Standardized Sculpture

You are a brilliant sculptor. A patron comes to your studio and plops a giant lump of clay on the table in front of you.

"I want you to take this lump of clay and make me something beautiful," says the patron.

Then, before you can ask any questions, he leaves. You find yourself not knowing where to start. Something beautiful? How do you choose? There are so many beautiful things. Does the patron want something realistic? Abstract? Based in nature? The ever-mounting swell of possibilities paralyzes your talent for creative creation.

Eventually, you accept the fact that the task before you is overwhelming and do the only thing there is to do...

Start.

You work tirelessly night and day. You shape and mold the clay until it takes on an aesthetically pleasing form. You scoop away the unneeded excess. Finally, you stop and step away from your sculpture. Being the professional that you are, you can see that the piece you have created is far from perfect. But it is beautiful, and you decide it is time to be done.

You contact the patron. He returns to your studio to see what you have created.

Your heart sinks as the financier of your piece stares in disgusted disbelief.

"Where is the pedestal?" asks the patron. "Don't you know that all great statues are sculpted to look like they sit on a pedestal? And why isn't it painted? Don't you know that every statue should be painted?"

The patron refuses to pay for what you have created and storms out of your studio. He snaps a picture of the monstrosity in order to show it to the National Council of Artists. He wants your sculptor’s license revoked.

The National Council of Artists sees your sculpture and is appalled. They decide that there needs to be a crack down so that no sculpture will ever be created without paint and a pedestal. Soon there is a national mandate requiring that all sculptures contain these two elements. Artists who refuse to comply lose their membership in the counsel which makes it very hard for them to get commissions.

Many members do not think that these restrictions are enough. They feel that the national council should also decide acceptable dimensions for a sculpture, the subject matter that can be depicted in sculptural form, and they mandate that all sculptures must be carved out of marble (they have a surplus in the quarries, and using it up will be very profitable to the council).

You lose passion for your work. The council no longer seems to have faith in the ability of sculptors to create beautiful works of art without national intervention and strict regulation. Your work becomes dull and passionless. All the sculptures in the country begin to look the same. If nothing changes, they will all begin to look like they were cast from the same mold. You give up the craft, because you are deeply distraught by the lack of freedom you have to make every sculpture into something unique.

Question 1: What kinds of students should our country strive for?

Dull passionless clones?

Or

Unique works of art?

Question 2: What kinds of teachers should our country strive for?

Regurgitators?

Or

Creators?

I know which of these I would choose. What about you??

Hear! See! Speak!

I say...

"I work with middle school students in an urban setting."


They say...

"Well, in this economy you can't expect to get your dream job straight out of college."

"Its so noble of you to take such a thankless job when your education could have allowed you to teach at any number of prestigious schools."

"You brave soul!"

"Given your...background...wouldn't you be more comfortable working somewhere more...suburban or...rural?"


I hear...

"Ms. Ronhovde, why don't we have a basketball team?"

"What's the point? I'm not going to college."

"Ms. Ronhovde, why don't we have any music classes?"

"Our school is broke. They can't give us nothin'"

"Ms. Ronhovde, how am I supposed to do this project when this school has no internet?"


They hear...

"Urban schools need to stop focusing on "fluff" and get back to the 3 R's"

"Gang violence is on the rise."

"Graduation rates for urban public schools still linger below fifty percent."

"High School drop outs: What's feeding the trend?"



I see...

Sparkle

Furrowed brows as furious pencils race to unlock the mystery of a variable

Mesmerized stares as thoughtful fingers turn crisp pages of a beloved book

The light bulb turning on as a young mind is introduced to a completely new world of thought

A smile full of love in response to every moment I prove to them I am listening and I care

Hope


They see...

Nothing




Here is what I am currently pondering. How do we get well meaning and intelligent people to stop simply painting a picture of urban schools and their students based on statistics and news stories? These children are not numbers, monsters, deadbeats, and certainly not pathetic beings in need of anyone's pity. I am humbled everyday by the intellect and perspective provided by the brilliant young minds surrounding me. I know that if others could see the sparkle I see in my students, they too would be invested in ensuring that it never fizzles out.

He kindly stopped for me...

I crave the crunch of fall. It is the season of my birthday, Halloween, and football. All of these things make it perfectly lovable, but what I love most are the warm colors. However, as I watched green turn to yellow, red, and brown this year, a thought hit me for the first time.

Those leaves are dying.

If I could choose how I leave the world, it would be as a beautiful yellow leaf. Before you freak out, let me explain. When most things die, people are either sad because they loved them or happy because they want them gone. A loved one dies- that makes people sad. A mosquito dies- that makes people happy. The death of the leaf makes people happier because they loved it. Nothing else that I can think of does that.

I have actually been working on this post for about two weeks, and I've been vacillating with regards to publishing it. However, I am going to publish this (as you can see) because we cannot avoid death.

So why avoid talking about it?

Death is what makes my life beautiful. Not the actual experience of losing a loved one. I have experienced enough loss to know that it is always unalterably devastating. It takes a piece of a heart that will never again be filled. Still, isn't loving someone so deeply that losing them causes literal pain its own form of beauty? As awful as death is, knowing that I will eventually lose the people I love most is part of what drives me to appreciate every beautiful and special thing about them. It makes me truly cherish our time together, and it drives me to overcome even the most painful of offenses.

But that's not really what I am talking about. The beauty in mortality, to me, is the vitality it adds to existence. If I knew I was going to live forever, I would be far less likely to embrace moments with the potential to be exhilarating.  Though I would like to think that I would still drop whatever I was doing and go running through a thunderstorm or dance like a fool in a department store when my favorite song comes on the radio, I doubt it would give me the same feeling.  There is no urgency when you have all the time in the world.

The fact of the matter is, I will not live forever. Death will stop for me even if I will not stop for him (thank you Ms. Dickinson). Why not face that fact head on? If we have to live with death, why not really LIVE with it? Stop sweating little things that don't really matter in the long run and appreciate everything beautiful that we are blessed to experience for a blink in time. That's what I choose.

Buddy Bolden's Cues: Jazzing up Classroom Culture

I love Jazz. Every time I hear a jazz band play, the sound penetrates straight to my soul. My breathing slows, my pulse picks up the beat, and for a while I am consumed by the raw vibrancy that courses through the horns, intertwines itself in the strings, and dances across the keys. Still, until recently, my enjoyment was purely visceral.

Ken Burns and Wynton Marsalis changed that. Over the weekend, I watched the first episode in the documentary series "Ken Burns' Jazz." It's really hard to explain the effect that it had on me. All I can really say is that before I was even ten minutes in, I knew this documentary was going to significantly effect my world view. I was not disappointed.

Completely by coincidence, my decision to screen "Jazz" came the day after my colleagues and I had a very in depth conversation about the kind of classroom and school culture we want to create for our program. I had a lot to contribute during this discussion, but I did not feel like much of it was very productive. My thoughts just would not crystallize, would not flow and integrate the way I needed them to. It was very upsetting to me, because I have thought a lot about classroom culture and what I would like my classroom to look like. I just could not verbalize it.

As is usually the case, the verbal artistry of a far wiser individual became my catalyst to clarity. Something about Wynton Marsalis' description of jazz tripped a switch on my internal circuit board, and all the lights started flashing at once...

I want my classroom to be like Jazz!

Jazz music relies on collaboration to synchronize the beautiful and unique sounds of many individual musical themes. It is simultaneously the ultimate form of self expression and the ultimate example of cooperation.

Jazz intelligently challenges convention. It is constantly trying new things and pushing the limits of what is acceptable. It never apologizes for itself, but it is very reflective. Jazz musicians learn, adapt, and evolve both by reflecting on and refining their own craft and by critically analyzing the work of their predecessors and contemporaries.

Most importantly, jazz takes on societies' proudest and most shameful moments with equal vigor. It startles the ugliness in humanity without ever losing its sense of humor. Often, jazz sounds likes its biking up a PAM covered hill, but it recognizes the beauty in that struggle. In fact, I would argue that it recognizes the beauty, the vibrancy, and the current of joy flowing through every aspect of life.

And that sums it up. That is what I desperately want my classroom to embody. I could go on forever about all the parallels, but they are pretty direct and transparent. I want my students to see collaboration as the best way to both showcase their individual talents, and as an opportunity to create something more meaningful and relevant than they ever could have working in isolation. My hope is that they can be unapologetic in their academic risk taking while still maintaining an evolutionary attitude. There is something to be learned from every success and failure and a way to grow from every experience.

I guarantee that my classes will very critically examine what is most atrocious and most impressive about the world and the people living in it. However, my goal is to guide them through this process in a way that recognizes the beauty that exists in every struggle.

I want learning in my room to bounce off the page and foxtrot across the classroom in a whirlwind- often chaotic, but never without purpose.

My dream is that learning can be for my students what jazz is for me: A force that penetrates them to the very core. I want them to get so excited by the very prospect of exploring something new that their breathing slows, their pulse picks up a brand new beat, and they enter a world that they never before realized was available to explore.

What do you say to taking chances?

"If you are never scared, embarrassed, or hurt, it means you never take chances."

This post is going to be an examination of what it means to take a chance. There are all kinds of quotations out there about taking chances. The one starting this post is my personal favorite, but here are some others...

"Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible. "

~ Cadet Maxim

"Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do."

~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

"Do one thing every day that scares you."

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success. "

~ Henry David Thoreau

"Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's."

~ Billy Wilder

I know that is a lot to take in all at once, but each of these quotes reveal something very important about how our society views the experience of taking a chance. We are told that taking chances means we might potentially feel embarrassed, scared, and hurt. These great men and women explain to us that chance taking requires us to lay aside safety, wisdom, practicality, the impossible, and instead take an instinctive leap of faith.

To a certain extent, they may be right. It is almost impossible to take chances without the presence of the unknown. However, as an educator it concerns me that we are sending the message that taking an unknown path to new experiences has the potential to be painful, scary, and embarrassing. I also do not particularly care for the message that there is no room for analysis, experience, and calculation in taking a chance.

In my classroom, I want my children to see taking chances as an adventure. I want to eliminate fear and embarrassment so that trying new things is comfortable or even exciting. When approaching something new and different, I want them to rely on wisdom and practicality (both their own and that of others) instead of treating them like an impediment on the road to discovery.

Sometimes taking chances will be scary, and sometimes it will require a leap of faith, but I do not think it always has to. My question for all of you is how? How do I create an environment where my students feel safe, comfortable, and even eager taking chances? How do I ensure that trying new things and heading in new directions is a positive experience instead of a scary and overwhelming one? As always, I appreciate anything you have to contribute.

The Rose Not Taken

Today as I was walking to get dinner, I saw something so beautiful that I felt the need to share it. It was one of those perfect evenings that make people want to be outside. There was a slight breeze, but it was not so cold that you needed a jacket. The air had a quiet and enduring quality that made you feel like time would be suspended forever in that pleasant place between night and day when there is nothing to do but enjoy life, and nothing to feel but quiet happiness.

I was walking past a common area, and skipping around the circumference of the benches situated there was a very small, bouncy haired child and her two huge yellow labs. She ran about aimlessly until she happened upon a rose bush with beautiful pink blooms. Of course, in this situation she did what any adorable 3-year-old would and picked the petals from one of the blossoms. Her intent was to offer these soft, lovely drops of happiness to her two lumbering companions, but this pursuit was thwarted by the fact that her hairy four-legged friends would not even acknowledge the existence of the child's gift. Still, she persisted, following her dogs lovingly from place to place, trying innocently to get their attention and give them her thoughtful gift. In the end, she did not give up but instead said with a maternal note to her voice, "well I'll just leave them right her, and you can come get them when you are ready." She then placed the petals on the corner of one of the benches and continued to pursue new adventures and discoveries.

My description of this brief scene does not come close to doing it justice. The juxtaposition of the dogs huge bulky frames with her light and delicate features, and their animal indifference to her humanity and warmth were comical. Her persistence in trying to share something that she felt would make the creatures she loved happy was beautiful. She was never discouraged, and she had no doubt that at some point, her gift of simple beauty would get the appreciation it deserved.

I am not simply telling this story because it made me ache with happiness. This 20 second scene got me thinking about some deeper issues that have been on my mind constantly over the past month.

Who should get our most precious and beautiful gifts?

If that little girl had given that flower to her doting father who stood close by, or even to me as I passed, it would have brought a smile to a face and put a good deal of warmth in a heart. Instead, she tried to give it to two dogs who paid her no attention and did not appreciate the beauty in what she was attempting to do. Should we be like this little girl? Should we persist in trying to share our gifts with those who do not appreciate them for the beauty that they possess?

Or

Should we reserve the beautiful aspects of our lives and character; our talents, our knowledge, our love, for the people who will truly appreciate the gifts we have to give?

Let's say just for fun, that this little girl attempts to giver her dog a rose petal 100 times. The first 99 times, the dog ignores that gift completely and sometimes even nudges the girl's hand aside with his nose to get it out of his way. However, the hundredth time, he turns and smells the rose, and the smell of that sweet little petal changes his life and the way he sees the world forever. What if the girl had given up the 57th time she tried to give the dog the petal? What if she had decided that dog could never appreciate her gift and instead gave it to me? That dog would have never had the life changing experience of encountering one of life's simplest beauties.

How long do we push? How long to we fight? How long do we persist in trying to give people the beautiful gifts that we know they need but that they cannot or will not accept? What happens when they are finally ready to accept what someone else has to offer, and everyone has given up? What if they turn to smell the rose, and there is no open hand holding the petal?

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine version - Official