Learning, Healing, and Change: Notes on Teaching in Testing Times

Rebecca Coolidge

Description

Drawing on illuminating stories from thirteen years as a public school teacher, Ms. Coolidge challenges cultural assumptions about effecting learning and change, making a compelling case for a bigger-picture perspective in the classroom and in society at large. She shares personal insights about learning as an innate gift, similar to healing, which is fed by responsive interactions. Learning is at the core of all human endeavors and is essential for individual well-being, democracy, and social progress. Although rigid separation is our cultural habit, good teaching is embodied, integrated with the arts and play, and engaged with diverse perspectives. Ms. Coolidge offers food for thought on how 21st-century federal education reforms, by elevating the status of words and right answers at the expense of connection and meaning, have played a key role in a reactionary cultural backlash.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645367536
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

L earning, H ealing, and C hange: N otes on T eaching in T esting T imes
Rebecca Coolidge
Austin Macauley Publishers
30-11-2020
Learning, Healing, and Change: Notes on Teaching in Testing Times About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Preface I. Introduction: Connecting the Dots II. Learning Is a Game Changer III. Pain Without Gain IV. All That Jazz V. Checking for Responsiveness VI. Play Is the Way (in Kinder Too I Say) VII. Music Connects VIII. Word Wars IX. Studies in Change X. Paths to Wholeness XI. The Big Picture XII. Renaissance and Reaction XIII. Talk Versus Drift XIV. Teaching the Basics (Before the Words) XV. Education, Enforced XVI. A Write Way to Right XVII. This Means War (and Peace) XVIII. Where We Stand Now XIX. Learning Matters Connections I. Adrienne Rich: Poetry as Soul Connections II. Scientists, Crime Experts, Artists, Autistic People and Animals Agree That Verbal Language Can Seriously Get in the Way of Accurate Observation Connections III. Deborah Meier: Corporospeak and Real Thoughts on Public Schools
About the Author
Rebecca Coolidge lives in San Francisco with her husband, two children, and dog. She divides her time between parenting, substitute teaching, working as a massage therapist, hiking, and playing jazz piano for fun. Ms. Coolidge taught the primary grades in public schools for 13 years.
Dedication
To my children who delight and inspire me every day: Madeline Rose (9), and Josephine Miranda (7). You have taught me so much about connection, joy, and what matters in this life. To their father, my husband, whose love and wisdom inspire me daily. To my mother, who has always encouraged creativity and passion. And to my late father, John Stanhope Coolidge (1926 – 2012), who passed on a deep reverence for the infinitely nuanced power of the word.
Copyright Information ©
Rebecca Coolidge (2020)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Austin Macauley is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In this spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
Ordering Information
Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Coolidge,Rebecca
Learning, Healing, and Change: Notes on Teaching in Testing Times
ISBN 9781643783505 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781643783512 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781645367536 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020919623
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street, 28th Floor
New York, NY 1000
USA
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Acknowledgement
I want to thank, first of all, my loving and wise husband, John, who made this project possible by providing invaluable moral support, kid coverage to allow me time to write, and all sorts of the fine-tuned editing and technical assistance that he is famous for. I thank Jennifer Morgan, Mark Graham, Carolyn Coolidge, Richard Levien, and Sue Blair, who took time from very busy lives to offer detailed feedback as well as advice and encouragement. I thank the good people at Austin Macauley who expressed faith in this project and helped me through the publishing process (after waiting a good six months while I made a few changes.) Last but not least, I thank all of my teachers who have helped shape me through tireless work and devotion.
Preface
While I was working on the final revision of this book in the spring of 2020, the Coronavirus pandemic put a sudden end to routines as we knew them. Our first year in a wonderful new school community ended abruptly, along with my first-year subbing around the city. When the school closures were announced in early March, we had just celebrated Maddie’s birthday a week early in order to accommodate the beginning of what was going to be an extremely busy first soccer season for both girls, and for us as well. Several weeks later, we are still struggling with our need for structure and routine on the one hand, and on the other, simply having too much to manage. With so much incomprehensible suffering going on, we know we are incredibly fortunate to be safe and healthy, and to have been spared many catastrophes.
As other disasters have done, the pandemic has magnified existing problems and conditions, including social inequalities. With all the variation of experience, still there is a sense that we are being called to slow down, somehow—to step back and look at the Big Picture. When we reach out across cyberspace or around the neighborhood to support and connect with each other in our various kinds of suffering, we are dropping into a deeper level of humanity, putting our hearts and our real needs before our heads. It is as though someone accidentally hit the Restart button in the mind of the industrialized human, allowing us to question the sanity of our most stubbornly habitual beliefs. As with our physiological system after a “big” bodywork session, resetting ourselves involves stepping back and reassessing. What has changed? What was actually going on before (when we were perhaps a little distracted)? What changes should we keep? Are we done making them? All these questions help to make up the bigger one of how we resume “normal life” from here.
Educators have heroically scrambled to prepare and teach an extensive online curriculum, including regular class meetings, reading groups, office hours, homework assignments (kept very reasonable), recorded video lessons, weekly Parent-Teacher-Child conferences for every student, and a wide assortment of resources. It seems to me that they have been kept plenty busy fulfilling their duty to their supervisors’ supervisors to account for enough instructional minutes in every subject, while simultaneously doing the much more needed work of staying connected, guiding and reassuring students and parents alike (including in their new daunting role as tech support.) 1
At the first weekly Zoom meetings held for us, overwhelmed classroom parents (some with a toddler climbing on their lap) only stared in stunned silence for minutes on end as the teacher gently repeated her invitation for questions. When we have completely forgotten about a call, or when I cannot cajole one or either of my children to join another Zoom meeting, our teachers have been steadfastly understanding and supportive. They keep encouraging us to do the things that work for us and to put the well-being of our children and family first. 2 They share their own overwhelm with having to reinvent the wheel and their desire to stay connected in this search for a new balance and groove.
Along with health care workers, I think of teachers as being first responders even in the best of times. They reach out a helping hand to people often drowning in all kinds of problems, and this struggle takes its toll. Working as a sub this year was eye-opening and deepened my respect for the daily heroism—patience, grace, devotion, ingenuity and skill—that teachers (and administrators) routinely show in often chaotic situations. Why, in normal times, do we not challenge high-level politicians when they proclaim that there is “no excuse” for teachers who work in under-performing schools? How did it ever become okay to blame a broken system on the workers trying to function within it? I hope that we will learn to stand up to the institutionalized bullying of teachers and call it out for what it is: a below-the-belt attack on an already beleaguered American public.
The pandemic is revealing many things about our way of life which do not work, though we might want to think they do. We could call them disconnects in our attitudes and modus operandi . The way that “Home Schooling” has been thrust on parents as a response to shelter in place provides a rich example. I am amazed at the superciliousness of the presumption that parents add a few hours of work onto our day in order to keep our children “on track,” while still managing to stay on top of everything else. This expectation is not based on the reality of people’s lives, but on a rigid Top Down system of education and governance. It also avoids the question of children’s actual needs—in this case for comfort, reassurance, and quality time with adults who are not going out of their minds.
We can also unpack the directive to find various false notions. One is that parents and teachers are not terribly busy to begin with because working with children is not real work. Another is that teaching young children does not require any particular skill or personal interaction but is merely transmission of information, which can just as easily be done online or through educational videos. And my favorite: that we all can and should plan our day according to a busy schedule which has been decided by some people in high government offices who have their own people to answer to.
It is an interesting coincidence that Earth Week falls during this Pandemic. 3 The crisis also comes following the release of two movies and one documentary honoring the teachings of the visionary humanist known as Mr. Rogers. Fred Rogers illuminated the lives of at least a couple of generations. He helped ground us to this Earth, reflecting on what is important and true. (I use the pres