When I began teaching at Oak Grove nine years ago, I was already a seasoned teacher with fifteen years under my belt, and I thought I had it all figured out. If you had asked me back then why I teach, I would have said that teaching is all about enabling children to find their voice. While that is still at the core of my educational philosophy, that empowering children to find and use their voice is paramount, the ‘why’ I teach, and perhaps more importantly the ‘what’ I even do has shifted, and I realize I actually have nothing figured out—which is exactly the point.
All of us went to school in some form or another: some of us excelled and competed for a space at the top; some of us coasted along happy with average marks; some barely made it through; some probably did not. The point is, we all learned something: we learned that we had to beat someone at something; we learned that if we played our cards right, we could be as invisible as we felt; we learned to tie our self worth to our grades, our clothing, our athleticism and our popularity.
The commonality between all these things is that learning was happening even though it was outside of ourselves, and living was happening—but we rarely saw the two things together: both living and learning. To do both, we needed the space and opportunity to look inside ourselves, to really notice and observe who we are. This is the gift I have been given at this school as an educator, and it is what I have come to know as my role. I am not here to ‘Teach’—that is, to impart some kind of knowledge to a child. The ‘what’ I do is ‘Learn’—that is, I learn how to facilitate a space for my students in which real self-awareness happens, where it is safe to try, safe to succeed, and safe to fail.
In the nine years I have been here at Oak Grove, I have been asked several times what the difference is in teaching at a school like ours. My response has always been simply that I can say ‘yes’ to children more often than I have ever been able to do in my career, after years of saying ‘no’ without consideration. With the tight timelines, rigid rule structure backed up by rewards and punishments, and prescribed curricula that had no room for creativity or depth, my public-school experience allowed for very little exploration outside these bounds.
During my first year here, a 7th grader named Makel asked if he could go jump in the bioswale at lunch time on one of the very few rainy days of our southern California school year. My practiced response was an automatic ‘no’, followed by his response of ‘why?’ It was not a why in the whiny adolescent vein, the why of someone who knows exactly why…. Instead, it was a why full of curiosity that warranted some observation and some questioning from me.
‘Well…,’ I paused, considering his proposal, ‘what are you going to do once you’re all wet?’
‘I have my basketball shorts,’ he replied promptly.
‘You will be pretty cold’.
‘Maybe, but I have seen these fill up with rain ever since I can remember and always wanted to see what it was like’. ‘Hmm, I guess you better find out’.
And again, it seems like a little thing. But it is this observation that mattered: the way this child looked at himself. His act of independent thought and curiosity, of taking a risk within the confines of safety; accepting the possibility that he might get soaked whilst he was still inside the classroom. To my mind, that was on par with volunteering an idea about Romeo and Juliet when he was not sure of the answer or writing a poem without knowing how. Just his willingness to try was important.
Moreover, the gift he afforded me as an educator in this moment was staggering. It was the gift of a pause for reflection. His sincere question was an opportunity to take in the moment as it truly was, not as an act of mischief to be quashed, but as an exploration of real curiosity that deserved more than a simple rejection.
Junior high students often come across as a paradox: full of the desire to push against boundaries and test out new ideas, while at the same time feeling an intense need to find belonging within a group. We see it in the choices they make with music, fashion, friendships and most other areas of their lives. So, it is only natural that this paradox would present itself in the classroom as well. In fact, the most exciting and inspiring thing I have had the privilege to witness as a classroom teacher is when students design their own solutions to problems that arise. This could be as simple as tweaking a writing prompt to fit their interest to a topic (I really want to write about the societal reasons why there are no girls in ‘Lord of the Flies’), or a more involved exercise (…instead of a reading log, I would like to make my own book review website. I feel like it would make me be more serious about it). Basically, the student wants to be a part of a class goal or project but in a way that has his or her personal signature on it, just to stand out and fit in at the same time.
In my previous experience of teaching at a large public school, I found myself in a similar conundrum — how to foster a sense of individuality and exploration in an environment dictated by conformity. Most of the time it felt frustrating, I was able to see small moments of expression, but anything challenging the structure of the curriculum or assignment usually came up against the wall of common assessment and testing. Just as I had done initially with Makel and the bioswale, I found myself, more often than not, saying ‘no’.
As I have said, teaching humanities at Oak Grove has presented me with the gift of saying ‘yes’. The small size of our classes and the commitment to inquiry allows for both small scale and larger opportunities for student-led design and problem solving. While every assignment and project does not ask the students to completely form their own learning, all students have the opportunity to inform their own learning as they develop their strengths and interests. As I moved through the first few years here, I increasingly found myself wondering how to encourage and foster this type of internal motivation and turn it into action.
With the new initiative of advisory time in middle school a few years back, came an opportunity for implementing an independent project that might provide both freedom and structure for the eighth grade. Our existing junior high internship, where students choose a local artisan or business to learn for a day, meshed with the mentor component of the program, and being the eighth-grade advisor allowed me to work closely with those students to help them navigate the challenges and help them use the opportunity that their chosen interest presented. What was important, whether students were attempting a project that was big or small, was that they were able to explore learning without boundaries. More importantly, they had the freedom to fail and retry, and to share their findings along the way.
The parameters of this project were simple and wide open. First, the students needed to choose something that they were interested in but not proficient at. Usually, this involves a presentation of a few of their ideas early in the year, followed by the collection of feedback from peers and advisors about which might be the best fit. Next, they identified a mentor—an adult in the community other than their parents who had expertise in some aspect of the project and who would be available to answer questions. Finally, they had to be completely independent in their endeavor, from funding to completion. So, while mentors and other adults could help them learn the use of a tool or a specific skill, it was hands off when it came to the project itself. Thus, an adult could demonstrate how to use a bandsaw but not cut the wood for a participant’s project.
The first time the students presented these year-long projects. I was stunned by the variety of their ideas. I stood across the table from the 8th grade girl, her eyes sparkling as she recounted how she submitted a successful proposal and implemented a plan to include junior high artists in one of the largest high school art shows in the city. She proudly described how she partnered with a charity that connected impoverished artisans in developing countries with the art show to help raise money for them as well. She spent time considering each of my questions and was impassioned and thorough in all her answers. The same went for student after student: the boy who built his own bike from scratch, the girl who created a line of lip balms to sell, the student who created a stand-up comedy routine and performed it at adult comedy open mics, a boy who learned how to turn a lathe and built his own custom baseball bats. The common thread linking these projects was that the students had come up with original ideas, found themselves mentors, documented their progress and designed a project on their own. The room was filled with a palpable sense of pride and motivation stemming from the students’ success in following their own interests.
In Education and the Significance of Life, Krishnamurti writes: ‘While one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally’.
I am always extremely excited to see what discoveries our 8th graders make as they explore their varied interests in whatever form they choose. As a teacher, perhaps the most difficult thing for me is to divorce myself from the outcome that a student’s interest may arrive at. The outcome in this project is simply not as important as the process—the investigation of an interest, no matter how fleeting that interest may be, is paramount.
Many a time in the classroom, students’ interests are dismissed as distractions—as being secondary to the ‘real’ learning at hand. I was hoping that with this project our eighth graders would see that their extracurricular avocations were as significant a form of learning for them as constructing a good essay or understanding a difficult concept. As Krishnamurti describes the process of distraction: ‘Follow the wandering, the distraction, find out why the mind has wandered; pursue it, go into it fully. When the distraction is completely understood, then that particular distraction is gone. When another comes, pursue it also’.
At Oak Grove students will hear me say time and again that I would much rather have them design their own project idea, essay thesis or even a train of thought and fail spectacularly than do exactly what I ask for. Inevitably a student will then ask me if I want them to fail, and my answer to that is a resounding YES! It is quite literally the best way to learn—to have an idea, put it into action, watch it flounder and fail, then stop and reflect—and then either redesign the project or file it away to study another time.
So, Makel may have been really cold that afternoon, but he said ‘yes’, and he learned. Gianna may have been really scared to deliver her graduation speech, but when we put a picture of her horse in the tree behind the audience, she said ‘yes’, and learned she had the courage. Audrey may have cried for hours before finishing her essay, but through tears she said yes, and wrote it all herself. Surya may not have known how to even hold a basketball before playing in high school, but he said yes to continuing, and hit a three-point shot in his final CIF game. My daughter Isla may have wanted to disappear within herself in middle school (having her own father as a teacher during adolescence was admittedly a challenge). But now as a senior here at Oak Grove, she has said ‘yes’ too, and is the student body president, immersing herself fully in everything she does. These kids, they all said yes because they felt safe here, safe to really see and observe who they were from the inside out.
This is not to say that Oak Grove is a magical place where nobody bases their learning on an imposed perspective, a perceived status, comparisons, or any other external factor. I work with adolescents and am under no illusion that this is their default experience of the world. However, it is to say that this is a magical place because inner learning is fostered in a way that inspires me every day and where kids are encouraged to look at themselves as they truly are. There is no learning more important than that.