Actor Matt Damon's mom, Dr. Carlsson-Paige is one of my sheroes. Here is her recent 2015 commencement address at Temple University, speaking on the art of good teaching and a quote from within:
We have to keep our eyes on an expansive vision of education. So
wherever we are, we find ways to move toward it. When I look around I
see so many teachers, parents, administrators, and students—even a
couple of politicians– taking steps toward a more holistic and human
vision of education. And I feel sure that we—individually and
together—are going to move that big needle.
We moved the needle on assessment this session in the state of Texas, but more needs to be done. In any case, Carlsson-Paige's address is uplifting, particularly for teachers.
-Angela
Monday, June 01, 2015
Dr. Nancy Carlsson-Paige is a child
development expert and author, and professor emerita in the Graduate
School of Education. She delivered the following keynote address at the
2015 commencement for the Temple University College of Education in
Philadelphia.
Good Evening, Everyone!
I
am truly honored to have this opportunity to speak to you today. This is
a big day for you, graduates, and for your families. It’s a celebration
of your accomplishments, all your hard work—I know it wasn’t always
easy getting here. And this is a day also to appreciate those many
people who have helped you, supported you, and loved you on your path to
this graduation.
Nancy Carlsson-Paige addresses Temple
University graduates.
I’m
so glad that education is the field you have chosen! It is a rewarding
and meaningful profession. It is through education that our minds
expand, we get wiser, and better able to improve the human condition.
Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you
can use to change the world.”
This moment in time that you have
chosen to enter education is a rocky and uncertain one. In recent years,
the meaning and purpose of education has narrowed. In the eyes of many
today, education is seen as a delivery system to transmit units of
knowledge and specific skills to our young people that are then tested
to ensure they’ve been learned. It’s a one-dimensional, restrictive view
of education that has led increasingly to the disappearance of
engaging, holistic curriculum, the arts, recess, teacher innovation,
teacher collaboration, and education for citizenship.
Classrooms
for our young children have seen a dramatic disappearance of play. But
we know play is the way young kids learn. And it is also how they build
inner security and resilience. I learned this lesson when my own two
sons, who are now grown, were very young.
It was a winter day,
after my teaching and the boys’ day at school. The three of us were
together in the living room of our rented apartment. An accidental fire
started from the fireplace—accidental in the sense that I wasn’t trying
to burn down the house, but tired after work, I’d made a sloppy fire. I
do wonder as I look back now how overwhelmed I might have been as a
young, single working mom. So the flames were leaping out of the
fireplace, lapping the wooden mantle. I began trying to suffocate them
with a heavy blanket. My older son Kyle was trying to help. But my
younger son Matt, who was then five years old, ran out of the room.
I
started having success suppressing the flames but then I was wondering:
Where is Matt? And then after some moments, he ran into the room. He
was dressed in his red corduroy bathrobe, his fire fighter’s hat, his
black galoshes and a sea divers mask. He had a little piece of rubber
tubing in his hand, it wasn’t connected to anything, but he was spraying
it in the direction of the fireplace.
The outfit Matt had on was the one he wore for his rescue hero play.
–He had it on now because wearing it was what he could do to put out the fire.
A
young child in a rescue hero outfit IS a hero in that moment—and he can
fully believe that by wearing firefighter clothes and with his rubber
tube, he can put out a fire.
When kids pretend to be Superheroes
and other Rescue fantasy characters, it helps them feel safe and in
control. Life presents so many challenges to young children, this kind
of play helps them develop a sense of security and inner resilience.
Studies
are now showing that play is rapidly disappearing from classrooms for
young children, increasingly replaced by more teacher-directed
instruction.
This test-driven education climate we have today,
reinforced with accountability measures and high stakes, has made
teachers fearful and discouraged. Currently 40 to 50 percent of teachers
leave the profession within their first five years. I don’t want you to
be included in that percentage of educators who become too demoralized
to continue.
It is ironic that at this very moment in history
when we need an expanded vision of education, the blinders come on. We
are teaching as if we think that what our youth will need to know in the
future is already known.
Our young people are going to have to
exceed our limitations. They’ll need to develop wide-ranging
competencies to be able to live well in the world they are inheriting.
They’ll need to think in new ways, initiate, create, explore and solve
problems, collaborate with others, make ethical decisions. They will
have to grapple with all the problems we are handing them–climate
change, income inequality, mass incarceration, nuclear weapons, war and
terrorism.
These critical competencies that our young people will
need are not quantifiable. How could you test for creativity on a
computer-based exam? Or measure original thinking on a fill in the
bubbles standardized test? (Let’s hope no one tries.) What passes for
education today—all the facts and skills that can be defined, pinned
down and tested– is a very small part of what education truly is and
should be.
When I was a new teacher about forty years ago, I came
across a letter that a principal had written to the teachers in his
school. The words had a profound impact on me, and they have stayed with
me all these years—as a reminder of the true purpose of education.
This is the letter:
Dear Teacher,
I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness:
Gas chambers built by learned engineers.
Children poisoned by educated physicians.
Infants killed by trained nurses.
Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.
So I am suspicious of education.
My request is: Help your students become human.
This letter was written in 1971. And it is so relevant for us now.
It
calls on us to understand education as a human and moral endeavor. In
school we learn knowledge and skills and the moral and ethical awareness
to choose how we use them. We educate whole people—their minds and
hearts—so they will become citizens who can think for themselves and
make choices for the good of others as well as themselves.
John Dewey believed that the aim of education was democracy and citizenship.
And that each generation had to learn citizenship anew– learn it by living it. Ideally from their first days in school.
I
was in a kindergarten classroom one day early in the school year when
the teacher was sitting with the children in a circle. She was asking
them, “How do we want to be with each other in this class?” The children
were raising their hands and saying things like: “We should share! No
hitting! If you hurt someone, say you’re sorry.” The teacher was writing
down the children’s words on chart paper. She told me that each morning
she reads this list with the children. As the children have more
experience with each other, they add more ideas to their list. Soon they
start coming into the classroom and reading the list by themselves. The
words are their words and the children want to learn how to read them.
In
another kindergarten I visited more recently– during this era of high
stakes testing—all of the children were sitting silently at tables. The
teacher was testing one little boy at a computer. The other children
were copying words from the chalk board. The words were: “No talking.
Sit in your seat. Hands to Yourself.” These were the teacher’s rules.
Most
of the children looked scared or disengaged, and one little boy was
crying. For them, learning to write was something required; someone
else’s words–disconnected from their ideas and passions.
This
teacher was required to complete mandated testing of each child in her
class—one by one at the computer– 3 times a year. She had no classroom
aid. The program’s funding depended on the test scores. It would have
been hard for any teacher in this situation to give children engaging,
play-based curriculum, and community building experiences.
In the
narrowed education climate of today, some people think of teachers as
technicians. But good teaching can’t be pinned down to a recipe. Good
teaching is a form of art.
Of course our work is grounded in
science. But it isn’t enough to know only the science. In education, the
whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Being a good teacher means
knowing how to apply what we know, when and how to use it, and how to
innovate upon it—and that takes talent.
There was an incident
that happened in a high school in East Harlem, that taught me a lot
about the art of good teaching. It was at a time when there’d been two
incidents in NY City—within a couple of weeks, two teens had been shot
and their coats stolen. In this school in East Harlem, there was a
conflict resolution program, and the teacher had been talking with her
students about these shooting incidents, and the kids were practicing
ways to deescalate conflict.
Raymond went to this high school and he had recently bought a new coat.
On
this day, Raymond arrived at school without his coat and profoundly
upset. At the subway stop near school, he’d been surrounded by three
guys who demanded he give up his new jacket.
The teacher called a class meeting immediately, with Raymond’s permission, so he could share his story and express his rage.
Teacher: Raymond I know you are very upset. Could you tell us what happened?
Raymond:
I was getting off the subway stop right here in East Harlem and all of a
sudden I was surrounded by three guys who told me that I better give
them my coat. One of the guys had his hand in his pocket and I thought
maybe he had a knife.
Teacher: Go on Raymond. We’re right here listening to you and all of us care a lot about you and what happened.
Raymond:
Well, before I could even think, I started to unzip my coat, and I said
to the guy who I thought had the knife, “This is incredible. I was just
getting ready to give you my coat.” I said, “Who should I give it to?”
One of the guys snatched the coat and all of them started to run off as
fast as they could. Then, of course, I wanted to pick up some rocks and
throw them at them, but I didn’t.
Maria said: I can’t believe you
did that, Raymond. I think you saved your life. How come you didn’t try
to say “no” or fight back? I think that’s what I would have done.
Raymond:
I don’t know. It just came to me, but now I feel so angry and
humiliated and I can’t believe I don’t have my coat. It’s 20 degrees out
there today and I walked three blocks without a coat.
Teacher:
Raymond, how do you think you were able to respond in this way and–I
would agree with Maria–probably save your life? Remember just last week
this same thing happened in Queens and the young man didn’t give up his
coat and was shot to death.
Raymond: Well, I was actually
thinking of what we were talking about last week of what makes violence
even worse and that’s more violence. I also remember when we were
talking about what happened to the kid in Queens, you said, “Remember,
you are not your coat”. So I guess I decided to do something that would
de-escalate the conflict and not give back more violence, and that’s
what I did.
Manuel: Raymond, I think it was more courageous to
not fight back and use your skills, but I don’t know if I would have
been able to do that.
Teacher: So Raymond, it looks as though you
really put your skills to use in a horrible situation. And when you
asked who you should give the jacket to you were also de-escalating the
conflict by staying neutral.
Anthony: How much was that jacket?
Raymond: Well, it was $119.00.
Tanya: There are 92 seniors in this school—that is a little over a dollar each.
Teacher: What are you thinking here, Tanya?
Tanya: I’m thinking that if I had help I would be willing to collect this money for Raymond to buy another jacket.
James: I would be willing to help. I can’t believe you were able to do what you did Raymond.
Teacher:
Well, this sounds like a wonderful plan. Do we need to do anything else
to make it happen? How do you feel about that Raymond?
Raymond:
Wow. I can’t believe you would all do that. But I know my mother
wouldn’t be able to buy another coat. Maybe don’t ask everybody or say,
“Only if you can afford the dollar.” That would make me feel better.
This
high school teacher had the skill, compassion, and the artful ability
to respond to her students in the moment and to build community from
their experiences and ideas. And she had enough autonomy as a teacher to
be able to create a teaching moment from what happened to Raymond.
Too many external requirements stifle a teacher’s ability to practice her craft.
Teaching
is so much more than transmissin of information, test prep, and data
collection. It’s why you can’t be replaced by a computer. Or by someone
who had a 5-week summer program in how to teach.
But teaching
like the teacher in East Harlem is a lot harder today. Many teachers say
there isn’t room anymore for conflict resolution programs, community
building, and student-centered projects when so many mandates fill the
day. But teachers also know what good education looks like–and they hear
its beating heart. They keep on finding creative ways to teach even in
this climate.
The singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen wrote: “There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
You
are holding that light now. You, with all of your energy, your fresh
ideas, your idealism (I hope you have it and hold onto it), your
knowledge and talent. You’ll shine that light where you can—in whatever
situations you find yourselves.
We have to keep our eyes on an
expansive vision of education. So wherever we are, we find ways to move
toward it. When I look around I see so many teachers, parents,
administrators, and students—even a couple of politicians– taking steps
toward a more holistic and human vision of education. And I feel sure
that we—individually and together—are going to move that big needle.
Margaret
Mead’s words, uttered decades ago, are timeless and history has proven
them over and over to be true: “Never doubt that a small group of
thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the
only thing that ever has.”
#teacherquality #putkidsfirst #edleadership #eduleaders #edpolicy
We have
worked collectively together to co-construct curricula in the area of civil
rights, immigration/migration, and local history and are in the process of
developing curricula in the areas of indigenous heritage, women, and the
cultural arts. The cultural arts focus is currently on Danza Mexica (Aztec
dance) and will soon incorporate Tejano (Texas Mexican) music. 
