The Forest for the Trees

Trigger Warning: If you're tired of hearing people moan and complain, don't read this. My purpose in this post is to vent and complain. If you choose to read this anyway and find yourself getting upset with my complaints or illustrations, please remember that your frustration is a natural consequence of your own decision.  The classroom is a crossroad for social trends. And right now, stupid is trending. Let me say now that I've done, do, and will, without any doubt, do stupid and think stupid both now and in the future. I'm not immune to stupid.  But I like to think this exercise of writing about stupid demonstrates a desire to see, name and repent from stupid to the degree to which I am able. The thing about stupid, though, is that it can look so different from day to day. One day its,  "We don't know what's in the vaccine." The next day it's, "Maybe this hydroxychloroquine  will help!"  The next day, "Oh sh!t, I've been sick f...

S tudents are miraculously consistent in their misconceptions of success.  My initial inclination is to attribute it to the natural progression of adolescent becoming. Students feign confidence (sometimes arrogance) and almost (sometimes) convince themselves they aren't utterly bewildered by their shifting social, emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual experiences.  In short, having become comfortable in childhood, they begin the discomfort of existential becoming.    I consistently see the same two student misconceptions that impact their education and adversely affect their becoming.  To clarify, I'm not addressing the very real and common impact of trauma, diverse learning styles or intellectual elasticity. Instead, we'll examine generalities in order to illuminate two troublesome underpinnings of the school experience.      First, many students believe and operate from the belief that the most important part of learning is to not be w...