Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Author: Tracy Rosen

  • A day at the park…literally

    At the end of November I met Marc Tison (in case your school is like ours and myspace is blocked, here’s somewhere else to go), a pretty well known skateboarder from Montreal, and we got to talking about one of my students whose dream is to be a sponsored skateboarder. In fact, at the beginning of the year we drafted some long term goals to achieve this dream.

    (I think about this student a lot because I fear sometimes that he’s going to leave school as soon as he legally can (next year). He’s 15, struggles greatly with reading, writing, and sustained listening, and all he wants to do is skateboard. At the beginning of the year he skipped class more often than he was there, but after a meeting with our VP to drive the point home, his mother and I quickly got on top of that – me by emailing her as soon as possible after I noticed him missing, and she by following through with consequences for skipping school at home. His family is incredibly supportive of him and the work that we do together. He’s a very lucky boy.)

    Back to the story….Somehow through our conversation we came up with a plan where Marc would spend some time with him just skating, having fun, maybe teach him some tricks, and then that experience could potentially form the basis of a project at school. I liked the idea because not only would my student have a good time, but he would meet a well-known, sponsored skateboarder who also has a day job – dispelling his belief that he won’t need one if he gets sponsored. I spoke with my student’s mother, who loved the idea, and we set the plan in motion.

    contemplating the first moveI showed up at my student’s house this morning and he was SHOCKED, to say the least! You should have seen the look on his face to see his teacher at his door on a Sunday morning! I told him that I had a friend who wanted to meet him and that he’d need his skateboard. His parents gave him permission to leave with me and off we went.

    I think he remained a bit in shock, and was definitely shy, for much of the afternoon. At one point he came out of the skateboarding area to take a break and I told him that we only had about 30 minutes left before Marc had to leave. He looked at me with big eyes, threw his helmet back on his head, and rolled back down to join Marc.
    we've all got our mountain to climb

    He definitely took advantage of the rest of their time together. From where I was sitting it looked like they were working pretty hard at trying to do some kind of spinning trick (fakie nose something or other…it’s beyond me!). When he finally landed it he turned to look at Marc and did a ‘Yeah!‘, you know, hands balled in fists and elbows thrown back past the waist, and that made it worth it for me. I sure wish I had caught that on film.

    'xplainin long

    Marc gave my student a copy of Pipe Fiends: A Visual Overdose of Canada’s Most Infamous Skate Spot, a book he compiled and wrote with his friend Barry Walsh about ‘the pipe’ near the Olympic Stadium in Montreal (which I will be borrowing from him soon…) along with a whack of other fun stuff – stickers, posters, a t-shirt (‘cool, I hope it fits, I want to wear it tomorrow‘).

    As soon as he got into my car at the end of it all there was NO DOUBT that he had enjoyed the afternoon at the skatepark with Marc. Non stop talking about what they spoke about (‘he said I had inspired him to try a trick he hadn’t done in 10 years and he even landed it!‘) and that he can’t wait until it’s nice out so he could go try out the pipe (poor guy, he’s going to have to wait a good 3 or 4 months before it’s nice out again in Montreal…).

    So…where will we go from here?
    I’m going to introduce him to podcasting so that publishing to his blog and his wiki pages becomes less of a struggle for him and today’s experience will be incorporated into those spaces. And since he is one of the older students in the class I will train him to teach the others how to do the same.

    I’m also thinking that, as a stepping stone for proficiency with the microphone and talking to an audience, I may ask him to create some voice threads about the photos from today.

    We could also possibly look at the idea of community and examine why Marc, an established skater, would want to spend time with him, someone just starting out.

    I’d like to also plan some kind of post-day communication between my student and Marc – a thank you note at least, but hopefully something more in depth…but I will stop there and let my student continue with the planning (though I may offer some, er, suggestions). After all, it was his day :)

    Major, MAJOR respect goes out to Marc for coming through on this little project that meant a lot for one kid and his teacher.

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  • Amen of the day for 01/13

    You must learn…just like I told you…You must learn. KRS One

    Here’s what’s appalling, to me. Every year we get 180 days to work with young people and every year we waste most of their time getting students ready for our past instead of getting them ready for their future. We focus on curriculum instead of kids. We focus on the way we wish things were instead of the way things are and we expect kids to relate to that.
    Glenn Moses    , in comment to Pete Reilly’s LeaderTalk blog post Appalling

    mp3 originally downloaded from www.hiphopassociation.org

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  • Changing Space

    Photograph by Edna Vite “Mandalas are utilized in all cultures as transmitters of energy,” Vite says, explaining that they can transform negative energy into positive energy. According to Vite, people use mandalas to cleanse spaces of negative energy, as well as to meditate and to energize themselves.

    Last week Jose wrote:

    I stayed in my classroom until 530pm making sure that, when the kids
    came in the morning, they had a more comfortable setting for themselves
    than what I felt I provided. I’m tired of the negative energy my
    homeroom class has, so maybe if I change the environment a bit, I’d get
    a little more positivity back.

    I’ve been trying to do the same and when I started my response to his question, “how?” it turned into this blog post.

    Here you go, Jose.

    How I did it? No, more like how I am attempting to do it. It’s always a process….a long one ;)

    Physical environment.
    I’ve got an interesting dilemma because I’ve got 2 distinctly different groups in my class – the 12-15 year olds and the 16-19 year olds (don’t ask how that happened). At first I had the older group (6 altogether) sitting at round tables at the back of the room with the younger group (8 altogether) scattered around the front at individual desks – facing all different directions because at the beginning of the year some of my kids couldn’t deal with looking at each other, too much of a distraction.

    This week I changed it up a bit and I decided to place some of the younger, more challenged students at tables with an older student or 2. So far so good. I’ve seen some mentoring already. And I’ve placed my major behaviour time bomb (remember the desk flying incident?) near the door so he can quickly leave when I signal him to go for a break or when he realizes (if we ever get to the point where he can self-assess his anger levels) that he needs one himself.

    Head space?
    The mentoring I mentioned above is helping. Instead of constant bickering I’m hearing more helping. Could it be that I am seeing more tolerance? I think maybe. Time will tell. That was a side effect of the physical space thing though. Something I started this week is a daily quote analysis. I work with kids who have a difficult time with text and being able to fully analyze a cohesive piece of text has been good for them. Instead of doing it every once in a while as a class, this week I tried it every single day and I gave groups of 2-3 students their own quote to look at it. I’ll keep you posted on how this goes. I’m liking it so far.

    Like I said, it’s a process….

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  • Amen of the day

    It’s been a long time coming, but I know a change is gonna come. Sam Cooke

    “Now let me say right off, I can’t do this by myself. I’ll need all the help I can get. I’ll need support from like minded people who know that changes at school need to be made so that these kids who are disconnected from school, from home and/or society can gain a sense of belonging, feel needed, useful and reconnected.” Elona Hartjes, think big, start small, act now

  • Change…the 6-letter 4-letter word aka Wishes, Hopes, and Dreams the Remix

    I closed my last post with this quote from the stunning Invincible:

    Metamorphosis, no better metaphor for this.

    here’s the link one more time for your listening pleasure. Go here to see credits.


    And post-post discussion (aka comments, I guess) is gravitating around the concept of discomfort and learning.

    I am propelled to reflect on both the quote and the discussion.

    I have not been feeling comfortable lately in the classroom. Before the holidays I was burnt out and definitely not pushing myself to do anything novel with my students – almost questioning my decision to return to teaching. My back went out, I took sick days.

    Metamorphosis, no better metaphor for this….

    Change is not easy.

    I have been suffering in my discomfort.

    Change is not easy. For me, my students, the attendant in my classroom.

    I’ve worked with teaching assistants before, but never with one who is in my classroom 24/7 and who was there for a couple of years with a different teacher before I got there AND who is bound by union regulations to certain activities. I’ve worked with students with disabilities before, but never such a diverse group as I am working with now.

    I am becoming a different teacher. Metamorphosis, no better metaphor for this….

    To do this, I need to balance:

    Charlie Parkerbuddha for Fern
    ACTION and REFLECTION

    I read Jose’s post The Great Dissenters and I think of the discomfort the teachers in his school are experiencing and I think of the potential for learning and change if it is examined more closely by more people, in the way that Jose is starting to do – with a balance of reflection and action.

    I read Elona’s post Helping Kids with Learning Disabilities Change Negative Habits of Mind and I am witness to the balance of reflection and action as a result of discomfort that led to learning.

    I read Pete’s post I Don’t Want to be the Bad Guy and I am reminded of the choices I make everyday and how I can choose to explore my struggles and discomfort in order to learn and change ….or…not.

    And I reread Marilyn Taylor’s work (2004) on learning and change and remind myself:
    “The challenge of the red zone [discomfort, disorientation] is self-inquiry about the nature of the disorienting experience and pursuit of learning from it.”

    And even though I read and remind myself about all of that….

    …change still remains a 6-letter 4-letter word a lot of the time. Luckily I don’t mind swearing once in a while.

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