It has been a long time (over a week I think!) since I blogged. There are multiple reasons why, and in many ways I am scared to blog all the sudden. Scared that someone, somewhere, might read this blog and think, actually THINK about my ideas. What an immense gift and pressure.
And what is my idea?
What is it I have been trying to do to unpack to break into pieces of late? I have spent so much time, energy, and effort focusing on the details of the "how" , the elements and teaching tools, because that's what everyone says is needed. The tools to make it scalable, to show that anyone can do it. Really it's irrelevant if I, Aubrey can do it, if I don't somehow make it so others can. That's the entire point of developing a model: in order to show your idea to another.
But here at last I come to a turning point. What is my authentic identity in all this creating? Not Aubrey Barnett the developing curriculum guru. Not Aubrey Cunat former Burley Elementary teacher who was chewed up and spit out for trying to be who she really was and not what someone else wanted her to be proving they were wrong. I'm Aubrey, trying to speak a Truth about what justice and compassion look like, in my particular context: with children.
Here's the Truth about my work. You cannot break it apart into steps, there is no formula or model for LOVE.
Let me tell you a story about my week.
Title: Workshop Model Kids Trial Workshop Day
Setting: Wildwood 10am-5pm, library where everyone brought their own laptop. Projection screen is set up and ipads are used to record the conversation.
Characters: Five students going into 10th grade, myself, principal Cunat
Goal: To have five sample units as well as recorded mini lessons for "how to" implement the curriculum to show teachers.
Last week I paid five of my former students, ones which one might very well categorize as "white, high achieving, middle class (is there one left?! Yes made of teachers oddly enough).
But beyond that, they are students whom I have, in several cases, been working closely with for over 5 years. They have been practicing this kind of thinking with me, starting with Future Problem Solving which is an international critical thinking and writing competition, since the age of 11.
..................................
And they STRUGGLED. I don't know if it was a summer day with friends they hadn't seen in a while, (after 8 years together they spent their freshman year at 4 different schools), or if it was an overly ambitious agenda even for them, but we didn't accomplish a lot of what I had wanted to get done.
So what happened? After about 4.5 hours of trying to push through, of them asking some of the most insightful questions ANYONE has thought to ask me about this curriculum as an experience.... (more to come on this later follow up blog)....
we moved onto them.
We moved onto their lives, their sense of themselves and who they were. We moved onto what REALLY matters when helping a child grow: that their needs as a learner, wherever they are in the world, are what matters the most.
IF and WHEN we can infuse content, like a good story that makes them not feel so alone, or sadly even more often history, which is the most honest of testimonies to the trials of the human spirit- that's when it means something. THIS is what these students spent the morning trying to convey to me.
There are ways of breaking apart curriculum, that make it more rigorous to engage with, and more open to inquiry. But NONE of those tools matter if you don't love the child in front of you enough to KNOW and SEE and REFLECT BACK to them what is Valuable and True and Loving inside of them.
How do you teach people to love this much, or love that way?
It is a spiritual question I am left with. And anyone who tries to answer it with logic or models will fail before he's ever opened his mouth.
When push came to shove, and I had children in front of me, my needs, despite having compensated them, dissipated; it became about giving them space to reveal parts of who they were, what they were experiencing, and how it made them feel.
The gift of a child seeking and accepting honest affirmation, when they feel seen, is a moment to be cherished as holy.
It is this that is magic, that makes a classroom breakthrough, that gives the learning a life of its own. When teacher, state, and national agendas are truly gone in favor of loving responsive relationships there's no telling what might just be discovered.
And what is my idea?
What is it I have been trying to do to unpack to break into pieces of late? I have spent so much time, energy, and effort focusing on the details of the "how" , the elements and teaching tools, because that's what everyone says is needed. The tools to make it scalable, to show that anyone can do it. Really it's irrelevant if I, Aubrey can do it, if I don't somehow make it so others can. That's the entire point of developing a model: in order to show your idea to another.
But here at last I come to a turning point. What is my authentic identity in all this creating? Not Aubrey Barnett the developing curriculum guru. Not Aubrey Cunat former Burley Elementary teacher who was chewed up and spit out for trying to be who she really was and not what someone else wanted her to be proving they were wrong. I'm Aubrey, trying to speak a Truth about what justice and compassion look like, in my particular context: with children.
Here's the Truth about my work. You cannot break it apart into steps, there is no formula or model for LOVE.
Let me tell you a story about my week.
Title: Workshop Model Kids Trial Workshop Day
Setting: Wildwood 10am-5pm, library where everyone brought their own laptop. Projection screen is set up and ipads are used to record the conversation.
Characters: Five students going into 10th grade, myself, principal Cunat
Goal: To have five sample units as well as recorded mini lessons for "how to" implement the curriculum to show teachers.
Last week I paid five of my former students, ones which one might very well categorize as "white, high achieving, middle class (is there one left?! Yes made of teachers oddly enough).
But beyond that, they are students whom I have, in several cases, been working closely with for over 5 years. They have been practicing this kind of thinking with me, starting with Future Problem Solving which is an international critical thinking and writing competition, since the age of 11.
..................................
And they STRUGGLED. I don't know if it was a summer day with friends they hadn't seen in a while, (after 8 years together they spent their freshman year at 4 different schools), or if it was an overly ambitious agenda even for them, but we didn't accomplish a lot of what I had wanted to get done.
So what happened? After about 4.5 hours of trying to push through, of them asking some of the most insightful questions ANYONE has thought to ask me about this curriculum as an experience.... (more to come on this later follow up blog)....
we moved onto them.
We moved onto their lives, their sense of themselves and who they were. We moved onto what REALLY matters when helping a child grow: that their needs as a learner, wherever they are in the world, are what matters the most.
IF and WHEN we can infuse content, like a good story that makes them not feel so alone, or sadly even more often history, which is the most honest of testimonies to the trials of the human spirit- that's when it means something. THIS is what these students spent the morning trying to convey to me.
There are ways of breaking apart curriculum, that make it more rigorous to engage with, and more open to inquiry. But NONE of those tools matter if you don't love the child in front of you enough to KNOW and SEE and REFLECT BACK to them what is Valuable and True and Loving inside of them.
How do you teach people to love this much, or love that way?
It is a spiritual question I am left with. And anyone who tries to answer it with logic or models will fail before he's ever opened his mouth.
When push came to shove, and I had children in front of me, my needs, despite having compensated them, dissipated; it became about giving them space to reveal parts of who they were, what they were experiencing, and how it made them feel.
The gift of a child seeking and accepting honest affirmation, when they feel seen, is a moment to be cherished as holy.
It is this that is magic, that makes a classroom breakthrough, that gives the learning a life of its own. When teacher, state, and national agendas are truly gone in favor of loving responsive relationships there's no telling what might just be discovered.