him better. The purity of a raw artist simply doing what he was clearly so gifted and called to do had been lost in the midst of improvements. 
                          In the field of education, our success often takes the form of change.  We change standards and add programs. We implement technology, update curriculum, and create formative, summative, informative, and reformative assessments to test our theories of change. We stop, collaborate, and listen….and we implement the suggestions that we are given by peers, administrators, students and families. We PD360 it, and then we sometimes 180 it as we finally understand that “opposite day” that our kiddos are always talking about might really be the best day for us as well. We conference and Tweet and post and Pin, and then we blog so others will know of the best conferences and Tweets and posts and Pins.  We subscribe and read and scroll and listen and watch. Goodness knows the children that we serve are also changing with each passing year, and we strive simply to keep up with the characteristics of the lives they bring into our rooms each day. We do it all in the name of excellence and getting better, and yet, sometimes, in the midst of it all, we lose the reason we set out to do this in the first place. That raw talent or strength of calling that once helped give us our identity among our students gets thrown out with last year’s curriculum and outdated assessments.  The aspects of our career that once drove our passion get replaced with strategies to transform the way we “do school.”
                        Change is good….it is crucial to our success, in fact. As a writing teacher, though, I tell my students that with every revision, they must still remain true to themselves. As teachers, we must keep that same truth in mind as we change and adapt and transform. If a teacher’s strength is a personality that creates an environment where students want to be, then we can’t let that personality get jaded by reform. If the calling is that of service to children and families, we can’t watch that heart for service be replaced by a necessity to lead them simply to perform. If there is love for content and a passion for delivering it, that passion can’t fade into the background of a new program that offers solutions for more uniformed ways of teaching.
                        Perhaps in the coming years as teachers complete their self-reflections and professional growth plans for PGES, we should choose an aspect of our career not because we have never implemented it, but because there once was a time when we did.  About halfway through the concert Sunday night, the fancy lights were dimmed, the band exited the stage, and the artist stepped forward with no choreography or extras….just his guitar and those lyrics that were once enough…and the crowd metaphorically fell crisscross applesauce at his feet to hang on every word. He did his thing, to himself he stayed true, and my hope for balanced improvement was restored. Find that calling, teachers….it’s still in there, and it’s still needed. May we continue to let it burn brighter than even the best choreographed reforms.

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