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G's Curiosities

Formerly titled G's S.T.E.M. Blog.  I realized that my learning has moved beyond science, tech, and engineering, and into a larger buckets of design and education systems.  I wanted a title that reflects my core value and my current state of learning.  So welcome to G's Curiosities.
All opinions expressed on this site are my own and not necessarily those of my employer or other affiliations.

Gradual Graduation

8/31/2018

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Graduating High School

When thinking back on high school, many people reflect fondly on their youthful adventures.  I did not like high school.  I would skip 30 out of 45 days in a 9 week semester.  I did not like my classes.  They bored me to tears.  I had no connection to any adult at the school.  I felt disconnected from many friends.  I even had teachers and students calling me by a nickname, “Larry”.  My name is not Larry.  Or Lawrence.  Or anything close to Larry.  These things were funny to me. Not to the school. I was the perfect case study for a kid ready to drop out.

As I neared the end of my penultimate year of High School, I realized that as much as I hated being there, my best bet was not to fail classes and be forced to repeat them.  My best bet was not to drop out.  I was going to claw my way back to passing grades and graduate early.  I felt a need to leave that space so intensely, it drove me to fix all the mess I had made for myself.

I took night classes.  My evening History class was taught by the same teacher who I tortured with my ridiculousness and disdain during regular school hours in my Sophomore year of studies.  Wasn’t much help for me there, and I guess I deserved as much.  I was kind of a prick to him.  I took extra classes while I was there.  I went to Summer School, taking a course I needed to make up, and since I was there also taking my senior year second half of English Language Arts.  This course, thankfully, was staffed by the amazing Ms. Magnolia Allen who taught me to love reading again.

I got my credits earned.  44 was the magic number.  I got it done!  I did it early.  My High School was okay with my graduating early.  I left the school in January of my Senior year, and never looked back.  I took full time work with a medical supply company and waited to get my cap and gown for graduation.  My family still wanted me to walk across the stage.  I personally could not have cared less.

In May of that year, I received the delivery of my cap and gown.  They were maroon. Maroon?!?  Our school colors were blue and grey.  I went back to find out what was going on.  I met with my Guidance Counselor who informed me that our school colors were, in fact, blue and grey with a touch of maroon.  The maroon cap and gown was worn by students who were on the honor roll and had higher than a 4.0 GPA.  The GPA upper limit, another magical number, that many students soar past in their efforts to achieve as highly as possible in preparation for applying to colleges.  I breached the limit.  Who would have known?  Certainly not me.  I had no conversations about future possibilities.  That’s okay though.  I had a good job and was already moved out and on my own.

School didn’t work for me.  I could play the game, and I played it well enough to graduate with honors and hardly showing up my Junior year.  This is one of the driving reasons I made my way, in the very roundabout, indirect fashion that most of my life’s moves are made, into a career as an educator.  

Summer School Graduation

This week, I attended the Summer School Graduation Ceremony as a representative from my District.  I have grown to love graduation ceremonies.  They were always emotional moments when I took part in 8th grade graduation at my former middle school site where I taught Science for most of my career.  While I didn’t have an active role in this ceremony, I do love to see the brightness in the faces of young people as they walk across the stage.

Two days before June graduation, one of my former students and mentee was told by his High School that they discovered a missing half credit from a failed semester of a course from 2 years prior and a missing half credit of Physical Education.  He would not meet the magic number of 44 credits.  He had to take Summer courses.  He had already been to prom and taken care of all his senior dues.  Because of this last minute discovery, he would not be allowed to walk across the stage with his friends to say goodbye to his school, his teachers, and begin the next journey in his life.  

Needless to say, he was upset.  He felt betrayed by the system.  I felt hurt and angry for him.  School didn’t work for him.  He didn’t play the school game well, and he paid the price for his ungamliness.  (Yep, still making up new words.)

Throughout his time in High School, we met up for various days of learning together.  For two years, we attended the World Maker Faire.  This young man got a crew of his friends together in their Senior year of High School to meet with me on weekends to learn about robotics and physical computing.  These hangouts moved to discussions of fund-raising so we could buy parts to build new things.  Then the fundraising became a business idea and these young men began designing a business of their own.  About a month later, I learn he has found a sound studio and recorded two songs with friends, and they were really good!

No one seemed concerned as to whether or not he had actually LEARNED anything.  It was all about the number.  No exception made for this exceptional young man.

I took my seat on the stage and began to peruse the Summer Graduation Program.  I was overjoyed to see that he had pushed through his anger and was listed as a Summer Graduate.  I volunteered to be the District representative at this event just in case I might be able to see him walk across the stage.  His name listed in the program had already given me a prideful moment, but I hoped I would still see him walk.

He did not come to his graduation ceremony.  I’m certain he is still angry with the system that let him down.  I am happy and proud that he pushed through this set back and completed High School.  I know he is a passionate learner and can/will do great things.  He has big dreams.  But this graduation debacle deflated him.  

I Have Questions

Why have we turned graduation, a rite of passage to college and adulthood, into a checkbox system of arbitrary numbers that really don’t carry much meaning?  

Why don’t we care more about the passions of the young people we serve, and help these young people to realize their dreams as they see them?

Why are there so many other young people like my former student, many without mentors, being disserved by a system that is supposed to be inspiring them to do great things?

Why aren’t we rethinking school to make it a place where all students want to attend and actively seek to learn more?  If attendance was optional, would your students show up?  Would your teachers?

We can do better.   Why aren’t we?
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Dismantling Myself

8/17/2018

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I was inspired by a colleague in Illinois, Mark Heintz, who spent a year writing about his learning and teaching process for an entire year.  I'm going to try and do this myself.  I hope those that join me on this journey will learn something from this journey.  

This week, I spent the entire week in professional learning.  New York City has given education leaders an amazing opportunity to learn together this summer about Equity.  I have already taken part in Mentoring for Equity, Beyond Diversity, and in many equity-based conversations with my critical conversational friend, toni.  I knew I had more to learn, and I was excited to take part in the learning this week.  

Day 1 - Solving Disproportionality

My expectations were being fully met on Day 1 as I learned from Dr. Ivory Toldson about disproportionality.  I already had seen important data about disproportionality in New York City schools when I dug into the Calculus of Race article.  I learned a lot by examining schools' data in the Civil Rights Data Collection about Schools and Districts.  I had never seen this data source before, and excitedly examined a variety of schools from across New York City and in my District.  There are definitely stories being told in this data, and some of these stories are not pretty.

I am pretty intentional about defining words in education that we often take for granted.  When Dr. Toldson asked us, "What is the achievement gap," we had time to talk through what we thought was a best answer.  When he then asked, "Shouldn't we first ask ourselves, 'What is achievement?'," I was really happy.  I love to tackle ideas like this with colleagues.  You learn so much about your own beliefs and the beliefs of others when you start to challenge yourself to really define what you think you know and often take for granted.  

I spent a little time thinking about my "Why" in this work.  Why am I working to dismantle inequity and oppression?  What drives me to get out of bed, even in the deepest of Winter, on the most unfortunate mornings, to push through these days and still come in to work and do my best to lead education and schools to provide the best learning conditions for all students?  What gets you to work every day when it's -2 Celsius, sidewalks packed with dirty snow and unseeable ice, and you spill your coffee down your shirt before you have even left the house?  What drives you to want to do the work?

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Day 2 - Implicit Bias

I have been in short workshops about implicit bias before.  I was pretty sure I knew what it was.  I'm certainly sure that I have moments where I lay bare my implicit biases.  I am lucky to have a mindset where I try to catch myself in those moments and question my motives and beliefs that drove a decision or comment that way.  I am also very lucky to have critical friends at work and at home (thanks, Dwight for always being there to help me think through these moments).


Early in the day, we were asked to "center ourselves in the moment".  Yeah, I was being asked to meditate and be present in a moment.  I do not like these types of mindfulness exercises.  I think they are hokey, hippie crap.  I played along.  It was hard to close my eyes to concentrate on my breath because they were rolling so much in my head, but I did my best.

After lunch, we were asked to "be in the moment" again.  I decided to give it a shot this time.  I was feeling kinda full from the sandwiches, so worst case I was going to get a 5 minute nap.  We went into the moment, and were then asked something different than before.  We were asked to picture the face of someone we loved, unconditionally.  Faces began to flow across my mind.  We told them four things, "May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe, may you be at ease."

Then, we were asked to picture ourselves as 6 year old children.  I immediately pictured myself from an old school photo.  Then we were to tell our younger selves, "May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe, may you be at ease."  I lifted myself and hugged myself, and told myself that it was okay being who you were inside even though no one else knew.  I still love you even though no one else knows who you really are inside.  You'll hide yourself, fearful, for years, worried about being found out as gay, but you will be okay.  And I started getting deeply connected to shit inside me that hadn't been explored, ever.  My closed eyes began to water, and I had to stop myself.  My eyes shot open.  I had to take a second to myself to get back to the room and stop thinking about that young boy I used to be.

Damn, son, I have a lot of work to do with me.  I also have a deeper connection to my Why now.  But there's a lot of work to do.  Scary, deep, intentional, thoughtful, emotional, but scary f%cking work to do.  

Day 3 - Culturally Responsive Education

Today I entered the room a little scared about what I might dig into.  But Dr. Gholdnecsar Muhammad was a great presenter, and the work today centered around being intentional with this work in planning and engaging students in the classroom.  Plus, Dr. Muhammad was such a fabulous presenter.  I really appreciated her words and her humor.

One activity that really stood out to me was sitting with my partner, the wonderful Beverly, and asking her, "Who are you?" over and over.  Each time she was challenged to come up with a different answer.  Then she did the same for me.  It really gets you thinking about who you are and who you are bringing to this work.

My big takeaway today was really rethinking the planning of learning activities and conditions.  Most teachers already consider things like Skills (how to write to a specific audience) and Intellect (the formula for finding the area of a rectangle).  We need to begin including Identity and Criticality in the work.  Identity speaks to the student being able to see themselves in the work.  Each student brings a unique perspective and set of experiences, and that should be intentionally part of the learning process.  You can not disconnect your humanity and emotion from learning.  Criticality speaks to questions that allow students to think about dismantling power imbalance, oppression, and inequity through their learning process.

It adds an important layer and meaningful depth to the work we are doing with young people.  I'm really excited to explore my own ideas about learning conditions and how I can be mindful to include these lenses in the planning process.

Day 4 - Coaching Adults with am Equity Lens

Dr. Darnisa Amante from the Disruptive Equity Education Project - deep - let us know right from the beginning of the day that the work would be intense, there would be tears, and it would feel like going to therapy.  The dismantling of inequity and oppression begins with dismantling yourself.  Dr. Amante was an intense and hilarious speaker of truth.  I can not express enough how impactful her day was for my learning and growing process.

As we were told, things got intense and emotional on Day 4.  I'm not sharing my emotions in this post, they are for me to continue to look at and analyze and learn from.  But I did learn that as much as I thought I knew, I am no where near learned enough.  As my friend Hazel Mason said, "The hard part of the equity journey is the more you know the less you know."  I learned that as woke-ish as I thought I was, I really had no idea the pain that people of color experience regularly in our society.  I don't need to see myself or make a personal connection to everyone, people are just fine being exactly who they are without me being a part of them.  I want to learn to see others more clearly as themselves.  I want to help young people feel more love and kindness in their lives for being exactly who they are and who they want to be.

Bringing All This Home

I am lucky enough to have folks to share my lack of knowledge with and to learn more from as I go through this journey.  I have much inner work to do.  I'm not making myself any promises about when that will get done, but I am promising to make an effort to do it.  I have already changed.  I know I will grow more the more I learn and participate.  

I am moved.  I am ready.  Are you ready?  Let's get to work, friends!
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    Bryan Glover

    This blog will track my adventures as an education innovator, S.T.E.M. enthusiast, and amateur Maker.

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    Disclaimer:  The views expressed in my blog are my own views and do not represent those of my employer or any other entity.

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  • Home
  • My Story
  • Re-Make Ed
    • Change as Belief
    • Studio Learning Research >
      • Q1 - Our Future?
      • Q2 - Learning from Youth
      • Q3 - Sci of Learning
      • Q4 - Building Partnerships
    • Influential Reads
  • Home Made
  • G's Curiosities Blog
  • Contact