There are moments. Last week on one of my too infrequent agenda-free strolls around the school, I dropped in to one of our Kindergarten classes, only to be immediately accosted by five- and six-year old enthusiasm. “Did I hear about the dominoes?” “Do I know how many dominoes there are in the school?” “Can we tell you about the dominoes?”
I don’t have to have a building fall on me. “Does this have anything to do with dominoes?” Never feed a straight line to a Kindergartener. “How’d you know?”
It turns out that a random reference to dominoes led to a spontaneous hunting-and-gathering of all wayward dominoes in the classroom, which of course led to grouping, counting and accounting. Evidently the grand total wasn’t grand enough for the class, and they petitioned their teacher to go off on a school-wide search.
You’d think it was The Search for the Golden Domino; they explored the middle school, they looked into the early childhood classrooms, they hunted in specialists’ rooms. Once again, they took their dominoes and their tallies and added, tabled and toted. We now know that The Agnon School is the proud owner of over 2,000 dominoes, courtesy of a band of intrepid domino seekers. But what really propelled them into this learning adventure was a combination of their own innate imagination – and their teacher’s ability to recognize it and fan its embers into a bright flame, all the while weaving in a lesson plan of math, scientific inquiry and problem-solving.
This kind of creative, take-advantage-of-the-moment learning only happens with teachers who can appreciate the difference between seizing the moment and losing control of the agenda. It happens when they get genuinely excited at the magic of discovery; and it makes beautiful sense when they can use the experience to provide horizontal and vertical learning – a kilometer long and a kilometer deep. It doesn’t appear in the curricular map and it can’t be found in any of the outlines and lesson plans developed over dozens of meetings and scores of cups of coffee. But when it happens – it’s a transformational moment.
And there are other moments. Tonight I received a call at home I’d be willing to get six nights a week. A parent wanted me to know how well a team meeting went today, at which his child’s entire team of classroom teachers, specialists and learning specialists met to discuss the student’s progress. That there has been progress – tremendous, positive progress – is terrific in and of itself. But the parents were particularly moved by the clear picture the team had of their child. They saw and heard that the teachers knew the whole child, with all his strengths and challenges; that he wasn’t defined by his limitations or labeled by a presumed inability; and that he was afforded the dignity and respect and learning opportunities as were his classmates.
I’d naturally be thrilled to get a call like this, but on this particular day it came on the heels of a troubling conversation with a mom whose child currently attends one of the city’s purportedly “better” public schools. Her son’s experience with the “resource room team” in particular and with the faculty and administration in general has been anything but supportive; to characterize it as adversarial would not be an exaggeration. I’m as leery of the hovering and smothering parent as the next head of school, but this is not a case of a mother refusing to see her child accurately or realistically. It’s not enough to grudgingly accept the need to modify a curriculum or to provide educational accommodations only when pressed to do so – and a teacher’s sideways glances or raised eyebrows can reverse the benefits of a modified curriculum in a heartbeat. Too often a teacher’s laissez faire (or worse) attitude toward learning differences will passively sanction students’ negative behavior in the classroom. It’s a double loss: the teacher foregoes an opportunity to model accepting and inclusive (not just “tolerating”) behavior; and the lack of a strong, positive model encourages non-acceptance, even ostracism.
The juxtaposition of the two conversations couldn’t be more jarring. This is not solely about outcomes – it’s also about intentions and environments and expectations. It’s about creating a context in which educational values are really life values.