Listening with understanding and empathy: Understand others! Devoting mental energy to another person’s thoughts and ideas; holding in abeyance one’s own thoughts in order to perceive another’s point of view and emotions.

I’m taking this post a bit off-topic and writing not about how I am empathic at work, but rather, how a personal experience forced me into the proverbial mile in another’s shoes.

On December 20th, I had surgery to correct femoral acetabular impingement.  My prognosis is good – the surgeon predicted an eventual return to full athletic activity for me, but in the meantime I had a few physical limitations:

• No driving for two full weeks after surgery
• Walk assisted, to some degree, by crutches for at least the first four weeks after surgery
• Very limited mobility in my right leg for the first few weeks after surgery
• No bending at the hip past 90 degrees for six weeks after surgery

The weeks since the 20th have given me a refresher course in awareness of issues of mobility and physical access. Here are some of my experiences from the last month:

Week 1: While I was able to get around on two crutches, I felt weak, nauseous, and tired much of the time from the surgery and pain meds.  The first few days I spent mostly horizontal on the couch, alternately reading, watching TV, and napping.  I avoided getting up as much as possible not so much because of the walking on crutches, but because the physical act of getting up off the couch without bending my hip was so taxing.  I had to mentally prepare myself just to get off the couch – I was not used to that.  Learning to use the crutches properly took a little getting used to as well – put your weight on the handles, not the armpit pads.  I’ll spare you the details of how I managed in the bathroom, but suffice to say that I had to reinvent how I did all the many things one does in the bathroom in order to stay upright and not stress the hip joint.  If you want a small taste of what it was like, try taking a shower (and getting in and out) standing on one foot. Good luck with that.

Week 2: Significantly better than Week 1, but still on two crutches.  Getting in and out of the car (as a passenger) was laborious, as I not only had to lean backwards into the seat, but then lift my right leg into the car with two hands while not breaking the 90 degree bend at my hip.  That, plus the increased amount of time it took me to get from Point A to Point B on the crutches made being ambulatory feel kind of like more trouble than it was worth (and what a horrible thing to feel!).

Weeks 3-4: Back to work!  I returned from Winter Break on the two-week post-op date – I was allowed to drive, but the hour+ drive to work made for an uncomfortable ten hours each week.  I often felt in danger of breaking the 90 degree rule, so I rolled up a fleece blanket and sat on that while leaning the seat back as far as it would go – still not terribly comfortable, but thankfully I have long arms and have been able to live with this arrangement.  I also spent the first few days spectacularly underestimating how long it would take me to get to different locations around my building.

Now: As I write this, I am just shy of four weeks from my surgery, and things are going about as well as could be expected.  I’m walking mostly unassisted, but I’m not allowed to bend beyond 90 degrees at the hip until the end of January, and I still have to take it slow going up stairs.  I feel fortunate that my recovery has gone as well as it has.

It still amazes me how much of the last month I have spent thinking about my body – not in terms of vanity or exercise, but in a purely logical, mechanical sense:

• How can I group the tasks I need to get done so I can minimize the amount of time I spend on my feet?
• Should I bring a backpack to work so I can carry more than one thing at a time?
• What’s the quickest way to get to X or Y classroom in case I’m needed?
• When are the halls filled with students, so I can time my trips to classrooms/offices/bathroom accordingly?
• Now that I’m in the kitchen/bedroom/office, do I have everything I came in here for so I don’t have to make another trip in 10 minutes?
• Should I just stand at the counter and eat my food now or should I make multiple slow trips to get it all into the living room?
• Should I sit uncomfortably in my office chair and think constantly about breaking the 90 degree mark or should I just stand at my desk to work?*
• When do I need to get dressed in order to have someone around to put my right sock on for me?
• What clothes/shoes do I have to wear in order to make getting dressed less challenging?**
• Is my hip flexion breaking 90 degrees?  What about now?  How about now?  Now?

But here’s the thing – I won’t be living with these issues forever.  I have, for a very short period of time, experienced a hint of what lots of folks live with on a full-time basis: limited mobility, persistent discomfort, and fatigue.  The experience has been a valuable one, not only for the long-term physical health benefits, but also for the concrete reminder that we all live, work, and move within different physical realities, and to be mindful of that at all times in our professional practice.

As Ira Socol says – and I frequently parrot – disability is often transactional.  In the case of physical disability, being mindful of the myriad potential physical conditions people can bring with them to your office, your shop, or your classroom and accommodating for them can lessen or remove their impact (read Ira’s blog post linked above for good examples of how).  Even those of us who consider ourselves sensitive to these issues may not fully recognize barriers until we experience them for ourselves.  Demonstrating empathy in this regard is elemental to establishing a culture of respect and trust, especially when one works with children and their families.

*Shout-out to my colleague Ryan, who provided me a tall stool from his office – a low-cost assistive technology accommodation that has made working at my desk significantly more tolerable for this 6’2″ guy with restricted hip movement.

**My 3-year-old daughter can zip up my black Chelsea boots for me, so they’ve gotten a lot of wear this month.

References

Costa, A.L. & Kallick, B. (2010). It takes some getting used to: rethinking curriculum for the 21st century. In H. H. Jacobs (Ed.), Curriculum 21: essential education for a changing world (pp. 210-226). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

So anyway, here goes: in “The End of Isolation”, my co-authors (Eric Brunsell and Elizabeth Alderton, both of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh) and I explore how K-12 classroom teachers use Twitter as a means of professional networking (the research behind the article was the basis of Eric’s and my conversation at Educon 2.3 this past January).  More from the abstract:

The researchers surveyed and analyzed the public Twitter feeds of classroom teachers to determine the specific purposes for which teachers use Twitter. Study participants also completed surveys dealing with social networking. The K-12 educators in this study engaged in true dialogue, where evidence of actual conversation occurred in Twitter over 61% of the time. Additionally, over 82% of the time, the educators in this study chose to follow other educators or content experts related to their field of teaching so they were able to create a personal learning network meaningful to their professional needs. Analysis of data shows that a majority of tweets were educationally focused and were primarily in the categories of practice/philosophy, questions, and sharing of resources. Additional studies looking at how other online learning communities may be used as professional development venues would be beneficial and add to the knowledge base of online learning, professional development, and learning networks.

The article appeared in this past September’s issue of MERLOT’s Journal of Online Learning and Teaching; the full text of the article is available here for your review.  Finally, a huge THANK YOU to the participants in our survey; we truly could not have done this without you.

Reference

Alderton, E., Brunsell, E., & Bariexca, D.  (2011).  The end of isolation.  MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 7(3), 354-365.

The original plan was for PSLPs to be piloted in sixteen school districts throughout NJ over 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, but I’ve since learned that the pilot program has been extended through the end of the 2011-2012 school year.  In August 2010, the state released its initial findings (PDF), which I’ll summarize here.

The 2009-2010 Evaluation Report (linked above) cites eleven major findings from last school year and six major lessons to take into the current one.  I’ll just highlight a few:

Findings

• Buy-in and support are crucial: Findings 6, 7, and 9 all address the significance of not only teacher buy-in, but also demonstrable support beyond “lip service” from principals (or, I imagine, any school administrator) to the success of a local PSLP program.  The report noted that the schools that most effectively implemented the PSLP program all had strong training programs for staff and students, adequate resources, and regular opportunities to meet, voice concerns, and collectively problem-solve.  One example that pops up a few times in the findings is an aspect of personalized education to which I alluded in this post from February – the flexibility of the school schedule.  Principals who were perceived to be supportive were also those who allowed for flexibility in both the school schedule and staff scheduling.  It makes sense; if we are going to truly personalize learning experiences, it has to be in for a penny, in for a pound; no half-stepping here.
• Technology is key: Hate to say “I told you so”, but Finding #2 noted that the vast majority of schools in the pilot program used some sort of web-based program as part of the PSLP process.  If this is the direction in which NJ schools are heading, for better or for worse, teachers and other school staff are going to need to get comfortable utilizing online tools.
• We need a point man: Or woman!  From the report: “School representatives reported that PSLP programs require substantial coordination and planning, and agreed that without someone acting as the central coordinator in each school, PSLPs would be difficult to implement.”  The report stated that of the 16 pilot schools, only three used teachers as their PSLP coordinators (administrators and guidance counselors seemed to be the positions of choice for this job).  I’m of two minds about this: on one hand, it doesn’t make sense to me to burden the teachers – who are already adjusting to entirely new professional environment with trying to meet the individualized needs of all these students – with this additional paperwork.  On the other hand, as the ones with the most daily contact with the students, they’re the ones who know them, their goals, and their progress best.  Maybe the paperwork needs to be handled by an admin or support personnel with regular input from the teachers.  Which, of course, means building regular meeting times into the weekly schedule (see first bulletpoint above).
• Despite challenges, initial reports are favorable: Findings 10 & 11 indicated that a significant majority of polled staff members felt that the first year of the PSLP pilot program had a positive impact on students, and that they would recommend the PSLP process to colleagues in other districts.  The Evaluation Report acknowledges that a single year is not enough time to gauge all the potential pros and cons of this program, but upwards of seventy percent of educators polled felt that the program had a positive impact on student-teacher interactions, help-seeking behaviors, motivation, and engagement, among other things.  Seventy-three percent of teachers and one hundred percent of program coordinators polled said they would recommend PSLPs to other schools in their districts.

Lessons

No need to bulletpoint here; I think it’s sufficient to say that the lessons primarily drive home the absolute necessity of staff training prior to the start of the PSLP implementation as well as having principals who walk the walk in terms of supporting the initiative by providing more than just verbal support for the program.  No big surprises here.

Looking Ahead

Despite this report being published in August 2010, I wasn’t aware of its existence until midway through the current school year.  Now that I know the state is publishing these, I’ll be keeping an eye on the PSLP site toward the end of summer to see what more the 2010-2011 Evaluation Report has to say.  I am concerned about the logistical headaches a poorly implemented PSLP could create, but I am more hopeful about the potential for good this could hold if done right.

If you’ve read the document (go do it; it’s only 5 1/2 pages), what about the findings/lessons stand out to you?  Has your school or state implemented something similar?  Is NJ on the right track with this project?

Why I Did It

First, why I DIDN’T do it: I DIDN’T do it because I feel I’d be depriving the world of some educational holy grail if I didn’t.  In fact, most of what’s in there was developed prior to the major change in thinking I had toward my practice in 2006-2007.  What is in there, however, I think are good jumping off points for development.  I may have had stale writing assigments from my first few years, but I think the core questions and ideas they address are still good – my challenge to you is, can you take those good ideas and come up with a better way to have kids address them than I did?

I did this in the spirit of open education and sharing.  I was fortunate enough to work in an English department with teachers who were only too happy to share their wealth of materials with me as I was starting out; I’d like to think that in some way, this move honors their generosity of time and resources (especially since some of their stuff is probably in these files, in one form or another).

I also think back to one of the reasons I liked having students post their research online: what good does all that hard work do if it’s just sitting on your hard drive somewhere collecting proverbial dust?  While my students may have had a few weeks of research to share, I have eight years worth of research, thinking, missteps, and refinement that I hope will benefit some pre-service or early career teacher sitting in his living room, staring at a copy of Hamlet, and thinking not so much, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”, but rather, “Where the hell am I supposed to start with this?”  Sometimes the seeming enormity of the task overwhelms; that’s where (hopefully) my stuff can help focus and provide ideas.

How I Did It

I’ve toyed with the idea of doing this ever since I stopped teaching at the end of the 2007-2008 school year, but could never find the right combination of price (for file hosting) and convenience to make it a worthwhile project to pursue.  The closest I came was using DivShare to upload my stuff because they had a drag & drop uploader, but folders still had to be individually created via the website, documents re-arranged manually (again, via the website), and let’s face it – we’re talking about 3.5 gigs of files, mostly text documents.  That was just too much.

The service I ended up using for this project was one I’ve used and loved for years now – Dropbox.  Dropbox is a service that provides 2GB of free online storage and file syncing between computers (if you use the link above to sign up for the service and install it on your computer, you and I both get an additional 250MB of space on top of the 2GB; further space can be obtained through their referral program).  The watershed moment came a few months ago when Dropbox announced that their next software upgrade would include a folder sharing function (previously, only individual files could be shared publicly).  Here’s how you do it:

1. Right-click on the folder you want to share.
2. Select “Dropbox” > “Get shareable link”.
3. You’ll be re-directed to Dropbox’s website, where you’ll get a short link you can tweet, share on Facebook, or embed in a webpage, wiki, blog, etc.
4. Anyone who can access the link can now access the contents of that folder.
5. That’s it.
6. No, really; that’s all there is to it.

Since I kept all my stuff in Dropbox anyway, this meant that all I needed to do was activate the shareable link for each course’s folder, put the link on my website along with a brief description of each course, and remove any pictures or videos of students (all of whom have long since graduated from high school and are adults, but it’s the right thing to do).  Once that was done, I did another cursory sweep of the files just to tighten up organization a bit, and that was that.  Unlike other services, I could do this all from my desktop, and any changes made there were instantaneously reflected on the Dropbox servers – far less time consuming than doing it all manually through a web app.

If you’d like to have a look, head over to my portfolio website and feel free to have a poke around.  Also, if you know an English teacher or department who may want to dig around, please feel free to distribute the link far and wide.  Much like my blog, my lessons and materials are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License (of course, this license does not abridge your Fair Use rights as an educator).

Finally, I’d like to toss this out there – if setting up the file sharing was as simple as dragging some folders into Dropbox, getting the shareable link, then posting the link on a website (or wiki, or blog, or whatever you like)…

…would you share your work too?

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION?

The short answer: to foster growth & independence.

The long answer: In the States, we have an acronym that appears in our federal law governing special education: FAPE, or Free & Appropriate Public Education.  According to federal law, FAPE is what every child who is eligible for special education & related services is guaranteed.  This means that for every student with an identified disability, the school must develop an Individualized Education Plan [IEP] that best meets that student’s needs based on his/her individual strengths and weaknesses.  For some students, this means they are educated in the same contexts as their non-disabled peers with minor accommodations, while others require instruction on basic facets of daily living.  For some students, the most appropriate educational placement for them involves leaving our traditional American high school in order to learn basic employment skills.  Yet other students spend a significant portion of their time in a polytechnic environment, developing industrial skills in an apprentice-like setting.  For all of these students, their formal educations look very different, yet are presumably appropriate to their individual goals.

If working in the world of special education has taught me anything, it is that education can – and probably should – look different for every student.  With this perspective, the question I constantly ask is: to what degree are we providing ALL students – not just those with identified disabilities – with FAPE?  This includes, but is not limited to, re-thinking:

• physical presence at school – do we all need to be there at the same time, or for the same length of time?  Why?
• how we structure our day – should we isolate subjects from one another in 40-80 minute chunks?
• who provides instruction – can students only learn from certified teachers, or was Illich on to something forty years ago?
• the increasing emphasis on standardized tests in the US that is driving curriculum to focus more on students’ areas of weaknesses instead of their areas of strength, interest, and passion?

My home state of New Jersey is in the midst of piloting a program called Personalized Student Learning Plans, which, roughly explained, applies the concept of the IEP to all students from middle grades (ages 12-13) through high school graduation (ages 17-18).  I will blog about the initial findings soon, but for now I’ll say they look promising in terms of student engagement, student-teacher interactions, and, perhaps most importantly, student ownership of learning and ability to think critically.  When we honor the individual differences inherent in our students, we reinforce the message that they are capable of learning, thus (hopefully) laying the foundation for a lifetime of self-directed learning, or at least problem-solving.

As an educator, but more importantly, as a father, this is the direction in which I want our education system to move.  Let us engage both our students and our children by structuring their formal educational experiences around their passions and strengths, and let us challenge them to become self-sufficient critical thinkers, not expert bubble-darkeners.

After presenting our findings, we presented our participants with three focus questions to discuss in small groups, carousel-style.  They were:

• What examples do we have of personal learning networks leading to a change in classroom practice?
• What steps / structures can be taken / created to foster improved classroom practice through PLN interactions?
• What are the major barriers (beyond technical fluency) for social-network based PLN’s to become vehicles for transformative professional development?

Our attendees came up with some great responses to each of these prompts.  I had originally planned to synthesize these into a single blog post, but as I sat in the SLA library typing them up on Sunday afternoon, I realized there was too much for a single post.  Over the course of the next few days, I’ll put up three individual posts, each dedicated to one central question and the responses generated.  In the meantime, have a look at the slidedeck that accompanied our presentation:

*Dr. Elizabeth Alderton, Eric’s colleague at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, is also a member of our research team, but was unable to attend Educon.

I’ve been sitting on this half-written post since December of 2009, according to WordPress.  No real reason why I never saw it through, but Susan Meisel’s comment on my last post about leadership certainly brought the sentiments behind it bubbling forth:

I believe all professionals in education should be practicing visiting and sharing. Teachers and administrators alike should be in classrooms, visiting, picking up strategies, observing students, and looking for “best of”. I realize that administrators are busy, and teachers need to be released for this, but it would go a long way to making excellent schools.

This also brings me back to a short Twitter exchange I had with sixth grade teacher, blogger, mainstay in my RSS reader, and all-around good guy Bill Ferriter back in September of 2009 (yes, I’ve been sitting on these links for over a year – knew I’d get around to this post someday!).  The exact context of the conversation evades me – probably something regarding how teachers & administrators view certain issues differently – when Bill said this:

(Follow Bill on Twitter at @plugusin)

Bill gets no argument from me that my schedule is a lot more flexible than that of a classroom teacher (though I doubt it’s the free-for-all many probably imagine it to be), but shouldn’t learning from our peers be something that is actively encouraged in a school community?

Now I’m not an administrator, but since leaving the classroom, I have gained a much more global perspective of the goings-on in my school district.  As a teacher, my perspective was fairly limited to what happened in my classroom, and maybe it extended to a department-wide level in some matters.  Despite that increase in the breadth, my perspective has become limited in another way – i.e., I deal primarily with issues of special education: students who have been identified as requiring special education and related services, those classes designated as such, and the teachers, therapists, ESPs, and various other personnel who travel in these professional circles.

On the other hand, I’d argue that it’s also possible to pull so far back from the “trenches” that you lose sight of the personal interactions and little details that impact operations.

Maybe there is no happy medium to be found (unless you work in a really small school or district), but I think Susan’s suggestion of release time is a vital one, and one that would address Bill’s concern.  As a young teacher, I would go on my prep period to observe master teachers in my department for tips on classroom management, lesson structuring – all the things that new teachers need to figure out on their own, but could really use a couple good models at the same time.  While I learned much from those observations, in hindsight, I probably also limited myself by only observing other English teachers.  I wonder what I could have learned about cooperative learning or project-based learning from sitting in on a Science or Art class, or more effective uses of film and primary sources from a Social Studies class.

I understand there are costs associated with bringing in substitutes to cover teachers’ classes while they observe, but is this not a valid reason to do so?  If you were to take a sick day or attend a conference, they’d have to call a sub anyway, am I right?  Even if that was an impossibility, could you give up one prep period per month to sit in on your colleagues’ classrooms and see what you could learn?  If you’re an administrator, is it possible for you to drop in on a non-evaluative basis?

In an age where budgets are being slashed left and right and professional development is usually one of the first items to go, I challenge you, dear reader, to devote one prep period per month from now until May to finding some in-house PD.  For my part, I am going to try to get in to at least two classrooms per month (beyond my student observations, group counseling commitments, etc.)  just to get a better understanding of instructional strategies, pacing, and – hell – just to try to re-establish some ties with a professional context I really haven’t seen in almost three years.  I don’t know if it will make me a better school psychologist, but perhaps it will help me become a more effective case manager.

I know you’re busy.  We’re ALL busy.  If your administration encourages this and gives you professional time to accomplish this, I think you’re very fortunate and should take advantage.  But when we’re not given time to do something beneficial for us and for our students, sometimes we have to make time.  Will you join me?

I plan to blog about my experiences with this in June, so please stay tuned.

At times like these, I debated internally as to whether I should share my personal opinions on the topic.  On one hand, I certainly didn’t want to influence the discussion and have students “side” with me for brownie points.  On the other hand, I felt hypocritical asking my students to share their opinions so freely without doing so myself.  I decided years ago that I would share my personal feelings on this (and other) topics in the course of discussion, but I frequently reminded the students that these were just my opinions, and not fact, and would frequently tell my students, “I could very well be wrong about this – I would love to hear what you think.”  I think that modeling openness without proselytizing went a long way toward fostering an environment of sharing.  Sometimes, students would even actively seek my opinion – during one debate about the appropriateness of discussing same-sex families in elementary school curriculum, a student asked me, “Mr. B., how would you feel about Dylan [my son] learning about this in elementary school?”  I feel that to deflect the question would have been disingenuous, so I answered honestly: “Yes, I think it’s important that he learn about the various types of families that exist today – not just same-sex and opposite-sex, but nuclear, extended, single-parent, and others.  How many of you come from families that you feel have been underrepresented in the books you’ve read or stuff you’ve studied?”  Without forcing my view on them as the “right” one, I answered honestly, and was able to draw some parallels between a family structure that was unfamiliar to most of my students (same-sex parents) to some that were more familiar.

For a unit of study that focused on a group defined by sexual orientation, I think quite a few of our students were surprised that we spent very little time discussing sex itself.  My response to that was always the same: to do so would be to reduce an entire group of human beings to one personality characteristic.

I preferred crafting the discussion as not a sex issue, but one of human and civil rights (i.e., state-sponsored discrimination against gays, violence and harassment against people who are, or are believed to be, gay, selective enforcement of sodomy laws, issues surrounding rights of marriage).  You might think that talking about sodomy laws in particular would trigger the “ick” response, especially since I used to start that lesson with a request for the definition of sodomy!  After the initial giggles and awkward glances, the class was usually able to cobble together an appropriate definition.  My purpose here was not to shock, but rather to compartmentalize.  As soon as we established a commonly agreed-upon definition, I would ask, “Can gay people perform these acts? Can straight people perform these acts?”  Once we established that yes, both gay and straight people can perform these acts, we could put the sex issue aside and go for the meatier stuff: “In what ways, if any, should these two groups be treated differently under the law?”  Students were then able to think about the legality of enforcing laws with one group of people and not others.  Usually, at least a handful of students would also take the class in the direction of the legislation of sex acts between two consenting adults, and how feasible they are to enforce, as well as their constitutionality.  Again, more often than not, my students could see the social injustice issues a bit more clearly once we effectively removed the so-called “ick factor” that so many people get hung up on.

I was astounded, yet gratified, when students would tell me, “You know, I never thought about gay people as just people before taking this class.” One of the activities that I felt had an enormous impact was when we invited Sharon and Barbara from our local chapter of PFLAG (Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays) [ed.: Just realized now that PFLAG actually stands for Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays.  I apologize for the error.] to come speak about their own experiences with their gay and lesbian children.  I always used to smile when they’d say, “Our kids are not drag queens and leather daddies, although that’s usually what you see on TV when you see gay people.  My son is a college student.  Her daughter is a doctor.  They’re regular people, just like everyone in this room.”  Hearing these concrete examples helped our students to see beyond the stereotypes and, as my students said, see gay people as just people.  Once that stigma of “otherness” was removed, or at least reduced, real discussion about human rights and civil rights could take place.

More often than not, by the end of the unit, my students reported feeling much more sensitive to, and better informed about, GLBTQ issues and how they related to their own lives, even if they did not identify as GLBTQ.  In addition to the “they’re just people” comments, the biggest payoff for me was that my students were given access to facts and realistic portrayals of GLBTQ people that did not fall within their very narrow cultural frame of reference.  Regardless of how (or even if) their opinions about GLBTQ issues changed, I was more interested in seeing my students base their opinions on factual information, rather than misinformation.

At the end of the course, long after we had completed this unit and moved on through others, our students were asked to break into small groups, research a topic pertaining to any one of the groups we’d studied, and design a 45-60 minute lesson to be taught to elementary or middle-school age children.  Invariably, at least one or two groups would ask to design a lesson on GLBTQ issues.  As much as my co-teacher and I would have loved to do this, it was not possible.  When we presented our cooperating teachers with the list of groups our students might cover in their classes during our pre-project planning, we were specifically and repeatedly requested to not have students teach on GLBTQ issues.  We reluctantly agreed, but I always made a point of telling the class exactly why the GLBTQ unit was off-limits.

It is easy to discriminate against any group of people perceived to be significantly different from you because as the differences become more significant, there is more room for judgment to come into play: the way those people do x, y, and z is gross/immoral/disgusting/wrong/not in line with what I believe to be right.  From there, even passively turning a blind eye to injustices inflicted by others is easier than fighting for equality.  However, when any marginalized group is humanized, rather than demonized, the differences begin to seem less important than the underlying similarities we all share as human beings.  People are less likely to discriminate or commit acts of violence against those they deem to be “like us.” Keeping GLBTQ issues visible in the public school curriculum is important not only to the students in those classes, but to the country as a whole, for when we decrease homophobic words and actions (along with racist, sexist, and other discriminatory acts), the greater society can only benefit.

As with “Alleviating Shakes-fear”, this story will be published here in two parts.  Any differences between this version and the final published version are attributable to the editing process, and all names used herein are pseudonyms.

The Ick Factor

Toward the end of the 1990s, when colleagues at one of my former schools approached high-level administrators regarding a request from students to start a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club, the response they got was concise and impossible to misconstrue: “Over my dead body.”  The process to start an extra-curricular club was pretty straightforward, and while clubs had come and gone over the past 40 years due to varying degrees of interest, none of the faculty involved could remember ever hearing of a potential club being told, “You may not exist.”  Essentially, a group of kids was being told,“You do not have the same rights as every other student in this high school” by adults who supposedly had their best educational and social-emotional interests at heart.

If you were a gay student at that time, the shortsighted decision of an administrator might not even appear on your radar amidst the daily verbal barrage of your classmates calling each other “faggot” and referring to everything they didn’t like as “gay.”  And whether or not a club was sanctioned by the school couldn’t possibly mean much to those actively targeted, and in turn bullied, because of their homosexuality, real or perceived.  That being said, eventually the school’s GSA did get approval and remains active a decade after its inception.  Fortunately, the aforementioned administrator did not have to die for this to happen, but his choice of idiom was fairly apt: multiple studies report that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, & questioning (GLBTQ) youth attempt suicide at rates of anywhere from double to quadruple those of their heterosexual peers.  In less severe, but no less significant, terms, GLBTQ people have historically been marginalized, underrepresented, and misrepresented in ways that have made it very easy for people to discriminate against them.

One arena in which GLBTQ people have been most severely underrepresented has been the American school system.  Whether due to disapproval, ignorance, or fear of controversy, the contributions and achievements of GLBTQ individuals have rarely been celebrated or identified as being part of the GLBTQ community.  Representation is important for a number of reasons, especially in schools.  For one, the simple act of acknowledging the existence of GLBTQ people throughout history provides some sense of perspective to people who are too young to realize that being gay is neither new nor a fad.  In addition, there are the caricatures portrayed in the media—the butch, sleeveless-flannel-wearing lesbian and the overly effeminate, impeccably dressed gay man—that can be addressed in school, thus broadening the perceptions of our students.

GSA clubs play a role in this effort, but there is still a lack of visibility, curriculum-wise, in the schools.  I feel privileged that I was able to bring some of these issues to my students for discussion and analysis when I taught a class called Multicultural Studies.  It was an elective course, open to juniors and seniors, and team-taught by an English teacher (me) and a Social Studies teacher.  Over the course of 18 weeks, we examined different ethnic, religious, and social groups within the United States and learned about many different facets of the groups, from historical issues to current events, and how they operate within and contribute to the greater fabric of American society.  One unit of the course focused specifically on issues pertinent to GLBTQ people.

The material covered in this unit varied from year to year, but topics included same-sex marriage (as well as many of the related legal issues), the presence of GLBTQ people throughout American history (for which I recommend the excellent documentary Out of the Past), issues faced by GLBTQ youth and the roles and functions of GSAs.  We also spent time each year discussing the students’ opinions on the appropriateness and necessity of covering different GLBTQ-related issues in a class like ours.

The course was reliant on discussion, but our GLBTQ Studies unit always seemed even more discussion-driven than the others, due in large part to our students’ desire to have an open and honest dialogue about a topic that, for many of them seemed like another world.  In fact, we used to begin by asking the students why they thought this unit appeared in the course curriculum at all.  Responses typically focused around the usual broad themes: reduce prejudice and discriminatory acts, and trying to understand “where they’re coming from.”  When pressed, however, most of our students had difficulty articulating more specific reasons.  It was usually the students who had gay relatives (or, in some cases, identified as gay themselves) who were able to give more insightful, nuanced answers:

“My uncle has been with his partner for ten years, and they want to have a family, but they’re not allowed to adopt.”
“A friend of our family is gay, but he doesn’t act all flamboyant like Jack on Will & Grace.  He’s just a normal guy.”
“What people don’t get is that we’re just like everyone else in most regards, but we’re seen as these crazy things, and that’s really frustrating!”

During these discussions, my co-teachers and I welcomed any and all questions, even the ones that tended to put us on the spot a bit (e.g., “Why do we have to learn about homosexuality?  Why don’t we do a unit on heterosexuality?”).  Thankfully, those types of questions were few and far between, and most were of a more thoughtful nature.  Since this was an elective course, the students who chose to take it tended to be more sensitive to those issues, even if they didn’t know exactly what they were.  But even among this group of students that skewed toward progressive and open-minded, issues surrounding homosexuality were still a bit more taboo and uncomfortable for many of them to deal with.

In the midst of a research and discussion activity about same-sex marriage laws, one student seemed unusually anxious.  Part of this activity was to designate different areas of the room as representing different opinions, and we asked our students to physically relocate based on their views on what the legal status of same-sex marriage should be.  As most of the students made their way toward the position areas that supported marriage, this student sat still, then reluctantly headed over to one of the “against” areas.

My co-teacher and I began polling the class to find out what reasons the students had for their chosen positions.  When I came to Anna, she immediately jumped on the defensive: “I like gay people! I don’t have anything against them, really! I have friends who are gay!”  As I tried to draw her back to the topic at hand, Anna almost seemed on the verge of tears when she said, “I – I think they should have all the legal rights we talked about, but you just can’t call it marriage, because it’s not.”

My memory of Anna is that she was very progressive overall, and certainly open to considering multiple perspectives on many of the topics we covered in the course.  On this day, however, she drew her own personal line, almost apologetically, as if her “liberal cred” was at risk.  Compared to the general student body, this belief would be considered very progressive (or heretical, depending on who you ask), but in this group, Anna was definitely in the minority; most students in her class came out in favor of full marriage benefits, including the name, for same-sex couples.

As I expected in the ensuing discussion, her classmates asked, “Why would you give them all the rights, but not the name?” and, in this instance, the difference came down to Anna’s personal definition of marriage: “It’s between a man and a woman. If it’s between two men or between two women, it’s something else.”  When pressed for the obvious (“Well, if it’s not marriage, then what is it?”), she answered, “A civil union. A domestic partnership. I… I don’t know…”.  When Anna trailed off at the end, it almost sounded to me like she was struggling with her own definition of marriage.  It may have been an uncomfortable moment for her, but I believe that she was challenged to really think hard about what she believed, and perhaps consider the validity of a viewpoint that contradicted her own.  At any rate, the hugs and friendly shoulder rubs between Anna and the classmates with whom she disagreed reassured her (and me) that there were no hard feelings, and that they were following our class rule of disagreeing without being disagreeable.

As a teacher, I was pleased to see Anna stand up for what she believed in, despite being among the minority in the class.  In this course, rather than simply present facts for memorization and regurgitation, one of our goals was to get kids to think critically about the subject matter and to hash out their thoughts, opinions, and questions with their classmates.  We strove to create a place where students could not only learn about GLBTQ issues (and to these students, almost everything was new information), but, more importantly, discuss them with peers in a non-judgmental, safe environment.

It is important to note that not all discussions came down to taking a “pro-gay” or an “anti-gay” stance. My students seemed to respond most passionately when we talked about issues facing GLBTQ teens, because these were more tangible to them. Our class learned about Harvey Milk High School and the Walt Whitman School, two schools set up specifically to serve the needs of GLBTQ students who are unable to attend their home school due to harassment or violence. After reading about the populations these schools serve, most students seemed pretty on-board with the idea:

“This totally makes sense. There’s no reason gay kids should have to drop out of school just because of bullies.”
“I think it’s great that these kids have a place to go where they’re safe and they can continue their educations in peace.”

The mob mentality would usually take over at that point, with everyone chiming in about how great it was that these schools existed. If we were lucky, though, we’d have at least one or two students who were a bit more savvy about the implications:

“Wait, wait, wait… You’re telling me these kids can’t go to their own schools – where they live – because their principals won’t do anything about the bullying?”
“Why isn’t the school being held accountable for dealing with the harassment instead of pretty much making these kids choose to go somewhere else?”
“This sounds an awful lot like ‘separate but equal’ to me…”

These were the kinds of discussions I relished. In these instances more than any other, I think even my more homophobic students stopped seeing gay people or gay kids and just started seeing kids.  Teenagers have a pretty acute sense of social justice, and even my most conservative students would never say that bullying and harassment are acceptable.  I always felt these were more constructive discussions to have because we weren’t hung up on “gay is OK” and “no it’s not”, but rather, here’s an issue we can all agree is a problem: what is the fairest way to achieve some kind of resolution?

(to be continued)

• Shakespeare wrote intellectual “high drama.”
• The Renaissance was a wonderful time to be alive!
• Shakespeare was highly educated and wrote specifically for kings, queens, and nobility.
• We can learn more about Shakespeare by studying his plays.
• The issues Shakespeare wrote about have no bearing on my world.

I explained to the class that these statements represented some commonly held misconceptions about Shakespeare and Elizabethan England, and that today we were going to symbolically destroy these beliefs that even the very highly educated and refined members of this class may even hold themselves.  Volunteers would come to the board to read one statement out loud, pop the balloon, and then read aloud the folded-up refutation that I had placed inside the balloon before inflating it.

The initial response was blank stares and silence from the class.  Uh-oh.  Had I completely lost the plot?  Was this too babyish for my high school sophomores?  After what seemed like an eternity of silence (which was roughly equivalent to three seconds realtime), an explosion of “ooh, me!” and “can I go first?” and “Mr. B, can I get a shot?” and other general commotion overwhelmed me.  When I heard one of my much less motivated students say to himself (unironically), “Wow, that’s really creative”, I knew it – they were hooked!

Five students got to (not “had to”!) go to the front of the room, pop a balloon, and explain to their classmates about the hygienic pitfalls of living in England during Shakespeare’s time, the universality of Shakespeare’s themes, and the rather straight lines one can draw between Shakespeare’s plays and some modern horror movies.  Afterwards, I gave every student in the class their very own red balloon, into which I instructed them to channel every bad feeling and negative association they ever had with William Shakespeare.  Then, on the count of three, we all popped our balloons in a cathartic release of negative energy.

Of course, a hook without substance is nothing but a cheap gimmick, and to follow a start like that with anything less than both barrels blazing would have been a heartbreaking waste of momentum.  We then did some work with Shakespeare’s language and physical movement, just getting familiar with the vocabulary and cadence and simply getting the words into and out of our mouths, much like a baseball player takes a few practice swings before stepping up to bat.  A little bit of acting, some discussion about stage directions, unfamiliar syntax, and using context clues to determine meaning, and before I knew it they were arguing over who got to be the witches first in 1.1.

In subsequent years, I added Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure, and Twelfth Night to the list of Shakespearean plays I would explore with my high school students.  While the specific assignments and activities varied by play, I found that by following a few guiding principles, I was able to make Shakespeare a relatively painless (possibly even enjoyable!) experience for my students.

While we all had a great time popping balloons and making a commotion, at the heart of that activity was an attempt to help the students get to the content in an unconventional way.  Along that line, I’ve found that having a healthily irreverent attitude towards Shakespeare can go a long way toward defusing some of the anxiety, intimidation, and subsequent resistance students demonstrate when confronted with this seemingly foreign writing.  Where others might put Shakespeare up on a pedestal, I always aimed to take him down off the pedestal and have some fun with him.  Making jokes and poking fun at odd phrasings or situations had my students laughing with me, and we were all in the Shakespeare boat together, which made for a dynamic well-suited to open-mindedness and learning.  If you haven’t seen The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), do so – it’s a perfect example of irreverence toward Shakespeare by people who clearly love him.

Physical movement is imperative to any study of Shakespeare.  I cringe when I think of all the time I wasted as a young teacher having students sit in their chairs, reading the play aloud.  Having my students get up and move around with the text made them think not just about what is being said, but how that translates into physical action, and why.  Whenever I asked students to block scenes, I would always challenge them to defend their blocking – why should Juliet stand here instead of here?  Why did Ophelia give the crowflowers to her instead of him?  Acting out the same scene in different ways can also lead to high-level discussion about character motivation and major themes in the context of a director deciding how to play a scene.  For example, I used to split my sophomore classes in half and ask one group to act out the banquet scene from Macbeth twice: once with an actor playing the ghost of Banquo, and once with no one playing Banquo.  We then discussed how both the audience and Macbeth’s dinner guests are impacted by a directorial decision to have Macbeth scream at an actor in ghost makeup versus having him scream at an empty chair. These all helped the students gain a more multi-dimensional understanding of the play – not just what’s happening, but why, and what could (or could not) happen as a result.

Also in a performance vein, I strongly suggest watching movies with your students.  More accurately, I suggest watching clips of movies.  I don’t believe I ever showed a complete film start-to-finish during any study of Shakespeare.  I used clips of scenes to reinforce basic comprehension or to make a point as needed, but my primary focus was to use film as a text for analysis and discussion.  One of my favorite film-based activities was to show three different versions of the same scene in Hamlet and have my students discuss whether they felt Mel Gibson, Campbell Scott, or Ethan Hawke had the most accurate take on the great Dane, and why (they are three very different portrayals).  We also examined how each film treats the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia and discussed the major points of contrast and what impact that has on the audience’s perspective.  Studying how closely different versions of a scene (such as Titania’s seduction of Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) adhere to the text can lead very easily to discussions of how the tone of a scene (and the subsequent impact on the play) can be altered by omitting a single line or set of lines, or by re-arranging the events of a scene.

Speaking of lines, editing Shakespeare’s text is a fantastic exercise in critical reading.  I often gave small groups of students a scene and instructed them to edit out ten (or twenty, or thirty) percent of the lines.  To do this effectively, they had to work together to distinguish what was essential to the scene and what was not, as well as what might be important to keep for later in the play.  As I’ve never been one to ask my students to do something I wouldn’t do or haven’t done myself, I first did this at TSI 2002, and I can honestly say that it is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever been asked to do with a Shakespeare play.  Try it yourself before you assign it to your students; you’ll see what I mean.

Regardless of the teaching strategies you try, above all, please: have fun.  If you dread teaching Shakespeare, your students will dread learning Shakespeare.  If you display your genuine enthusiasm, however, and can maintain a light-hearted attitude, even the most reluctant learners can be brought along for the ride.