I Would Make a Bad Teenager

I am a fake.  A sham.  A charlatan.  To my credit, I'm a pretty good faker, but I am not the genuine article, the real deal.

If you looked at my tech footprint, you would think I am a reasonably tech-savvy guy.  I have a personal iPad and one from my school and I use both.  I have a Bluetooth keyboard, a Bluetooth speaker, and an iPhone.  At school I have a desktop computer, and at home we have a laptop.  I have e-books on both my tablets, on my phone, and on my Kindle.  I store a lot of music on my phone.

As for my web presence, I maintain a personal website, a business website, and a website for my classes.  I host three different Twitter accounts and three blogs.  I am on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  I check three different email accounts multiple times per day.  Colleagues laugh when I post pictures almost faster than I take them.

Yet for all that, I would make a terrible teenager.  For you see, none of that activity and none of those tools are my first thought or choice.

I noticed this when I recently spoke to a class of student teachers at Ball State University.  I had tweeted about the activity prior to speaking and thought I would get some pictures to tweet from the event.  Yet as I sat in the parking lot responding to tweets from new followers, I realized I had forgotten to take any pictures.  Why was that?  After my talk I was engaged in several conversations with undergraduate education majors.  I spoke with faculty from the school of education.  In all of that I was focused on the person in front of me.  I simply forgot about the cyber world.  I was captivated by the human-to-human conversation at hand.  It just never occurred to me to take out my phone.

I doubt that a teenager would have had to think of it at all.  It would have been as natural as breathing.  While I do wish I could have had some pictures from the event, I am rather pleased by this particular example of forgetfulness.  It shows me that while I use the tools of the age in which I live, I have not completely forgotten the ultimate purpose for why I use them.

Swimming Against the Current

The Indiana State Fair is home to many wonderful things, not the least of which are the finest soft pretzels in the world.

At the state fair you will find all manner of deep-fried goods, great music, crafts, animals, rides, and thousands of Hoosiers who enjoy this annual celebration of what our state produces.

Yet when I recently attended, I witnessed something near the Indiana State Police booth that was disheartening.  A woman was walking with her son who had just obtained a free yardstick.  The boy appeared to be about four or five.  His behavior must have been inconsistent with his mother's expectations, for she said yelled, "If you don't act straight, I'll get that stick on your butt.  I'll tell him (indicating one of the officers) to get out the handcuffs and put you in kiddy jail so you can learn to act straight."  

My wife and I are parents of two, ages 13 and 9, so I am quite familiar with how a parent's buttons can be pushed.  I also know that a person may make an extreme statement in jest, e.g. "Our team is going to KILL you on the field Friday night!"  My reading of the mother's tone and body language suggested she was not playing cute with her child, and I had not seen anything in the child's behavior to warrant her comments if indeed they were meant to be taken by him at face value.

I also could not help but connect this scene with the product being displayed at the next booth.  It was a spa, the kind you install on your deck.  The salesman was demonstrating the various currents that could be produced at one end so a person could swim against them and get a workout.

Teachers are the swimmers, and there are many things, including bad parenting, that form the current against which we swim.  If we are swimming with the current in a community that supports education and in which parents understand what is best for their children and work to achieve it, we can go far.  Of course, going far for teachers means taking everyone else with us.  If, on the other hand, the current against us is strong, stirred up by parents who threaten to beat their children, for example, then the going can be tough.  We do not make much headway, and we end up feeling like the swimmer in the spa, expending a tremendous amount of effort without going anywhere.

 A recent article that Sean McComb, 2014 National Teacher of the Year, shared with some of us makes a distinction between communities with great schools and schools with great communities.  No school, good or bad, exists in a vacuum.  When the results are less than what we want from a particular school, perhaps it would be a good idea to explore the conditions of the community.  What percentage of the children are living in poverty?  What percentage have their physical needs well met?  How many have supportive families?  How many are living in environments that no one could reasonably call a home?  It just may be that the schools in that community have some teachers at the level of Michael Phelps, but they are swimming against the current.

School Is For Dreamers

It is the first day back to school for our students, and my thoughts are with this young man at Purdue University in 1958.  His name is Sam Carlile, and he came from the small, southern Indiana town of Scottsburg.  Born in 1935, he did not grow up in the easiest years of this country, years that for him were made more difficult by the drowning of his father during a Fourth of July celebration at Fall Creek in Indianapolis in 1943.  His mother moved him, his older brother, Bob, and his younger sister, Patricia, back to her home in Scottsburg where she reared them on a single parent's income as a bank teller.

At a time when many of his classmates did not go on to college, Sam did, following in his brother's footsteps to Purdue University where he would study engineering.  His sister went to Indiana State and majored in education, eventually earning her Master's as well and making all three of them the first generation of their family to graduate from college.  Upon graduating from Purdue, Sam went to work for General Dynamics and spent his career in the space program at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

I know a lot about this family because it is my family.  Patricia is my mother, and her brothers are my uncles.  For my eleventh birthday, Uncle Sam...yes, I am one of the few people who can claim to have an actual Uncle Sam...sent me a note and some pictures of his work.

Among the pictures he sent were photographs of the Titan/Centaur-4 Viking A rocket and the Titan/Centaur-3 Viking B, both of which soft landed on Mars.

          

He also sent one of the Atlas/Centaur just prior to liftoff carrying an Intelsat communications satellite to geosynchronous orbit.

These and other pictures gave me an image of what my Uncle Sam did down at the Cape.  They certainly filled a fifth grader's head with great dreams.

I was reminded of these dreams when I joined teachers from around the country and ten other nations for International Space Camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, this summer.  As I trained for a lunar mission, performed space-related experiments, and stood in awe of the Saturn V rocket while marveling anew at human achievement, I could not help thinking of Uncle Sam.

I do not know what inspired him toward his engineering degree or what led him to work in our space program.  What I do know is that such stories are inspiring, and by that I mean both my uncle's story and the story of the American space race.  They show us what we can do.  They show us that obstacles and setbacks and difficult circumstances cannot derail dreams but quite often fuel them.  They show us what happens when human beings dream of achievement far beyond what is possible at the moment, and in this I think it entirely appropriate that thoughts of my Uncle Sam are on my mind at the start of the school year, for school is and must always be for the dreamers.

Swapping a Toga for a Flight Suit

In the first century A.D., Tertullian famously asked, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"  It was a question to expose what he saw as the irreconcilability of logic and faith.  Many would ask a similar question with regard to me and the week I spent at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.  What has a Latin teacher to do with Space Camp?  The answer is everything, for if teaching Classics has taught me anything, it is that true education knows no boundaries.  It is about the exploration of the glories and wonders of creation, and few things usher us into those glories and wonders like our human achievements in space.  So let's see just what got this toga-wearer to don a flight suit!

Was it the chance to work with the best teachers from around the country and all over the world?

Was it pushing myself in leadership training and learning to survive a helicopter crash in water?

Was it learning to build ablative shielding and a lunar lander...for an egg?

 

Could it have been building and launching a rocket?  Yeah, that's right, a rocket!

 Maybe it was training in the multi-axis trainer and the 1/6 gravity chair...

or preparing for shuttle and lunar base missions...

or meeting NASA legends Homer Hickam and Ed Buckbee?

Actually, it was this.

I was on Team Destiny, comprised of eleven other State Teachers of the Year, a professor from Greece, and a principal from Australia.  We shared all the experiences depicted in these pictures and much, much more.  We breathed stardust for a week and were reminded of just what can happen when human beings push the edge of the envelope to create something new to explore the truly unknown.

And what has all that to do with a Latin teacher?  In the first century B.C., Cicero wrote,

Ex quo omnia mihi contemplanti praeclara cetera et mirabilia videbantur.  Erant autem eae stellae, quas numquam ex hoc loco vidimus, et eae magnitudines omnium, quas esse numquam suspicati sumus.  (De Re Publica 6.16)

"As I gazed at them from this point, all the other heavenly bodies seemed brilliant and amazing.  And there were stars that we have never seen from earth, and the sheer numbers of them all were such as we have never imagined."

What the space race of the mid-twentieth century achieved and what NASA and space agencies around the world are attempting today is simply the next step in the shared journey of discovery, and because this is the definition of education, it has everything to do with me, for I am a teacher.

Here For a Purpose

This may be the most boring picture of all time, yet it represents an excitement I have not felt in many years.  I am in a dorm room at the University of Alabama Huntsville, and tomorrow I will join teachers from across the nation and around the world for a week at Space Camp.  I am going to learn something that is truly novel for me.  I am always excited to learn something further about Latin or the ancient world, but that is a different sort of learning.  That kind of learning is to go deeper into a field about which I already know something.  Tomorrow I will begin learning something completely new.  I know nothing about space science, but I am going to learn, and I am more excited than I can say.

The humble quarters in which I am lodging speak to this.  This tiny room serves but one purpose, to provide a place to sleep and perhaps to do a bit of work while I am learning.  It is not meant to be my home, and my unpacked suitcase atop the wardrobe reminds me of that.  This is a place where I can come for a brief time as I join eager educators in the process of learning.

This simple room's purpose reminds me of my purpose, to learn something brand new.  When was the last time you learned something about which you truly knew nothing?  And armed with the tools of learning that I have developed and honed over many years, tools I have shared with countless students, I stand ready and as eager as a child the night before his birthday, for I am a student again.  I have the privilege of "going back to school," but this time with a hungry, even voracious expectation that youth's lack of experience could never have allowed me to feel in my school days.

I look at this simple, Spartan room one last time before shutting off the lights, filled with the sure knowledge that there is nowhere I would rather be. 

Wrongedy-Wrong-Wrong

I admit it.  I was not just wrong about the Education Commission of the States National Forum on Education Policy.  I was wrongedy-wrong-wrong.  I knew that the forum would be made up of many important voices speaking into education policy in our country, including fellow Teachers of the Year, elected leaders, researchers, and leaders from the business and non-profit worlds.  Yet as the forum drew near, I began to have my doubts.  So much of what we do is talk, and so rarely, it seems, does that talk get us anywhere.  I am making a difference when I work directly with my students or with teaching candidates in university teacher-prep programs, but what would it gain me to spend three days with policy wonks?  The answer is inspiration, motivation, and a better relationship with the foot soldiers and field captains in the battle for our children's, and therefore our country's, future.

For an excellent summary of the forum, check out my friend and 2014 National Teacher of the Year Sean McComb's blog post.  I would like to spend a bit of time, though, talking about some particulars I gained.  Did you know that

• hope is stronger predictor of college success than the SAT or a student's G.P.A. and that hope can be reliably measured according to Gallup?
• there is a negative correlation between PISA math scores and perceived entrepreneurial capability, also according to Gallup?
• University of Texas mathematics professor Philip "Uri" Treisman suggests that not everything in a school's or a district's report card must be psychometrically valid and that we should be presenting what a school does best and letting the public decide?
• according to Dr. Paul Kelley of Oxford's Sleep & Circadian Neuroscience Institute the onset of most mental illness is in adolescence and is caused by sleep deprivation?

I could go on and on about redesigning the job of teachers so that we can extend the reach of excellent teachers for more pay, within budget, and without forcing class-size increases, as at least one organization has shown can be done.  I could talk about an innovative program that Kansas State University has established to help administrators develop the skills they need as leaders, recognizing that there is a world of difference between administration and leadership and that schools need both.  I could share with you an amazing alliance of military, business, crime-prevention, religious, and athletic leaders called Council for a Strong America that focuses on early childhood development and pre-K programs.

I say I could speak about these and many more insights into education, but I am tired of talking.  There are people, good people, who are working hard and trying new things to help our children, and I want to join them.  St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, famously wrote in the 3rd century, "non loquimur magna sed vivimus," which translates, "We do not talk big things but live them."  (De Bono Patientiae, 3)  This was the motto of the first Junior Classical League chapter I sponsored in Austin, Texas, and I am taking it back up as my own.  It is part of our American heritage to know that we do not need permission and we do not need to be asked to make things better.  We simply do it.  To paraphrase a line from Thomas Babington Macaulay's famous Horatius, now who will stand on my right hand and join the fight with me?

Blowing Up the Parthenon

In 1687, Ottoman Turks used the Parthenon as an ammunition dump.  When a Venetian mortar exploded gunpowder that was stored there, one of the most famous buildings in history suffered its worst damage.  It would too much to claim an exact parallel with a curricular decision by Michigan State University, but the difference is one more of degree than of kind.

This spring MSU graduated its last Classical Studies major.  No longer will the Spartans offer a degree that focuses on the ancient world from which their namesake came.  Ridding a major university of a core area of liberal arts study and storing gunpowder in one of the stunning works of human achievement share one thing.  Both are the consequence of blind allegiance to the immediately and narrowly pragmatic while rejecting a broader understanding of truth, goodness, and beauty, or more simply, that which makes us human.  Of course, this is nothing new.

In 335 B.C. Alexander the Great razed the great city of Thebes, killing thousands of men, women, and children, just to make a point.  Whether or not Nero burned Rome, he seemed to benefit from the widespread destruction of the city. Ancient Egyptians went a bit too far in their recycling efforts by using papyrus manuscripts in mummy cartonnage, even for crocodiles.

The article by Fritz Klug on the ending of Classical Studies at MSU does offer an apologia for the value of Classics by highlighting immediately applicable benefits, but there is an even greater benefit than can be had by looking only through the lens of the financially profitable and pragmatic.  It is the well-lived life.  While training in specific skills is important, it is a different endeavor from education, which, to borrow from a Platonic allegory and Latin etymology, is a leading out from darkness into the light.  If an educational institution wishes to claim such a widely encompassing title as a university, then it must reach as broadly as it can to embrace the universal rather than shrink its grasp to the quivering, chest-hugging parochial.

Julius Caesar wrote that the Gallic leader Vercingetorix, in order to send a clear signal of his cruel and absolute authority, cut off the ears of messengers from other tribes.  Jesus was fond of saying, "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear."  No school, rightly called, should be in the business of cutting off ears.

The Things Teachers Do

What do two middle-aged high school teachers and a hair metal band from the '80s have to do with each other?  They prove that the teacher-student relationship lasts a lifetime.

In 1986 she moved from Illinois to a small city in southern Indiana to teach Latin after a local legend had retired.  She had taught previously, but was not that long out of college, and while she would teach for a number of years at this Indiana high school, she would eventually return to Illinois to teach at her alma mater for the remainder of her career.  If she were to have built any kind of relationship with her first students in Indiana, you would have thought it would have been with those in her Latin I class.  They knew no other teacher and would be completely hers.  The seniors should have been least likely to form a bond with her since the majority of their study had been under someone else.

(Marcene, me, my friend Bryan McCorkle, and my mom)

I was one of those seniors, and I can tell you none of us knew quite what to make of our new teacher who changed the arrangement of the desks and was hopelessly devoted to all things Stevie Nicks and purple.  Yet in that one year as a student with Miss Marcene Holverson, I received the finishing touches on my dream to become a Latin teacher.  She introduced us to new activities and gave leadership tips that I have shared with other teachers over the years and still follow to this day.  She stayed in touch with several of us through college, and when I finally entered the teaching world, we became colleagues.  We email frequently, I have been fortunate to speak at her Illinois high school for Latin conventions on several occasions, and she was an honored guest at my Teacher of the Year banquet this year.

So where does the rock and roll come in?  In the late spring of this year, I was on Facebook and a message popped up from Marcene (now Farley after marrying and returning to Illinois) saying that my favorite band, Stryper, would be performing in her town in June.  A few clicks later I had tickets for my son, 13, and me to attend.  We arrived early the day of the show for Marcene to load my truck with boxes of Classics books, some dating to the late 1800s.  She is not retiring, but said that there comes a point when a person has to start getting rid of things.  We had dinner with her parents, and then she said she would lead us to the venue.

(Marcene, me, my son)

Pause for a moment.  As Joan Jett sang, "I love rock and roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby!"  I agree with KISS, for "I want to hear it loud, right between the eyes."  I am one happy camper going from Vergil to Whitesnake, Cicero to Bon Jovi, Catullus to Deep Purple.  There are times when I just want a little Led for my head.  I think you get the picture.  So I was pumped to pull into a small parking lot in front of Goodfellas', a local Italian eatery that featured a stage that has hosted some pretty big names in music.  This was to be a small venue, where the fans crowded around the stage and despite the heat would bang there heads for four hours.  Rock as it was meant to be.

Standing in line (the tickets were general admission), I gasped when Stryper lead singer Michael Sweet came out to say hi to the crowd.  I called out to him and we exchanged some pleasantries, including his asking my son about his Lego creations.  Suddenly Marcene called out, "Michael, will you take a picture with them?"  I handed her my phone, and she snapped several pictures of Michael Sweet with my son and me.  I was on the moon!  Think screaming teens when the Beatles came to the U.S.

(My son, me, and Michael Sweet)

As the doors opened and we started to enter the venue, Marcene took her leave and told me she would stay up so I could call if I needed to on the drive home.  We would be traveling back to Indiana in the middle of the night, and she didn't want me to fall asleep at the wheel.

Teachers and students.  What happens between human beings who occupy these roles is more complex than could ever be grasped by the blunt instrument of an evaluation.  Teachers buy students food and materials that they cannot afford.  Students invite us to their weddings.  I was humbled and honored beyond measure when a former student and her mother asked me to walk the bride down the aisle since the dad was not in the picture.  Once, the social studies teacher on my 8th grade middle school team and I took off at lunch to pay respects at the funeral home for the passing of the mother of one of our students.  Teachers listen, counsel, and try to open up the world to the students who share their lives, their hearts, and their dreams with us.  It does not end when they leave our classroom.  It is not finished when we retire.  It goes on and on, and as one summer night in Pekin, Illinois, recently proved, it lasts a lifetime.

(Stryper covering "Jesus Is Just Alright" at the Pekin concert)

Why Did You Hire Me?

Why did you hire me if you don't trust me to do my job?  If you thought I was a professional with the required skills to make me worthy of hiring, then why do you not give me the required, trust-based freedom to do my job?  If I am as poor at my job as your top-down, micromanaging of my professional life indicates, what does that say about your hiring practices?

I recently read an article about technology in the classroom, which is a common topic these days.  Even more run-of-the-mill was the use of Finland as the starting point in the discussion.  Yet what made this article truly important was not its provocative title or anything on the first page, which pretty much told us what we already know.  Page two contains the gem.  The article cites a post on Finnish education author Pasi Sahlberg's blog that identifies the two basic things the United States must get right if it hopes to learn anything from Finland:  teacher trust and teacher training.

Let's acknowledge a few things up front.  I teach with an extraordinary department chair, Traci Rodgers, who works hard to help her teachers do the jobs for which they have been hired.  My school and my district have been incredibly supportive of me and mine.  We all know this is not universally the case.  Let us also admit that it is entirely possible to make a bad hire.  The person looks good on paper, has a great interview, but just does not work out.  It happens.  It is also possible for a person to get worse over time for any number of reasons.  Even those who do not get worse can and should improve.  Yet does a system built on distrust of teachers, one that proves it assumes teachers are doing a bad job with its requirement of endless reporting, observing, evaluating, and testing, really help anyone?  

Consider for a moment a famous scene from the classic film Cool Hand Luke.  In this scene the boss of a prison gang informs the men that they may have some privacy as they answer the call of nature while

working along a road, provided that they keep shaking the bush that hides them.  One of the prisoners takes advantage of this, but even as he shakes the bush, one of the prison bosses fires a rifle in his direction.  At last the bush stops shaking and the guards rush over to discover that the man has tied a string to the bush so that he could shake it at a distance as he made his escape.

Education is a most human enterprise, yet it can feel inhumane in the extreme when professional, caring, and creative adults live under the cloud of such distrust.  As the Cool Hand Luke scene illustrates, a sufficiently motivated person can get around such measures, and in what should be a humane environment like education, these measures serve mostly to discourage and drive away the best and brightest.

Sahlberg does point out that the trust and respect given to Finnish teachers derives from the high level of their preparation.  Perhaps that is what administrators and legislators do not trust.  They do not trust the institutions that have prepared their employees.  If that is the case, then let's have that conversation.  What must stop is a demeaning, punitive system of so-called accountability that seems to have but one actual effect, a hemorrhaging of educational leaders from the profession.

For Those Who Are Not Me

First of all, I know that the title of this post is grammatically incorrect.  It should read, "For Those Who Are Not I."  The reference, however, is to a Kenny Rogers song with the lyric, "I feel sorry for anyone who isn't me tonight," and it just seemed pretentious to give the correct grammar in the post title only to follow it so quickly with the song lyric.  Those of you who are not grammar nerds will not understand why I took so much space in this opening paragraph to talk about such a matter, but I am a grammar nerd and had to clear the air.

Fine.  I'm done talking about that now.

The truth remains, though, that I do feel sorry for anyone who isn't me.  No, this is not a statement of overweening pride and arrogance.  It is, in fact, a declaration of humility.  What follows are the remarks I delivered at our district's end-of-year celebration.

"Mr. Perkins, the principal needs to see you on your conference period."  The cold and clammy hand of terror reached out of Claire Campassi's email and choked me.  For the next four hours I had to teach while wondering what outrageous thing I had said in class that was finally going to get me fired.  When Mr. Branigan and Mr. Akers stopped by to tell me I would be North Central Teacher of the Year I was both relieved and surprised.  I was relieved to still have a job, but surprised by their message given where I teach.  You see, I have taught at almost every level of school in three states, and I have never seen such a body of scholarly, creative, and caring teachers as I have come to know at North Central.

Then it happened again.  "The Washington Township Teacher of the Year is Mr. Steve Perkins."  Dr. Woodson made the announcement, and the YouTube video tells me that there was a lot of cheering and clapping, but I remember very little of that moment.  I was stunned by her message given where I teach.  From Kindergarten through twelfth grade, the students of Washington Township experience award-winning scholars, artists, and scientists who just happen to be their teachers five days a week.  I was humbled and honored to be chosen to represent such a sterling group of educators.

And then came October 4, 2013.  "Mr. Perkins is the 2014 Indiana Teacher of the Year."  The words came from State Superintendent Glenda Ritz amid an invasion of television cameras and reporters interrupting our warm-up activity in Latin I.  This time I was flat out nervous.  I grabbed our son and daughter, whom Glenda was leading by the hand, not so much for their comfort as for my own.  Since that day I have had the opportunity to meet and work with extraordinary educators from all fifty states.  I have participated in policy discussions here and in Washington, D.C., have spoken to the Indiana House of Representatives, and yes, I was able to share a message from our Latin students with the President of the United States in the White House.

Yet for all the fun and exciting opportunities I have enjoyed so far and will continue to enjoy through next school year, one of the highlights has included speaking to pre-service teachers in schools of education around Indiana.  We all know that this is one of the most challenging times in which to be a teacher.  Circumstances at all levels of the great American education machine, to say nothing of negative media, make it increasingly difficult for intelligent adults to do their job, which is, quite simply, leading students on the shared journey of discovery that is education.  Yet these pre-service teachers in our schools of education give me great hope for the future.  In their eyes and in their words I see and hear the passion for children and commitment to learning that are the hallmarks of any great teacher.  They are not blind to the deck that is often stacked against them by foolish regulations, the poverty of their students, and life itself.  They are, however, prepared to do something about it because they have been shaped by amazing Hoosier educators.

How do I know this?  I know it because I see in them what I see every day in the hallways at North Central and I what I see here today, men and women who have continued their own discovery of the true, the good, and the beautiful, lifelong learners who know that one of the greatest things for a human being is to walk alongside others in that most humane of enterprises, education.  We walk with the richest and the poorest in our community, with those from loving homes and those from environments that no one could reasonably call a family.  Our students are hard working and lazy, brilliant and struggling, inquisitive and dead at an early age to the wonders of life.  Yet the dedicated professionals in this room have given their lives to guiding all of them on that shared journey of discovery.  Who are we to be entrusted with such a sacred calling?  The answer is that we are teachers.   For this reason, I could not be more proud to work with the extraordinary educators of Washington Township and to share your stories with those who, like you, are changing the world one student at a time.  Thank you.