Category: Uncategorized

 

Quiet Celebration

Musical genius

Accomplished beyond measure

Hands of magnificence

His instrument sang

Its velvet tones

Arco, legato

The bass

 

Troubled soul

Touched by brilliance

The music was

His language

A place of peace

Resonant, doleful

My brother

 

Taken too soon

 

Special day

No balloons or fanfare

I quietly celebrate

My little brother’s

Birthday

 

In loving memory of Sean Kelly Ball,

March 20, 1970 – February 28, 1997

Title: “Gratitude, anyone?”

“Yeah, 20 minutes in, I was like, ‘snooze time.'” It was a fairly crowded downtown subway car, but the male voice seemed unnecessarily loud.

“She was trying to be funny, but she so wasn’t,” came another voice, a female’s. Wait a minute, are they talking about TC Reunion? It was late Saturday afternoon, and following an amazing day of learning at Teachers College, I was traveling downtown Manhattan to meet up with my family. Incredulous, I turned my full attention toward the small group of what I now guessed were educators huddled on the subway car.

“Finally after, like, half an hour, she got to the topic,” sneered the male voice. The others in the group contributed a mocking chuckle.

For those unfamiar with a TC Saturday Reunion, it is a gift that Lucy Calkins, Director of the world-renowned Teachers College Reading and Writing Project and all the staff developers, office staff, writing staff, and tech staff, give to educators. There is no cost for any teacher to attend. It is a free day professional development, with sessions led by world class keynote speakers and the finest minds in literacy, all in the spirit of supporting the international cause of literacy.

As I quietly sat and listened to the conversation devoted to cutting down a staff developer, a person by the way who had just donated her entire Saturday to play her part in bestowing an invaluable gift upon any teacher who showed up, I began to seethe a little. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up a little bit.  But I knew the next stop on the subway was mine, so I resolved to let it go for that moment.  However, the audacity of some people! It was a disgrace, I thought.

It is my hope that in this blog post I am able to make clear not only my appreciation, but the collective gratitude for Lucy and all of the TC staff for the gift of Saturday’s Reunion. It truly was a golden bestowal upon the education community.

Perhaps the group on the subway that afternoon had some reason that would explain their abhorrent behavior, I don’t know.  But I was reminded of the importance of gratitude, and recognizing how working to understand perspectives other than our own is such important work. For all of us.

Filing into the majestic Riverside Church among the mass of educators, I veered right to locate my usual seat right behind the TC Staff Developers reserved section. Although I’ve been in this church several times to attend TC events, the ancient, awe-inspiring architecture never ceases to amaze and cause me to catch my breath. After a few gratifying hellos to former TC friends (miss them all so much), I settled in with a colleague for the keynote speaker, Drew Dudley. Now, I had never heard of Drew Dudley, but the promotion of his talk today promised a memorable experience. And boy, did he deliver.

In his talk today, which happened to be devoted to the topic of leadership, Drew began with a survey. Mind you, the church, located on the upper west side of Manhattan, was filled with roughly 800 teachers. The survey went something like this: “Raise your hand if you consider yourself a leader, and you are 100% certain that’s true.”

Pause.

Looking around, I don’t think I saw a hand raised. Maybe one. Drew went on to politely express his amazement, amazement that a group of teachers, a group this size, would respond so resoundingly in the negative. “How can that be?” he wondered aloud.  “There is no more important job on this planet that plays a bigger role in shaping our future.”  Quickly grabbing my phone, I tweeted that phrase.  This is going to be good.

Drew went on to make several more salient points that morning.  Summarizing here, I am hoping I can do them justice.

1.  Story is the basic unit of understanding.  Drew recounted the story of a young, seven-year old girl he met on a train once.  This little girl taught him something of the power of story.  “You have no idea how your story will impact other people,” he asserted.  For me, this resonated powerfully.  And it reminded me of Dr. Thomas Newkirk’s writings about narrative writing, and its misassigned place in the common core state standards.  Newkirk contends that labeling narrative writing as a “type” of writing is actually a category error.  For narrative writing is at the base of all good writing.  And without it, we as humans are (a) not interested, (b) not able to learn, and (c) not convinced.
2. What is the Secret to Unhappiness?– nope, that’s not a typo.  “The secret to unhappiness,” Drew began, “is allowing a gap to form between who you know yourself to be- how you conceive of yourself- and the way you are behaving.”  Now, when Drew said this, I could almost feel a palpable pause, as 800+ teachers inhaled in order to muster as much internal reflective energy as humanly possible.  I was no exception.  Is there a gap between the conception I hold of myself and my behavior?  Good question.
3. Are you living a life that makes people smile at the mere mention of your name?  Drew told a beautiful story about his somewhat recent visit to his old high school.  While waiting for the principal to fetch the Scotch from her bottom drawer, Drew ran into his old custodian. Seizing a rare opportunity, Drew gushed at the incredible difference this man, Mr. Kiff, had made in his life.  Right to his face. Mr. Kiff’s kindness, his subtle non-judgemental manner, his humility-all of this had made such a difference. And Mr. Kiff’s response? “Meh. I’m just a janitor.” 

Just a janitor? Drew proceeded to tell us that when we use the word ‘just’ to describe what we do, we give people permission to think less of us. Don’t do that, he instructed. Don’t do it.

I left Riverside Church moved, touched, and inspired.  And like most people, I love that feeling. It’s like a good book: when you’re done, you think how will I live differently now that I read that? This day was no different.

Title: “Choice”

About a week ago, Zach came bursting into my  office.  “Mr. Ball, I need a book!” he bellowed, his backpack slung over his shoulder.

I looked up from the paperwork I had been studying before this boy had stormed my office.  There was Zach with this head turned sideways, scanning the books on the shelf nearest the door to my office.  The thought crossed my mind to tell Zach I was busy, to tell him to come back perhaps after school.

But no way was I going to do that.

Here was a kid who needed a book!  I find matching a kid to a book to be both one of the most challenging and gratifying experiences in my profession, although I will admit it rarely goes the way I think it will go.  That day with Zach was no exception.

“Well, what are you ready for, Zach?” I asked him.  “You finished the Michael Vey series, right?”  This is how I had met Zach.  He was not my student, but had come to me upon the recommendation of his seventh grade English Language Arts teacher to pick up the most recent Richard Paul Evans installment of the popular character, Michael Vey.  I remembered he had read and returned the book within two weeks, lamenting the fact that no book seven existed yet.

I stood up and circled my desk so that I could approach a different book shelf.  Now, the book selection in my office is quite limited, so I worried that I might not be able to help Zach.  I began to scan the mental files in my brain. Hmm…What to recommend?

Suddenly, I heard Zach’s voice. “I’ll just read this one.”  He held up a book from the shelf he had been searching.

Now, I am not familiar with this book.  It was one of the many books I inherited when I moved into this office four years ago.  With that being the case, a few thoughts crossed my mind.  Thought #1:  I should not let this kid have this book.  Thought #2:  If I do allow Zach to take this book, at least one of his teachers will want to let the air out of my tires to seek revenge.  Thought #3:  I should make him pick something else.

But a core belief inside me took over at that point, a belief that choice really matters when it comes to growing and nurturing young readers.  Perhaps this book wouldn’t have been my choice for Zach, but it was his choice. So he signed it out and was out the door.  “Thanks!” he uttered over his shoulder as he ambled into the hallway.

That was a week ago.  Then yesterday, Zach, once again, shuffled into my office with his backpack and returned the book to my hands.  “It was really good,” he reported. “Thanks!”

“You’re welcome.”

On Wednesday, I opened my garage to see this:

Taking a big breath in, I grabbed my trusty shovel from its resting place in the corner of the garage.  This was going to take awhile.  A long while. The weather report that had promised an unusually abundant snowfall had, indeed, proven quite accurate.  Every school-aged child had just enjoyed another March snow day in our state, as had I.  Throughout the day, my daughters and I had played board games, written “And Then” stories, watched a movie, gazed at the blustery snowfall outside, as well as a engage in a host of other indoor activities.  And fortunately for us, no power outages had occurred! A good day.

But now, a price needed to be paid.  Due to an unexpected bout of strep throat that swept through the family, my daughters all now needed medication. With the storm and a travel ban, we had been unable to make the trip to the pharmacy (see yesterday’s post about that).

Staring at the enormous volume of snow, I positioned that motivation squarely in the forefront of my mind.  Honestly, the task looked impossible.  It truly did.  But we had to get out. We had to.

So I started shoveling. I knew if I allowed myself to feel angry at the snow, or if I watched the clock, or if I tried to hurry- none of that would be helpful.  It was literally one shovelful at a time.

I pushed myself to focus on the larger goal only when necessary- especially when I began to sense the voice in my head that liked to repeat things like, “You’ll never finish.  This is impossible.”  Those were the times when I widened my view and thought about the goal I needed to reach.  But most of my internal dialogue focused on much smaller goals: This section here; just finish from here to there; make sure this shovelful gets to the top of that pile.  Like that.

I also remembered the fable my daughters love so much, the one about the Tortoise and the Hare.  “Slow and steady wins the race.” Keep going.  Keep going.

And eventually it happened.  It was a long day, and there were many times when I wished our budget would have allowed for the quick, professional snow-plow solution (for those of you not from this part of Connecticut, this is what most people do).

But this experience helped me to think about our students, and how things can feel impossible for them sometimes.  I wonder how many of them, when asked to write or read something, feel like they’ve just opened the garage to see a vast field of snow they must now shovel?  I realized that for me today, it truly was both the larger and smaller goals working together that helped make something  possible, something that had, initially, felt so enormous.