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table of contents 1 narrative from reel to real 2 mystery my day in black and white 3 shards a backpack of full of toast 4 impact from fireworks to fire works 5 wisdom nothing to teach 6 identity mullet man and the beautiful broken homes 7 ritual despite rumors the rhythm is not going to get you 8 leadership jesus isn t chuck norris 9 courage misfit island 10 skills postmodern pinocchio 11 achievement macbeth also raced to the top 12 focus midas and the market mavens 13 assessment drunk tetris 14 content i d rather discover than cover 15 motivation beyond bribes and extortion 16 global shaking the dust off a vapor existence 17 relevance the vinyl paradox 18 technology abandoning avatars in the babel babble 19 creativity enjoy your pi 20 finite knight of the living dead 21 clarity common ground and garden-variety metaphors 22 transparency embracing our alter-egos 7 13 20 25 32 36 44 50 57 67 74 95 105 114 120 129 137 144 153 159 165 171 3[close]
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thank you dedication thank you to all the people who have followed my blog for awhile and who leave comments pretty regularly these people include doyle angela kelly brazen bibo betty tom and the nerdfighteria misfits matt aka halpey1 miss teacha joel russ i know that i m leaving people out here but i want to thank all of you who have challenged my thinking i also want to thank the friends mentioned in this book who have helped me through my teaching career thank you christy for all loving me so well and helping me to become more humble and authentic thank you javi and dan and quinn i am forever shaped by our numerous coffees together thank you brad for mentoring and shaping my thoughts about teaching this book is dedicated to joel micah and brenna being a father has been one of the best experiences of my life 4[close]
p. 5
characters one of my favorite elements of a russian novel has nothing to do with the pastoral connection to the land the complexity of characters or intricate plot details instead i love the list of characters at the beginning so i m including a list of characters at the beginning of the book if i could make the list perforated you could simply tear it out and it would be a makeshift bookmark so that you re not stuck using scraps of paper neatly folded unused tissues to let the world know you are still classy or dog-eared pages unfortunately i have no perforating powers so you re stuck with a traditional page · christy the love of my life we are opposite in nearly every way and we are incomplete without one another she s amazing · brad my mentor he introduced himself to me as a philosopher and that s what he is a man who loves wisdom but who loves people even more · javi a close friend and a phenomenal teacher he s got the soul of an artist and he works harder with more passion than anyone i know · quinn a business bohemian he s a man who with the heart of a troubadour and the lifestyle of a corporate executive · doyle a man i know only in the cyber-vapor kind of way i think he s the best blogger on the planet he s the man responsible for my newfound love of science · johnny a kid i tutored from fifth grade through high school we still see each other sometimes he s a fighter in the good kind of way and has faced tough odds to succeed in his learning journey · joel micah brenna my kids have taught me so much how to laugh and be silly how to dance how to notice a moon or an ant hill how to make up a song they have been a bigger part of this journey than i could have ever imagined 5[close]
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about this work disclaimer while i strive to be honest in my depiction of the classroom and i base my stories on incidents within my own life there are details names and events that i change in order to protect the identity and narratives of my students it is not my job to tell their story but only my own the impetus the work began as a challenge from tom roth an educator i admire after reading sages and lunatics he suggested that i take the work from my blog musings from a not-so-master teacher and turn it into a book i quickly realized that most of what i wrote was either currently irrelevant or a topic that no longer interests me within the same time frame i wrote a blog post called the impact paradox about the notion that more is less and that the way to have an impact is to focus less on having an impact as i began to outline a potential book i realized that the less is more concept was not so much about impact or choice but about humility i can be arrogant real arrogant mean in my arrogance i can be a bulldozer or a brick thrower yet i ve found that my best moments as a teacher happen when i am humbled that s what this story is all about it s an ideological journey through the paradox of humility i readily admit that much of the source material is taken from my blog if it feels like a real bad string of re-runs i apologize the good news is that the book is pretty cheap so it wasn t entirely wasted right features this work is a little different in the fact that i want it to be interactive it is available in hard copy as an e-book as an audio book and in a blog format please visit the blog at teachingunmasked.blogspot.com to comment on any sections within the book to view a few videos about teaching unmasked and to join an ongoing discussion 6[close]
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narrative narrative one narrative from reel to real mr spencer you re not talking much today a student points out as we line up for class i m losing my voice i explain just because you can t speak doesn t mean you lost your voice there are lots of people out there who have a voice but aren t able to speak and there are lots of people who talk all the time and never find their voice i smile realizing that on some level she has internalized our conversations about a social voice and an individual voice and the importance of developing both i didn t try and change her i never developed a plan for this student to internalize my own ideas about the importance of voice it just sort-of happened mysteriously when i share stories it can feel like a highlight film i want people to see that this generation is not a bunch of lazy screw-offs and sometimes i overstate my case the truth is that teaching is much more banal i spend hours walking around asking clarifying questions reminding students to use words more creative than stuff and thing using my body language 7[close]
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narrative to suggest that a discussion of schoolyard crushes should stay in the schoolyard and attempting to manage the administrative/paperwork side of teaching not exactly freedom writers it s not that teaching is a boring job at least not in the sense that bagging groceries was boring it s just that it s more like the real game than an episode of sports center my classroom includes the usual missteps false starts and occasionally an intentional grounding or two it can get as lethargic as a full count in the fifth inning and on my worst days i m just trying to handle the hecklers in the bleachers and yet it s real which means it also includes the subtle drama the serendipity of story and the moments of glory that inevitably make it to the highlight reel for what it s worth i d rather have real than reel because it is the unpredictability of the narrative that makes it exciting javi meets up with me to have a microbrewed pint somehow i feel infinitely cooler when i can call it a microbrew which is nice because in so many respects my life has been defined by being horribly uncool how was the conference i ask it was good the speakers were great so were the workshops educators always call them workshops despite the fact that no one really does any work i guess it sounds fancier than sit and watch someone give a passionate power point presentation javi is careful to avoid criticizing people and so he mentions key things he gleans from it not being a farmer i have to ask him to define the word and he says i think it s about taking the leftovers after 8[close]
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narrative everyone is finished so i guess it s the other way around i picked what i liked best and dropped the rest after awhile though he tells me i just wish people had been a little more vulnerable that s all teaching is messy and confusing and if we re honest really hard what would you ave wanted a speaker to do everyone shows us exemplars or they hand out the best possible work from all of their classes i would have pointed to some mediocre work and asked people what we as teachers could have done to prevent the mediocrity we would have talked about it together and shared our own expertise i mean it s crazy to think that i d be the only expert in a room i know what you mean after awhile it feels like sports center where no drops a ground ball you start thinking through this lens of perfection and if you re not careful you end up leaving a conference either dejected or with this false notion that you can create perfection in your classroom even the terminology starts to grate on your nerves everything is cutting edge wow so it s a program that can show you visually how many words are being used javi s right a flying car that shoots lasers is cutting edge splitting an atom is cutting edge a stop-animation program is probably not cutting edge novel but not innovative everyone wants something great and revolutionary i add revolutions are bloody ordeals i just want my students to read better javi is a humble teacher he s never written a how-to book of the essential fifty-five if there are really fifty-five can they all be essential however he knows his students well and despite the language barrier his 9[close]
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narrative ell students have deep classroom discussions that often surpass the expectations of an honor s class javi does service projects and documentaries and holds debates with his students yet if you ask him what he s doing to make a difference he ll speak honestly about his mistakes javi makes a difference because he is humble it s counterintuitive i admit but he s a phenomenal teacher because he doesn t have seven steps and eight keys and forty essentials he offers himself and as a result the students love him and learn from him i m not against practical advice i ve bought books with seven steps or nine keys and sometimes they work conference speakers either honest insights about teaching my issue is more with myself see if i start reading too many of them i turn toward the sports center mentality i get arrogant i start believing i have the secret formula the best ideas the perfect classroom i tell myself that i m thinking outside the box when in fact that very phrase is so cliché it fits well within a box what happens is an ugly spiral of selfcompetition and goal-driven directives to try and validate my existence as a teacher it can get worse i once gave a presentation called social studies 2.0 where i provided insights about all the paradigm shifts that we need to make in history classes people seemed interested and i fed off their excitement when it was over a friend offered his critique it was interesting parts were actually pretty funny it was missing one element 10 sometimes i m not against i ve known humble speakers who provide[close]
p. 11
narrative though what s that humility what are people supposed to do with this presentation either they write you off as deceptive or crazy or perfect that doesn t motivate them to embrace new ideas it was painful to hear but he was right i was the emperor refusing to recognize that i d been exposed my friend quinn once told me that he read three cups of tea and it was more depressing to him than a book about genocide i was supposed to feel inspired but it made my life feel worthless i kept thinking man what am i supposed to do with this i m sitting in an office cubical writing procedures right now and i m not inspired i tell him those books make me feel tired i read a few pages and i have to fight back a sense of jealousy or defeat for me those are the only two options i know that i should feel happy for the guy but i don t i don t need more stories of great achievements or more steps to a perfect classroom instead i ve found that i am stronger when i am vulnerable it is when i am humble that i can lead it s when i focus less on behavior that students change and when i focus less on making a difference that i actually make a difference it s not a new idea jesus taught the same concept twenty centuries ago so the bad news is that i don t have seven steps or three keys or the magical formula for education i m still figuring out this whole teacher gig and my place in this universe this is a story a philosophical journey of the reality that teaching is a paradox of humility i say a lame joke in the morning before school and a boy interrupts 11[close]
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narrative me with that s not funny it s not that he s offended he just feels that he has the go-ahead to be conversational comic critic it s the type of comment that brings back a narrative i don t want to relive one of being the outcast the strike-out king the teacher s pet and the kid who can t stay in sync with the my classmates whose humor revolves around quoting movie lines at one time i would have kicked him out of the room or perhaps i would have turned his humor upside-down and left him feeling wounded and ashamed it s awful that i consider going to those places but it s easy if i play the i m the ever-important teacher card this time though i see him as he is a scared broken insecure thirteen year old i see a part of myself in him too often i am the critic the cynic the one who uses words as weaponry to try and conquer others in hope of becoming important too often i stand up arrogantly and lob insults with the hope that people will believe the lie i m trying to portray hey what you said kind-of hurt i know your motives were probably mixed but i need the freedom to be myself and that includes lame jokes what happens is if i don t feel safe being myself i lose my smile and my sense of humor and it s not as fun it s a vulnerable moment that moves both of us into a humble place of transparency it s nothing spectacular nothing that would make a teacher s highlight film but it s real and it s honest and as he musters up an awkward apology i am reminded of the reality that i am more of a teacher when i am less of a teacher 12[close]
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mystery mystery two mystery my day in black and white things begin to make sense when they don t make sense it s spirit week which conjures up images of ghosts or alcohol it s really just a chance for students to dress up as nerds in the name of school pride for what it s worth i d rather have students feel a sense of pride in their learning rather than in the institution that houses them yet i can see that dressing up for eighties day does give kids a sense of belonging incidentally the day is about a decade and not a day to celebrate octogenarians kids are wild during spirit week but i am able to round the class up direct them toward bell work we call it bell work but our school doesn t really use bells i guess it s better than silent work to do while i take attendance and make last-minute changes on the lesson i walk around and read the student answers to my question what are the pros and cons of being proud of your culture i smile smugly at my class at work students are thinking deeply and working quietly i ve arrived after half a decade i ve figured out this whole teaching gig 13[close]
p. 14
mystery as i walk by i read a student connecting the dangers of nationalism in the holocaust current fear of the mexican culture and his own experience of discrimination as a haitian living in the dominican republic the student next to him sputters out a sentence and whispers to me that it s too hard she s not the only one two boys send instant messages instead of writing blog entries maybe i haven t arrived one boy raises his hand in confusion which culture do i choose he then describes living on the reservation as half-white and half-navajo and never feeling at home in his own skin except it gets worse i m not really half white my dad was white and indian not the kind of indian that they name baseball teams after stores and work as doctors the kind that own convenience do i even begin to confront the racial stereotypes in his comments is now the time to engage in that discussion or should i appreciate his honesty in exploring cultural diversity there is no handbook no memo no conference speaker that can hand me an easy answer as the class moves into small group discussion i watch a few conversations turn intense while others trail off into conversations about the weekend on some level the lesson works and i m shocked by their ability to articulate a complex philosophical concept on another level i m lost i m wandering in a cave with a flame that flickers from bright to nearly extinguished the minute i become convinced that i have reached some sort of expert enlightenment the flame dwindles back down and i come to terms with my own ignorance it s a mystery 14[close]
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mystery rewind five years and i m sitting with liquid happiness in my hand brad people really pay attention when you teach what s your trick there is no trick provocative what makes you provocative though what do you do to get people so into it i plan like crazy ahead of time he says and takes a long sip from his pitch black coffee then i set down my notes and i teach in the moment it s serendipitous so you ditch your notes entirely i ask i actually throw away all lessons after i write them i want it fresh i need it to be in the present tense does that make sense so i m totally prepared and yet completely unprepared that s a mystery or a paradox i can never keep it straight which one is which but the ideas are held together in tension he says and locks his hands tight what if you get off track i ask it s something you feel your way through it s a dance i guess you lead but then you follow sometimes you let it go brad warns me that a teacher could fill up a white board with observable objectives and start to believe that learning is an observable behavior missing the mystery of a person s mind brad believes the most dangerous place to be as a teacher is in that place where you are convinced you understand everything about a person or a subject or an idea or even about one s self 15 i think people seem engaged because i m sometimes you step in and correct and[close]
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