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.

Guns, Schools, and the NRA

What can I say that has not already been said about the shooting at the Connecticut elementary school? So many positive touching tributes had already been posted. Two of my favorites has been first a photo of the perpetually smiling Mr. Rogers with a beaming child and his reminder that in every tragedy we need to look for the helpers, because the helpers show our true selves. A second favorite has been a viral tweet from NBC broadcast journalist, Ann Curry, who suggested we ought to volunteer 26 acts of kindness as a memorial to those who were killed. Since Sunday, according to NBC, over 167,000 tributes have been posted to #26ACTS.

That, I thought, was enough. No more words were needed. Such a crime cannot be undone, and all we can do is pledge to try to make the world a better place. Let Newtown mourn in peace.

Then came Friday's bizarre NRA news conference. NRA spokesman, Wayne LaPierre, took the occasion of the one-week anniversary of the shooting, while teachers and students were still being buried in Newtown, CT, to say that the NRA opposes any gun laws: "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." How does one do that? asks the inquiring mind. LaPierre said the answer to gun violence in schools is an armed security force that can protect students, made up of trained volunteers stationed at every school across the country.

No, this newscast couldn't be true. Even the NRA has more sense than making a statement like that at a time like this. I double-checked the initial reports, because I thought this had to be a parody penned by The Onion, the irreverent newspaper satire from Madison, WI. But no, to my disbelief, this was an actual event staged by an obviously deranged publicist. To not tear into this idiocy would be to disrespect the memory of the Newtown students and teachers.

Trained, armed volunteers in every school? Why trouble with Mr. Rogers, with acts of kindness, the NRA seems to say, when we have superior weaponry? Well, following NRA logic, why stop with a single armed officer in every school? Why not arm every individual classroom? Why not arm every temple, church and mosque? Why not arm every shopping center and movie theater, and fast food place and neighborhood spa. Perhaps even Santa and his elves should be packing. Prince of Peace: phaaaa!

Twitter contributor, Adrian Eversoll, posting to #NRA, pointed out that the NRA's theory of superior firepower did not protect the sites of three other mass shootings. He wrote, "Columbine had an armed guard. Virginia Tech had a police department. And Fort Hood had the military." How many more guns are needed to protect us? Earth to NRA: escalating the threat of violence in schools and in society is not the answer.

From Bangladesh to Super Storm Sandy

While listening to Roger Waters, Bruce Springsteen, and Adam Sandler's irreverent "Hallelujah", at the 12-12-12 Concert for Super Storm Sandy Relief tonight, my mind wanders back to August 1971 and the original relief concert, the Concert for Bangladesh. At the time, that small country endured millions dead from unimaginable famine and political terror. The 1971 concert brought together the best performers of the time including Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Phil Spector, and Ringo Starr among many, many others.

The driving force behind the concert was another ex-Beatle, George Harrison, and Indian music legend, Ravi Shankar. It seems like a full turn of wheel of fate that at the same time I am listening to Bon Jovi at the Sandy Concert, I am also mourning the death this week of Mr. Shankar, an ambassador who was able to unite a fractious late 60s and early 70s with quivering sounds from an odd looking, long-necked traditional instrument.

Shankar explained why he reached out to Harrison with the idea for the Bangladesh concert. Admittedly, the proceeds from the concert and subsequent film would be only "a drop in the ocean (of relief need)," he said. In fact, the back of the Bangladesh album booklet (yes, we still have the vinyl three-record album, my wife's college barter for meal tickets) shows an imprint of the check from the concert to the UN Children's Fund for Bangladesh: $243,418.50.

"Maybe it (the proceeds) will take care of (eight million refugees) for only two or three days," Shankar wrote in the album booklet, "but that is not the point. The main issue -- beyond the sum of money we can raise -- is that we feel that all the young people who came to the concerts... were made aware of something very few of them felt or knew clearly."

The point of the concert for Bangladesh, and for Super Storm Sandy 41-years later, is not just the money. According to Shankar, the point of the music and performances, "is trying to ignite -- to pass on the responsibility as much as possible to everyone else." It is a celebration of responsibility and of hope joined together only as music can.

I'd write more, but Clapton, the 2012 version, has just joined the Sandy Concert, and the Stones are next. Rock on!