Shaking things up once in a while

Every organization needs a good shake-up now and then. The creaky moorings that once held an organization firmly to its purpose need to be occasionally loosened or tossed off entirely. This is healthy and natural. Sometimes the shake-up is initiated by outside forces, but sometimes the organization itself has the sense to cast free of the past and trust to the future.

The Catholic Church seems to have shaken itself this past week. Time will tell if Pope Francis will be the change agent as was John XXIII or John Paul II, but initial reports show this pontiff is a right angle turn from the past papal prerogative. Early conclave reports from the Wall Street Journal, among other news sources, indicate that during a short four-minute speech that apparently clinched his election, Bergoglio warned the conclave cardinals against becoming a "self-referential" church, one that is so closed in on its internal problems that it has forgotten its true purpose: humility, dignity, and justice.

Please forgive the unusual, unsecular nature of this particular blog, but 12-years of inside perspective as a Catholic journalist are hard to shake. I do see in the Catholic Church a parallel challenge that faces any large, established organization. Projects that were once shiny, innovative, and daring are inevitably calcified by the salt spray of years. No amount of vigorous polishing can replace a sheen once time dulls the central idea. Those organizations that are in most danger, are those that are unwilling or unable to adapt to changes in the world. Change is hard for an individual set in his or her ways; it takes biblical labor to change a large organization.

When challenged, it is too easy for an organization to turn in upon itself, to become defensive, to become "self-referential" as Bergoglio said, justifying its existence by meaningless, time-consuming, self-serving, bureaucratic ritual. This can happen to a business who forgets to serve its customers, to a school who forgets to teach its students, to a non-profit who forgets its advocacy, and to a church who forgets its core mission. The core of the Catholic Church is not the Curia in Rome, nor the College of Cardinals, nor even the diocesan chanceries across the world. Its core is Gospel of the Good News. If Catholic Church seeks to regain relevance in the modern world, it will have to proclaim its Good News in the streets and neighborhoods of its local parishes.

I think Pope Francis understands that. I wonder if he will be able to persuade others.

Habemus Spring Break

Blue sky days with temperatures finally in the 40s, coaxes me out for a run and makes me feel that spring may be just a few weeks away. Last year, in contrast to this year's severe diet of 19-degree nights, snow-covered lawns and icy-slick sidewalks, the high and low for the day was 74 and 36. It's not even 74 in my house right now.

But, such are the Wisconsin extremes during March Spring Break when classes are excused for the week, though the college offices do remain open. I remember when I worked as a member of the support staff, I looked forward to the week as a little extra time to get some work done without the interruptions of a typical school day. "This would be nice place to work," we would say, "if not for the instructors."

Instructors and students have various strategies for the mid-semester week off. Some schedule vacations with family or friends. Spring Break hijinks are not nearly as common as you might guess. Most students don't have the extra money, or freedom, to make a gulf coast break. When instructors travel, we are more likely to go to grandmother's house than to the Grand Caymans.

Instead, students spend the time getting extra hours at work, or logging in time with family who now look vaguely familiar. The semester is half over, and the second half is usually packed with the larger papers and projects. Instructors, especially new instructors who have been just keeping their heads above water, use the week to catch up on grading, lesson plans, emails, and the ever-present team projects. Sleep is also a treasure.

This past week, I've spent a lot of home time, attended a Literacy Green Bay benefit, completed a painting project that has been long promised, attended a couple school meetings, cleared out emails, and even spent the afternoon yesterday receiving a plenary indulgence for watching the announcement of the new pope from Rome and receiving his televised blessing. Lord knows, I need as many indulgences as I can gather.  The break is a time to take deep breath and get reading for the final eight week push: "Habemus the Rest of the School Year."

The Dash that Makes the Difference

Perhaps it's an overly long winter, or the doom of an impending birthday divisible by ten, but my thoughts lately have turned toward mortality, toward my "dash". This is an idea suggested by Linda Ellis in her poem and subsequent book, The Dash: "It's not the date you were born, or the date that you died, that really matters. It's the dash between those years and what you do with it to make a difference with you life."

For some reason, when I think of Ellis's "dash", I think of a small graveyard near Boston Commons shaded by trees as old as the commonwealth. Just beyond an iron fence that borders the sidewalk and busy street stands an upright, weather-worn grave with a collection of mourner's stones placed on it. The writing on a plaque screwed to the stone reads: "Here lies Buried Samuel Adams, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Governor of the Commonwealth, A Leader of Men and an Ardent Patriot. 1722-1803."

That downtown Boston graveyard is filled with tombs of other founders of the country, yet even significant, brave lives are finally commemorated in just a few words, numbers, and a horizontal dash chiseled between birth and death. All of their studies, their speeches, their writings, their dreams and despair -- all of it equally summarized in a short incised line worn smooth by passing years.

Our challenge, it seems to me, is to carve our dash as deeply as we can. Some do this by raising families who will continue their name through generations. Teachers continue on through their students. Creative types draw, build, mold, and write. Others make their mark through career or community effort. Some, like Samuel Adams, may even leave a historical mark on world prompting generations to leave a stone on their grave as a gesture of respect. Deep down we understand our mortality, but we strive to leave behind something deeper than a shallow indent in the space of time.

A Successful Teacher Needs a Short Memory

Top ten lists of top ten teacher attributes are usually predictable. We should be technologically savvy. We should be student focused, positive in the classroom, creative with lesson plans, immediate in email response. We should be detailed of planning (but not too much), spontaneous (but not too much), brave, clean, and reverend (oh, the last three were from the Boy Scout handbook, but they seemed appropriate, though predictable). You could pop this list into a hermetically-sealed silver envelope and use the contents in a mind-reading game during an ice-breaker at an education conference.

But, I came across an attribute recently in a Twitter feed that would not have been found in that envelope. The idea came from an October article titled "What You Owe Your Students." What do you owe them? A short memory, according to Terry Heick, director of currriculum at the Internet site, TeachThought. That idea intrigued me and, on second consideration, seemed quite accurate. Why does a teacher need short term memory? There are many reasons.

You need short term memory so you can proactively encourage a student who an hour earlier could be heard complaining about your teaching to a classmate just outside your office door. Teaching focuses on the student, not on your pride.

You need short term memory so students always surprise you, even if you are delivering the same exercise with the same answers to the fourth class that week. The content is new to the students, though you may have been planning it since last summer.

You need short term memory so you can focus on the class in front of you, not on the unfulfilled requests for supplies, texts, training, or assistance that are stored in the sent folder on your email account.

You need short term memory so as you turn to a new worksheet, assignment, project, paper, or PowerPoint, you judge the material on its own merit and do not compare it to work that you have just downgraded or praised from their classmates.

You need a short term memory so each semester you come back to the classroom refreshed, reinvigorated, ready to successfully teach verb tenses to this new class. This semester, the students will love to work on grammar exercises.

You need a short term memory so you can do the work your truly love, in the inspirational power of the moment, with the students and staff you truly enjoy working with. If it wasn't for a short memory, the rest of the attributes wouldn't really matter, would they?

The Center of the Campus

Rather than build a college around geeky science laboratories and uber-smart classrooms, I think schools ought to be built around coffee shops. That inspiration came to mind as I sipped my Campfire Mocha Friday in the newly remodeled Campus Buzz coffee shop on the Green Bay campus.

Wouldn't you rather sip a medium brew in a coffee shop than sit in a sterile study space, computer lab, or industrial commons? So, rather than have one solitary coffee shop, wouldn't it be better to have them scattered about the campus and in regional learning centers, like choice parking spots? The coffee shop is the natural center for a free exchange of ideas among close friends and between departmental colleagues. I can't think of a place I'd rather be in a school, and I kind of like the classroom.

The idea of a social center in our lives is nothing new. That's why town squares were platted in the first place. Atriums and open areas in corporate buildings are designed to give the mechanistic soul a respite from the 9-5. The Apple genius, Steve Jobs, circled his huge Cupertino headquarters around socializing choke points he called "serendipitous and fluid meeting spaces," according to his biographer Walter Isaacson. Jobs knew breaking down departmental barriers, or silos, allows even unlikely colleagues to come together to exchange work projects and ideas. Great ideas come from that serendipitous exchange.

What works for communities and for business, also works in education. Instructors long suspected that groups of students generate as much learning together as do lectures, worksheets, and textbooks separately. Give me an Americano menu on a chalkboard in a multi-use, art-filled space equipped with comfy chairs, a reliable WI-FI signal, and light jazz, and the world will pivot in my favor as if balanced on a caffeinated lever. Sprinkle generously with scones, muffins, and Death by Chocolate brownies and, Houston, we have landed in Nirvana. Sit down and let's go over the assignment for today.

Excuse Me. That's My Spot.

By this point in the semester, the second full week of classes, the routine for the rest of the term has been set. We of the college classroom know where we need to go to find a parking spot for a particular class at a particular hour, which doors have the straightest path to the coffee shop or vending machine, how to most efficiently get from classroom A to classroom B, and where to sit once we are there.

One might think that these routine patterns would create a malaise among the students and instructors, that it would hinder creative academic achievement, but we seem to thrive on it and, in fact, are put off by any change in the norm once the semester has begun. One week, for example, in a graduate class more than a few years ago, I sat in a chair across the room from where I usually sat. This was about three-quarters of the way through the semester, so the unspoken seating arrangement had been firmly set.

My de-chaired classmate came in her usual door at her usual time and stared at me for a bit. I think she thought I had wandered into "her" spot by mistake and politely waited for me to say, "Oops, wrong chair." But I didn't. I just reviewed my notes for the class, pretending I didn't know she was behind me, quivering with indignation, spilling her Starbucks mocha. So, she wandered to a vacant spot, my usual spot (now empty of course), on the other side of the class. Classmates on either side of me were silent, no small talk. The professor stepped over and asked me if something was wrong. "No, not at all," I said. It was as if I had stumbled into the wrong class. People could not make eye contact with me. Discussion was subdued. Everyone seemed thrown off by this breach of educational etiquette, but no one stated the obvious: "You're not in the right seat."

The next week, bowing to peer pressure, I sat in my usual spot, and my classmate sat in hers and her mocha did not spill. Equilibrium was reestablished. Class participation was energized and the universe once again spun unimpeded around its celestial axis. I have since decided that since the purpose of education is to deconstruct our knowledge base and rebuild it with new scaffolding, we need our habits to keep our balance. We will take risks -- and education is certainly a risk -- so long as some things do not change -- like our parking spots, our coffee drinks, and our seats in class.

Just Being Best in the Neighborhood

When we daydream about success, do we dream of world-wide fame, universal-accolades, and a chest full of gaudy gold medals? I think, too often, popular self-help wisdom pushes us to set our goals at unachievable levels. Then when we fall short -- which usually happens -- we give up. Successful workers realize goals set at less Olympic heights can be just as impressive

Mexico City's most famous chef, Enrique Olvera, said he did not dream of world-renown when he opened his restaurant, Pujol, 13 years ago. Chef Olvera told Hamish Anderson, of the Wall Street Journal Magazine (February 2013) his goal was just to be "the best restaurant in the neighborhood." Neighborhood? Only neighborhood? To the casual reader expecting an inspirational story, that might seem low balling the dream. Aren't entrepreneurs supposed to reach for stars and walk in the heavens on a daily basis?

No, not really. That star-stuff is good for fawning interviews after you are successful, but on a day-to-day basis, being "the best in the neighborhood" is the best recipe for success. Following Chef Olvera's initial humble goal, Anderson writes that Pujol is considered "Mexico's finest -- and 36th best in the world according to the much scrutinized S. Pellegrino rankings."

Rather than walking among the stars, Olvera works side-by-side with his cooks through lunchtime service. On a daily basis, work is often neither earth-shaking nor revolutionary. It is done faithfully on a consistently high level. The key to success is persistence and continual improvement. Each day you do the best you can with what you have. Then you get up the next day, and try to do a little better.

Most of the time, working toward being "best in the neighborhood" is usually quite extraordinary.