MAC Week 4 - Comment 1

Screen capture of Mark Dohn's Blog

Original post by Mark Dohn:

The last month. Wow. In a few short weeks I’ll be a graduate of Full Sail! In a few short weeks I’ll be in Israel! Whoa. What? Yes! Israel! My son is turning 13 next month and we’ll be having his Bar Mitzvah in Israel. There are a lot of reasons that go into a choice like this, but suffice to say everything is worth it.

3 years ago, it was my daughter’s 13th and we were celebrating. EVERYONE decided to come to Israel for the Bat Mitzvah....including my mom.

     Yeah. “Dangerous Jan”. My mom has never travelled really. She had never needed a passport, or flown for more than a few hours from our home in Ohio. Now she was packing up for the 14 hour flight halfway around the world. These two pictures from that trip sum up this month and our reading.

     The picture of my mom was the first time she had seen the Sea of Galilee. She is a very religious and spiritual individual, and I snapped this photo as she stood there ABSORBING her surroundings. This was her field trip of a lifetime. She had waited for so long, and now she was THERE. Living, breathing, feeling every bit of the experience.

     Several days later we were in Jerusalem at the Western Wall. This was my son’s first trip and as we got to the wall, he urgently requested a pen and paper. Using the worn edge of one of those massive stones, he wrote something. It is a tradition to write a prayer and place it in between the stones. I have no idea what he wrote - I wasn’t allowed near him - but the intensity from this 10-year-old boy was incredible. What is in these photos is two very powerful experiences. They are tangible and real. Neither of them has forgotten one moment of what is in these images (and I asked them both). And I ask myself, why we don’t teach like this?

Maybe is time to replace

Reading,

Writing and

Arithmetic

With

Exploration,

Expression and

Relationship

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My Response:

Mark,

These are amazingly powerful memories for you and your family.  I agree that if we could get more experiences like these into education, everyone would benefit.  I want my students to approach school like this. 

My most powerful experience as a teacher happened a month ago when I taught "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas.  The poem was written to the poet's dying father, and it discourages him from giving up.  In the two days we studied the poem, it made 3 people cry, all because the poem expressed the experience they had when family members close to them died.  The combination of their past experience, the expression in the poem, and the relationships made the experience in class those days more powerful.  They understood the poem.  

I felt horrible when it happened, but when I talked to them about it later, they said that they really appreciated reading something that they could relate to in class.  You're right, we need more of this.

MAC Week 4 Reading - The Art of Possibility, Chapters 9 - 12

Photo by Flickr user t0msk

This week I was hit smack dab in between the eyes by Chapter 9, "Lighting the Spark." I've been burning the candle at both ends with work, the EMDT program, and the school musical, which opens next Friday.  On top of the Publishing and Leadership Project, I had grades due on Wednesday, and tech week rehearsals.  Needless to say, I'm about ready to flame out, especially since the kids in the cast have been flaking out and missing rehearsals.

I've grown very frustrated with them for over-committing themselves and with myself for poorly managing my time.  To top it all off, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last week as well, so my stress level was at an all-time high.

Now, I'm not telling all of you these things so that I can have a pity party.  My purpose is to illustrate why I may have lost sight of my passion recently.  But, when I read this chapter, it reminded me of why I do the things I do, and that means all the things I do.

The steps for this chapter's practice were outlined on page 126 as:

1. Imagine that people are an invitation for enrollment.
2. Stand ready to participate, willing to be moved and inspired.
3. Offer that which lights you up.
4. Have no doubts that others are eager to catch the spark.

I've been so self-involved lately that I've only been doing step 3, offering what I'm passionate about to those around me.  But I've learned that when you do that without the readiness to be inspired by others or with the expectation that you are among a hostile audience, then you will burn out rather quickly.

I love what this chapter has to say about approaching our students.  I know that I'm very much different in my presentation style when I teach to one of my classes that is not as receptive to my subject that I am in one of the others that has students with more enthusiasm.  And the students recognize these differences as well. This leads us to feed off of each other's energy in a vicious cycle that only leads to frustration.

So, with this in mind, I'm heading out this week to begin a unit on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, put the finishing touches on the Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, and kick start month 12, all with the expectation that if I sparks a fire in me, others will soon catch the spark, too.