Benchmarks

I am guessing there is a decent chance that most of the people reading this blog have at some point in their lives encountered the Robert Frost poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." But in case you have not, here it is.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The first time I interacted with this creation of Mr. Frost's, I was in an eighth grade English class. Something about it immediately grabbed my attention. Like most things that grab my attention for reasons I can't explain, this poem stuck with me. I mulled it over in my head for days, but no matter how many times I wrote the poem out, no matter how many times I recited the lines in my head, I could not summon forth the deeper meaning belonging to Frost's words.

My senior year of high school I encountered this poem again. We read it in an English class I was taking shortly after being dealt the most devastating blow I have ever endured. This time, I came to a conclusion about the poem's meaning before we had finished the first read through. It seemed to me that Frost was contemplating death, and more specifically, whether or not it was time for him to die. In the end, he decided that even thought death seemed "lovely" and quiet and peaceful, he still had miles to go before it was his time to die.

Now, I am a senior in college, and Frost's poem about a silent evening in a winter wonderwood has been very much on my mind. Perhaps because it has been snowing so much, but I think there is another reason as well. My understanding and interpretation of this poem has again been altered. Frost's woods make me think of contentment. They remind me of moments in my life when everything is beautiful and I am at peace. Like the traveler in the poem, I am tempted to try and suspend myself in those moments forever, or you could say, I am tempted to stay in the woods.

However, at this point in my life that is not something I can afford to do. Like that man in those woods on that calm and snowy night, "I have promises to keep." I have promises to keep to myself regarding places I want to go and things I want to do. I have promises to keep to other people about the kind of person I am going to be and the level of commitment I am going to have to the causes I believe in. These promises make it so that, at least for now, I cannot slow down, and I cannot be content. I have to leave my comfort zone and push the limits. Mostly, I need to find out how much of a person I am capable of being and how much that person is capable of doing, because right now I do not feel like I have a very good grip on what I am actually capable of.

I love that I have these re-occurring themes in my life. By that I mean certain songs, certain movies, certain literary works, certain people that reappear from time to time. They act as important benchmarks that provide me with valuable insights regarding my personal development. It never ceases to amaze me how experience and current life situation can influence my perspective on the world. Is Frost's poem about death? Is it about contentment? Is it just about appreciating beauty but realizing that we must return to reality? Or is it supposed to be about all of those things? I don't know. But in the end that is not what matters. "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is valuable to me because it is so subjective, and because that subjectivity makes it so easy to relate to my life no matter how old I get or how much my situation changes. Considering the fact that I am only twenty-two, and my life is only just beginning, it is safe to assume that my interpretation of Frost's words will continue to experience many additional alterations in the years to come. After all, I still have "miles to go before I sleep."

I hope you realize, this means WAR!

Today, my classes started a war. I say classes because as of 9:00 AM today, I am the sole instructor of both of Mr. K's 20th Century Global Studies blocks. I say we started a war, because that is literally what we did.

Before I go any further, I need to introduce you to a famous education scholar that is near and dear to the Education Department here at Swarthmore. His name is Bruner, and many of you have probably heard of him, but for those of you who have not, here is his basic philosophy. Bruner believed that it was important for children to interact with new material that they were expected to learn in a way that allowed them to form their own conclusions and come up with their own answers. In doing so, they would interact with the material they were studying on a deeper level. Thus, Brunarian activities often focus on helping students understand a concept before they get filled in on all the nitpicky (though still often important) details.

The activity I created was called Project CubeWorld. For this project, I placed students in 5 groups and gave each group a country (Country #1, Country #2, etc.). Next, I handed them each a packet that contained background information on all five countries and the various treaties between countries. Students were asked to read the materials in the packet and then list their country's basic traits, most prevalent concerns, allies, and adversaries. This project was called CubeWorld because I also provided and map (which was on the board as well) that depicted the countries in the shape of squares.

I should mention that the five countries in the activity were actually the five main countries involved in WWI (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, France, England, and Russia), and all of the treaties included in the packet were the actual treaties created between these countries, but with the real names taken out and replaced with numbers.

Once we had established all of the alliances, the nature of the alliances, and the adversaries, I read a series of events that happened in CubeWorld in 1914. After reading each event, I asked each group to decide what position their country would take with regards to the event. The first event was the construction of a railroad from Country #4 (Germany) to Country #8 (The Balkans), which consequently was also one of the first events that led to tensions between the European Powers in 1914. We continued all the way through the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (also known as the heir to the throne in Country #3) and the invasion of Belgium by Germany.

The activity worked very well, and both classes ended up going to war in the right order at the right time. Many of the groups ineven figured out what we were doing before the game was through, which was fantastic in my opinion.

I still need to think more critically about how to design group work that more readily ensures engagement on the part of all group members. I had some students today who did not contribute very much, if at all, and instead spent most of their time talking about other things or just simply doing nothing. Some things that might do more to ensure accountability are assigning roles to each group member and holding students accountable through grades for their participation from time to time. If anyone else has other suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Overall, I am very excited to be starting my own Unit. Today was so much more fun and so much more fulfilling than that last couple of weeks have been. I feel much more in my element even though there are still plenty of areas from improvement. Tomorrow we fill in the details of how The Great War began, and then we start talking about the leaders from various countries.

Wallpaper

I spent a lot of time as I was walking around my school today looking at the walls. They are covered with the kind of posters pushing positive thinking that you might expect.

"There is no "I" in team."

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mohandas Gandhi

I remember reading similar quotes in my own high school and being deeply touched by some of them. One in particular was written on a marker board in my 11th and 12th grade English classes (taught by the same remarkable teacher).

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." - Henry David Thoreau

When I saw a quote such as that hanging in a teacher's room, I knew it was a space where dreaming was allowed. I felt more comfortable sharing ideas and exploring curiosities because I knew I was in a place that embraced dreams and encouraged mistakes.

As I was leaving my classroom today, I noticed a quote hanging above the door that I had never seen before.

"Good is the enemy of Great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life." - Jim Collins

Initially I was very impressed by this quote. However, as the day wore on, I found myself more troubled by it.

I do not believe that the great people whose words and actions end up plastered all over high school hallways set out to be great. Gandhi probably did not wake up one morning and think to himself, "I am going to be the greatest champion of peaceful protest the world has ever seen, and people will remember me forever." Eleanor Roosevelt did not, I am guessing, look across the dinner table and say to her parents, "Mom. Dad. Someday I am going to marry a man, and he is going to become president, and when he does, I am going to change the role that the first lady plays in this country forever. I am going to give women a strong role model that they will look to for years and years to come."

I could go on, but I think I've ingrained the point I am trying to make. The greatest and most inspiring people in our world did not end up in their respective roles by setting out to be great. Instead, they found an issue they were passionate about changing and they pursued it with all of their heart, soul, mind, and spirit. They refused to rest until they saw their dreams of a better world realized. In the end, this meant that they never rested.

Therefore, while I can truly appreciate the intention of this quote, I believe it misses the mark ever so slightly. Instead of inspiring our youth to be great, I believe that we should inspire them to be passionate about making the world a better place. True greatness comes not from a place of selfish ambition, but from a place of selfless vision.

The Meaning of Life

In addition to student teaching, I am also running a group for 7th-9th grade girls in the Chester Children's Chorus. This chorus is made up of 2nd-12th grade students from the city of Chester, PA, which is notorious for its struggles with education. The official name of the group is the Young Women's Power Hour, but they truly hate that name, so we have a secret one for ourselves. I'd tell you what it is but...(I really should not have to finish that sentence for you).

From time to time, I want to talk about them in this blog as well. Now is one of those times.

The YWPH is considered a "total wellness" group. What this means is that we focus on developing healthy bodies and minds. We meet twice a week, and we exercise for about thirty minutes, and then we have discussions. Last semester, our focus was concentrated on the Penn Resiliency Program. This program was originally developed to prevent the development of symptoms of depression in adolescents. However, I used it with my girls because it has activities that help develop problem solving skills, assertiveness, and that give students a vocabulary useful for talking and thinking about emotions and how they affect our actions. We had some great conversations, but I felt that my girls were a bit too cognitively mature for the curriculum.

So this semester, we are doing something completely different. We are exploring the meaning of life. My hope is that by exploring the general question, "What gives peoples' lives meaning?" the girls will gain some insight into what makes their own lives meaningful.

I did not design a curriculum for these discussions right off the bat, because I decided it would be more meaningful if the girls came up with their own ideas of how "the meaning of life" should be explored. At the beginning of our first meeting Saturday, I wrote the question "What gives peoples' lives meaning?" on the board and asked the girls to take a good 15 minutes to really think about the many different areas of life where meaning can be found. After adding their ideas to the board, I asked them to do their best to organize the ideas they came up with into more finite groups. Here's what they came up with...

Loving Relationships: Family, Friends, Romance

Beliefs: Religion, Faith, Morals and Values

Ambition: Power, Money, Respect, Employment

Passion: The Arts, Learning/School, Creativity, Service Work

Taking a Break: Travel, Chill Time, Food, Hobbies

I was very impressed that they were able to construct such a meaningful curriculum for the semester. It made my life easier to be sure :) They are an amazing group of young women and I love them all dearly. I am so excited to hear what they have to say about how we find meaning in life!