Teaching

Teaching is the greatest act of optimism!!!

Helping-Fixing-Serving....

"Helping, fixing, and serving represent
three different ways of seeing life.
When you help, 
you see life as weak,
when you fix,
you see life as broken.
When you serve,
you see life as whole.
Fixing and helping
may be the work of the ego,
and service the work of the soul."
— Rachel Naomi Remen

Turnaround Teachers and Adults Provide 3 Protective Factors …

1. Caring Relationships…

 Adults can convey loving support to students

 by listening to students and validating their feelings,

and by demonstrating kindness, compassion, and respect

(Higgins, 1994 ; Meier, 1995).

They refrain from judging,

and do not take students' behavior personally,

understanding that youth are doing the best they can,

 based on the way they perceive the world.

  

2. Positive and High Expectations.

 Adults' high expectations can structure and guide behavior,

and can also challenge students beyond what they believe they can do (Delpit, 1996)

Turnaround adults recognize students' strengths,

mirror them, and help students see where they are strong.

They especially assist overwhelmed youth,

who have been labeled or oppressed

by their families, schools, and/or communities,

in using their personal power to grow from

damaged victim to resilient survivor by helping them to:

 (1) not take personally the adversity in their lives;

 (2) not see adversity as permanent; and

 (3) not see setbacks as pervasive (adapted from Seligman, 1995)

 These adults are student-centered:

they use the students' own strengths,

 interests, goals, and dreams

as the beginning point for learning,

and they tap students' intrinsic motivation for learning.

  

3. Opportunities to Participate and Contribute.

As an outgrowth of a strengths-based perspective,

 turnaround adults let students

express their opinions and imagination,

 make choices, problem solve,

work with and help others,

and give their gifts back to the community

 in a physically and psychologically safe and structured environment.

They treat students as responsible individuals,

allowing them to participate in all aspects of the school's functioning.

 ( Rutter et al., 1979; Rutter, 1984; Kohn, 1993)

Transforming Lives..

Adults and Programs Have the Power to Transform Lives

A common finding in resilience research

 is the power of adults, often unbeknownst,

to tip the scale from risk to resilience.

Turnaround  teachers/mentors

provide and model three protective factors

that buffer risk and enable positive development

 by meeting youth's basic needs for

safety, love and belonging, respect, power,

 accomplishment and learning, and,

ultimately, for meaning.

 (Benard, 1991)

Teaching Troubled and Troubling Kids!

When we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey.  The

When we no longer know what to do

 we have come to our real work,

and when we no longer know which way to go

 we have begun our real journey. 

The mind that is not baffled is not employed. 

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

                   - Wendell Berry

 mind that is not baffled is not employed.  The impeded stream is the one that sings.

                   - Wendell Berry

Creating Healthy Environment for all our children!

In its original meaning the term “at-risk” was meant to focus attention on the HAZZARDS IN THE ENVIRONMENT

That can lead to poor outcomes for ANY CHILD!!

It was never intended to become what it has turned into…. Another description or label for “ CERTAIN KINDS OF KIDS”!!

Once the term became distorted it simply has become another label to describe kids.

We have shifted from the original focus… which was on how to build supportive environments for ALL children and youth…toward once

Again… labeling  kids!!

I suggest to you that this is the wrong focus……!!

Let’s take a look at the SEEDS OF DISCOURAGEMENT AND THE

4 ENVIRONMENTAL HAZZARDS THAT PLACE CHILDREN AND YOUTH

                              “AT-RISK”.

1.  DESTRUCTIVE RELATIONSHIPS

As experienced by rejected or unclaimed children, abandoned, unable to trust…and expecting to be hurt again.

Bowlby ( 1982 ) described 2 types of anger triggered by UNSTABLE BELONGINGS….

The first he called:  THE ANGER OF DESPAIR

It is seen in youth who believe…

“It is no use… I deserve what is happening to me.”

These kids feel deep guilt and worthlessness…they have

• Very low self esteem
• Sexual abuse may have been experienced by these children
• Are at high risk of drug/alcohol abuse
• You may see promiscuous behaviors
• High risk of depression
• Cutting
• Suicide
• These are the children and youth that act their anger out “inwardly”
• They blame themselves for how they have been treated by those

     closest to them.

The second group he labeled:  THE ANGER OF HOPE

This is seen in youth who believe:

·         “I” do not deserve this shit.  It is not fair.

·          They are indignant at the treatment they have received and direct their

       Anger …”EXTERNALLY” AT ALL OTHERS.

·         They have a sense of me first.

·         No one tells me what to do… I can and do take care of myself!

·         Fuck-You All…..

There is a third broad group of HYPER-VIGILANT CHILDREN always in an uneasy state of ANXIETY AND STRESS.  These kids can look at act like children with ADHD. 

Over time… all these children can become… “RELATIONSHIP RESISTENT”

AND DISTRUSTFUL OF ALL ADULTS.

They are children with-out POSITIVE ADULT BELONGINGS!!!

2.  CLIMATES OF FUTILITY

As experienced by children that rarely meet with any success in schools.  They have long histories of failure…many times repeating grades….being removed from schools and programs….and becoming crippled by feelings of inadequacy.

Generally schools have not had much success with these children and have been characterized by:

• High Degrees of Punitive-ness
• Negative Expectations
• Professional Pessimism

Inadvertently Schools often recreate the STRESS and CONFLICT of the kids life outside of school.  These kids carry their worlds into our schools and they get unconscious adults to re-create those worlds on a daily basis in many of our schools!

It is also important to note… that for many kids…it is much better to be seen as BAD… rather than STUPID!!!

3.  Learned Irresponsibility

As seen in kids who display an “ I DON’T CARE”…INDIFFERENT ATTITUDE IN OUR SCHOOLS OR… A “DEFIANT…REBELLIOUS”.. “YOU CAN’T MAKE ME” DISPLAY.

As students disengage academically they become powerfully dependent on other DISENGAGED PEERS who join together to support each other in their “hatred of school”!!

4.  LOSS OF PURPOSE

As seen by self-centered youth searching for meaning in a world of very confusing values.  Empathy must be nurtured to grow and many of these children have been under-nourished.

Young people can not develop their own value unless they have opportunities to be of value to others.

THESE ARE THE ENVIRONMENTAL HAZZARDS THAT OUR MOST TROUBLING CHILDREN HAVE GROWN IN.  To reclaim them will require schools to do many things a bit differently….

Let us begin.....

Tribute- Martin Luther King and the Soul of America

It has been 45 years now since Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed.  At the time of his death I was about to turn 13.  Little did I realize at the time the deep impact the man would have on my life.

The celebrations that our country have now and what our children are taught, rather quickly, about this man continue  not touch the depth of what his life and his work  represented.  We see for the most part his “I have a Dream Speech”  and for the most part settled for it as a history that we have completed and moved on from.  For me his words and his work are far from completed.

I believe that Martin Luther King provided Americans with our last great call to conscience.

At the very young age of 28, Matin Luther King, Jr. formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and declared his mission in its motto:  to save the soul of America.

That “soul” is a belief in deep democracy.

That rare combination of belongings and independence that is so hard to integrate. The "idea" that is America.

He showed us the  injustice that was flourishing in our country something that is rarely seen or talked about today.

King used his creativity and imagination to take us to the…  “space of elsewhere.”

 Prophets always have a way of showing us a place that does not yet exist and before he was killed Martin Luther King, Jr. was moving the civil rights movement he is now known for toward a new vision for all of America.

 He awakened America. He brought us face to face, and allowed us to have an encounter with ourselves (the looks with-in place)…. many did not like what they saw….but they looked into their own shadow… and many were transformed.

 His words are a remarkable example of “a wisdom that disturbs”… sorely missing in the world today.

 He disturbed the status quo with his words and his deeds…. And put a mirror up to America so we could look at ourselves.

It was not pleasant.  In many ways… it still is not very pleasant.

He used marches and protests and demonstrations to bring America’s shadow to the surface where she could no longer deny its existence, and then, rather than leaving her wallowing in guilt and shame, he offered her specific redemptive measures she could take toward healing and wholeness, which would ultimately lead toward the manifestation of what King called…

 The Beloved Community, his term for the individuated culture.

King knew that transforming the world would be the work of “nonconformists”… It always is.

He called upon people to become MALADJUSTED !

 Listen to his words:

 “ Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word. It is the word maladjusted. Now we should all seek to live a well-adjusted life in order to avoid neurotic and schizophrenic personalities.

 But there are something’s within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I call on you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things.” ( King, 1958 )

Martin Luther King Jrs.  Riverside Church Speech, delivered in 1967 spoke of where he was taking us.  

With the Riverside Church speech, the civil rights leader moved beyond concerns of racial injustice. But the speech is more than just an outcry against the war.

When King spoke of “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism,” he got at the very core of the American character; when he said we need to shift from a “thing-oriented” to a “person-oriented society,”.

The Triple Evils of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle. They are interrelated, all-inclusive, and stand as barriers to our living in the Beloved Community. When we work to remedy one evil, we affect all evils.

The Beloved Community- (http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy)

For Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal to be confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

 Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill.

 There is a curious plaque outside the Lorraine Motel where King was assassinated.

It reads, in part,
“They said one to another, Behold, here cometh the dreamer. Let us slay him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”

As we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. we will rarely hear much about his vision of the Beloved Community.  We will see clips of his “I have a Dream” speech as if his dream has been realized in America.

 For me, this is the wrong focus.

We might consider his vision in a deeper way.

How well have we in America done on Kings Triple Evil Threats of….
of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM??

King, like Jesus, like Gandhi, like the other prophets and saviors and lovers  before him, gave us enough wisdom to live by for centuries.

We most certainly will not all agree as we discuss and dialog about what Kings words and messages mean…  however… I would suggest that it is way past time to begin to use this holiday to begin the discussion of what do we want America to mean and to be?

Behind King’s conception of the Beloved Community lay his assumption that human existence is social in nature.
 "The solidarity of the human family" is a phrase he frequently used to express this idea.

"We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality," .