The Forest for the Trees

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend the first annual Toward One Wisconsin Conference in Milwaukee with five colleagues.  According to the Toward One Wisconsin  website it was a “conference on overcoming barriers to inclusion.”  The goal was to “ bring together  individuals  and organizations from multiple sectors across Wisconsin to address the most persistent barriers to inclusion, what is working, and what is promising on the horizon.”   I was impressed by the range of participants at the conference.  There were business leaders from across the state, representatives from state and local governments, organizations, educators and students, northerners, southerners, country-folk and city-folk. And, as you might guess from a conference on inclusivity, there were yellow, brown, black, red and white; cisgender, transgender, female and male; poor and rich; abled and disabled.  The list goes on, although my command of the nomenclature...

My illustrious colleague, Mr. Hansen (a.k.a. Hansen), and I launched a class this year called "Innovation and Creation."  The title came from a lack of imagination, really.  We didn't know for sure what to call it. "Blow the Doors off School"? "Do Something Awesome"? "Make Money and People Happy, Too"? Nothing seemed to fit because we wanted the title wide enough to support students in almost any venture, but we needed it narrow enough to give students an idea of the class and gain administrator support. The premise of the class came from Hansen and I being consistently impressed by the breadth and depth of passions in the conversations we were having with our junior level students. They expressed interest in all kinds of issues surrounding them, some personal, some communal, some national or international.  We talked about the role of the arts and self-realization, the limitations of the industrial model of education, the process of...

Before I had a student teacher, I had formed plenty of stereotypes about student teachers: Stop asking questions and go make the copies.   Holy $h!+, we've talked about that three times already! You don't know what you're doing today?! Shut up and let me tell the story. You're a history major? Really? You had to take history classes, right? I don't know what you should do. Go sit in the corner and take attendance or something. I got this. Obviously my initial expectation was one of annoyance.  I thought of having a student teacher as another ball and chain.  For years I didn't want to be responsible for one more student.  I didn't want to sit back and let my students suffer the growing pains of someone else's student.  That was my attitude.  Thankfully it changed. The credit for my changed perspective on student teachers really goes to my first student teacher, Mrs. Walters.  She was nervous and awkward the first time we met. ...