Form, Function, and Frank, Part 2

Today was frustrating.  I didn't exactly have a "bad day."  It was just the sort of day as an educator that makes you wonder how many people truly understand schools and learning.  In fairness to the day, I think I may have a sinus infection, which meant I woke up at 3:30 and was at work at 7:00.  I left sometime after 5:30.  So maybe the day isn't wholly to blame.  Nevertheless I find myself at my computer with an old fashioned chilling on the desk and Beethoven sonatas playing on iTunes, trying not to be pissed off at a large number of people.

My bad day really started on Wednesday.  I discovered on Wednesday night that I would be "presenting" at a school this coming Monday afternoon for a few hours.  Lest anyone think that I'm just grumbling because I'm being asked to work on what was to be a holiday (President's Day for state employees), I really don't mind going to schools to talk to teachers.  Apart from teaching music to students, it's my favorite thing to do.  One would expect more advance notice than these few days, however.  (Actually, our office was asked to put the date on our calendar weeks ago, but having heard nothing more, most of us believed our services were no longer required.)  

No further instructions were given.  We are to present three hours of "professional development" to teachers from three schools.  Our boss is to present the first hour or so, with two hours set aside for content specialists.  The "event" is being "coordinated" (if one can call it that) by something called a "School Intervention Specialist."  I suppose this individual is charged with providing help for struggling schools.  If there were any individual who was aware of what sorts of development were needed by the professionals in these schools, it should be this person.  Yet we were given carte blanche.  I might be presenting on executing the perfect arabesque or re-stringing horns, it would be all the same, I suppose.  As it happens, I'm presenting on student engagement through creativity, and authentic assessment through performance, especially the use of performance descriptors.

You get that a lot if you are an education bureaucrat.  You may get it more if you are one working in the arts.  I don't know.  "Come present something.  Anything.  We've got a few hours to fill and we have to make these teachers do something.  You do arts?  Great!  We never plan anything for them."  It's a babysitting gig.

Only it's not.  At least to me it's not.

The assignment feels like the first general music class I taught.  I was charged with watching 20-odd 7th graders and no one else cared what they learned from me.  My administrators were unfamiliar with my standards and ignorant of any music curriculum.  Brahms or The Beatles, dulcimers or digeridoos, I could have done anything I wanted.  I could have shown the Stomp! video each and every day and no one would have cared, as long as students weren't sent to the office and parents didn't call.  The message was clear: my subject did not matter, my professional skills did not matter, and as far as my class was concerned, my students didn't matter.

The thing was, I cared.  I cared a lot.  One of the first evaluations I received said, "Mr. Deskins is an excellent teacher.  His biggest fault is that he expects others to care about music class as much as he does."  Effin' right, that.  The rest of you have your #2 pencils and your scantron tests, your  team meetings and your curriculum maps and all the rest.  My students and I have the language of angels, glimmering forms that make time audible and make our souls quiver.  We have the giants of this Earth.  We have Bach and Mozart and Bird and Monk.  We have Moonlight Sonata and "Moonlight in Vermont."  We have rock and roll.  The rest of you can go screw.  What happens in this room matters.  

So here I am again.  "Come present.  We have some teachers who need watching for a few hours."  I'm going, but I'm not just watching them.  I'm going to try to engage them, to excite them again about the joys of teaching and the joys of the arts.  I'm going to try to help them see their students for who they are and see themselves for the rock stars I know they can be.  What we do will matter.

I had another large project that took the day yesterday, so I began my task today.  I spent a large part of my morning on the what.  I'd visited one of the schools in attendance one time for about an hour.  Based on that one visit, what could I bring to them that might aid their development as teachers?  I had a few ideas, but I didn't trust myself.  I wandered down the hall for inspiration.

I wandered into the office of my math colleague, Lou Maynus.  Lou is the math teacher I wish I'd had but never did.  I casually asked her what she was presenting on Monday.  Instead of a casual answer, Lou began talking of math practices.  She was excited.  Math matters to Lou.  It's hard to be around her and not think that math matters, too.  And not because of some damned test in the spring.  One senses that evangelical zeal as Lou begins expounding on algebra.  It's exciting to hear.

As we began to talk, Lou remembered that the aforementioned "intervention specialist" had not yet told us how many teachers we would each have in our sessions.  As I left Lou said she would give this person a call.

A few minutes later, Lou was in my office.  "You better come down and listen to this."

We walked to her cubicle.  She had the lady on the phone.

"I have Jack Deskins, the arts coordinator, here with me.  Tell him how many teachers will be in his session."

"Jack, we'll have 50 teachers there."

Now, I've presented to much larger groups than that, but I was mildly confused.  I understood that three schools would be in attendance and I knew that none had a dance teacher and only one had a theatre teacher.

"You have 50 arts teachers?!"

"Well . . . "

I know this pause.

"What are you calling 'arts teachers'?"

Breathe.

"Well, Ms. X, I'm calling arts teachers 'arts teachers': dance, theatre, visual art, and music."

"Oh.  See, I was including all of the related arts."

Now, for those of you not familiar with the double speak that is common in education, an explanation is in order.  The term "related arts" refers to courses that are not (in any special sense at least) "related," nor are many of them "arts."  In addition to actual arts courses, "related arts" can refer to any number of disciplines.  The interventionist went on to explain just which she meant.

"I was including foreign language, business, consumer science, health, physical education, drivers ed, and all of those teachers."

The message was becoming clearer.  None of these content areas matter.  None of these teachers matter.  Professional development doesn't matter.  

This is the message that was becoming clear to me from this "intervention specialist," an individual charged with transforming struggling schools.

"See, I was thinking of it like a principal," she went on to explain.  "I need some place for these teachers to go."

I explained to Ms. X that I would be unable to help her, that my area was the arts and that I was unfamiliar with the other content areas.  I told her that I would be happy to present to non-arts teachers if she knew of particular needs they had and I had some expertise in those topics, but of course, she didn't know.  I told her that my presentation, such as it was at this point, was geared toward those in the arts, which are special disciplines in themselves.

I know some of you will grin at my ire.  So be it.  Screw you.  This shit matters.

Why can't we change schools?  Because we go through motions.  We have a structure called "professional development" and we check our boxes and say that it has happened.  We have a template called "standards" and we agree that they are important and check another box.  We have a form called "assessment" or "faculty senate" or "intervention" or whatever, and we never get to the essence of the thing itself.  

We can't change schools because we believe that learning is just something that happens.  We don't cultivate a culture where real learning, the kind that makes students care about polynomials and gerunds, is fostered.  We don't move with intentionality through the process.  Our understanding of education is superficial because we view it as an ends to something else: a grade, a test score, a job.

We can't change schools because we have confused image and essence.  We have mistaken a few discreet indicators of student achievement for the achievement itself.  We've linked massive amounts of money and regulation to the indicators.  We have exchanged the glory of learning for an inglorious corruptible image.

In the arts you will occasionally hear the mantra, "Form follows function."  Popularized by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the proverb reminds artists that we must not elevate our structures, our templates, above the essence of the art.  For the architect it is a reminder that how ever glorious the façade, the house is pointless where one cannot sleep.  To the musician it is a warning that no matter how exact the sonata-allegro form (or the rondo or the twelve-bar blues), all is lost if audible time does not touch the heart.  Those who forget these lessons are called "mere formalists" and their work is branded "inorganic."  Theory be damned, it all comes to that Platonic question: what is the essence of the thing itself?

In education we have elevated form for such a long while that we have forgotten function.  What is the function of education, after all?  It is, as Robert Hutchins said, to "unsettle [students'] minds, widen their horizons, inflame their intellects."  It is to cause students to engage the world around them through language and figures and law and custom and observation and pitch and rhythm and motion and color.  It is to prepare them for lives of productivity, certainly, but not only as the world judges productivity.  It is to make them question and reason and care.

Students be warned, though: caring has a price.  Sometimes it leads to anger.  And sometimes it causes frustrating days.