Ed Reform Archives

Seventeen and a half Inch Neck

Not everyone knows what it is like to be the odd man out. Lacking fit. I am used to it in lots of ways. Outside of education discussions, my most persistent experience with this is when I buy clothes. You see, I am built for speed. Not too high off of the ground so as to incur headwinds. I have been known to hit the gym. So when I need, say, a shirt this is often the beginning of a bit of an adventure. The best method to get around this is to know what brands and what stores make clothes that fit my body type. In the case of clothing that cannot be tried on, like a new Jiu Jitsu gi, I have to call or send an email. It usually goes like this:

What size gi should I order?
Have you looked at the sizing chart?
Yes. I’m 5’7″ and 210 lbs.
Well, which is it?
What?
If you’re 5’7″ you should get an A2.
But I’m 210 lbs.
Oh. Well, I guess you can buy an A3 and try to shrink it.

Now try getting a dress shirt with 32 arms and a seventeen and a half inch neck. This sums up a lot of areas in my life.

You know? I can’t get behind that.

Classrooms are not designed for class activities, they are designed for class sizes. Seated.

I can’t get behind that.

Curricula are designed for tests. Or teachers.

I can’t get behind that.

Teachers are prepared for management.

I can’t get behind that.

Education is designed for compliance and one path is the best and variants are considered failures.

I can’t get behind that.

It is 2014 and we are not required to accept everything that is given to us. To fit. It is time to rebel. We can no longer accept the teacher who is not also an activist and advocate.

Passivity is acceptance. Endorsement. Establish the rule of engagement. Engage. Fight.

Dig into Goodness of Fit. Seek to understand why we do not have to fit.

WEEDS

Nick Nolte did not have it this good. Think about it. Weeds. Growing, adapting, and developing at a breakneck pace. Some of the greatest diversity and hardiness in your yard, forest, or garden is coming from those things you cannot seem to shake. Your prized flowers and foods wilt after a few days with no rain but it seems that that weeds thrive! It makes you wish that you had a value or a purpose for them. Some weeds have even adapted to become valuable to some–Bio-promotion!

Can we make the necessary changes for our selves in the context of learning and development? Can we embrace the adversity? Adapt? Change? Thrive, even? Of course we can.

These binary robots in the earth outside our homes. They have one task–grow. What is yours?

Supporting Creativity Pt. 2

Our first year was a “learning experience.” In typical parlance this means that it was a failure. It was not.

We encountered MiRo Dance Theatre as they were developing a piece called Pitch Black. They met, appealed, auditioned, and werked a group of interested, curious, and some disbelieving students. MiRo did not spend time drilling technique though their director was a former ballerina. They did not spend their time watching video though their producing director was an award winning video artist. They worked and treated these students as members of a company.

Students started saying they danced with MiRo Dance Theatre. They were.

When we traveled to see the premiere of the work at Altria, MiRo delayed its start while they waited for the student company to arrive.

They had arrived. We all had.
This is how education works.

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Supporting Creativity Pt. 1

Several years ago I was in a beautiful position. As the chair of a small fine arts department in an urban independent school I was able to push, pull, advocate, and influence. The faculty around me were supportive. The administration was trusting. Our budget was enough and our facility gave us room to grow.

Times like these you learn to live. Again and again we would consider our methods and how well we served the students, the mission of the school, the faculty, and one another. We were open and looking for ways to make everything meaningful and memorable for our students. One gaping hole in our curriculum was dance.

Now everyone knows that there are standards for dance and that they are never fulfilled for many reasons. If you can imagine that, historically, arts programs are the first to be cut you can trust me that dance may not be an area that even gets onto the schedule. How could we make this work? Another challenge is that the certification process for K12 dance is essentially a technical certification–categorized with shop classes and the like. Earning the certification is one thing, maintaining it is nearly impossible. For this reason, many dancers and dance educators do not even bother. As an independent school, this was no real concern but this meant, from a practical standpoint, that there is no significant pool of dance educators to draw from in the same way that you may be able to tap into student teachers or practicum students in other content areas.

Having been a co-founder of a NYC dance company and having worked with professional dance companies in 5, 6, 7, or 8 past lives, I knew a little bit about the field. I knew that dancers had a few things in common. One of those things was a love of available space–often the more austere and forgotten the better–and a need for space. My company used to rehearse in a Julliard studio on odd weekends when classroom reserves were thin. We rehearsed in loft bedrooms with furniture stacked on end. We rehearsed in performance spaces like PS 2 in between performances of popular theatre programs, in church basements, and in performance venues–they thought we were performing but we ran it like a rehearsal.

The final frontier.

Our students needed opportunities to express themselves creatively.
Dancers needs space. We had space. I started searching. Alphabetically.

Miller Rothlein–then Miro Dance Theatre–was the first company who had a functioning web presence, a functioning phone number, and a functioning director who answered it. I told them what I had in mind. We have space and you have dance. We want to share. And that, as they say, was the beginning of something beautiful.

Years later, we reminisce on the amazing work they have done with our students.
It is nothing less than beautiful.

This year, at their annual fundraiser, two of their first students will be presenting a duet.
Seniors. Going where no man has gone before.

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the seed, the soil, the water,

the care, the shoot, and the growth.

Click here to sustain creative expression