When I invited the teachers who’d told me that they’d already found their dream job to put down on paper what it was that made our charter schools special, they came up with what became our Values statement. One of the dozen core values was, “Foster lifelong learning.”
Maybe that doesn’t sound strange or special for a school. Maybe most teachers say they’d like their students to become lifelong learners. We weren’t just talking about our students. We were talking about our teachers and leaders as well. Even in our earliest days, we found the money to help teachers and leaders continue their education. We helped teacher assistants become teachers. We provided salary incentives for continued learning, and we promoted the best and the brightest. If you went to college or grad school after work to earn the necessary credits and credentials, you were rewarded with opportunities.
There was an even more important message embedded in our commitment to lifelong learning, the implication that we didn’t expect you to know everything as you began your career as an educator. What we expected was that you would be learning and growing every year; and no matter, how long you taught, you still wouldn’t know all there was to learn. We expected you to learn from your peers as well as your leaders, and we expected you to learn from your mistakes.
This was important because we opened our schools with a lot of brand-new teachers, and as they started down the pathway there were gigantic potholes on either side. Misstep to one side and you fell into arrogance and pretension; misstep to the other and you were swallowed up by feelings of inadequacy. The vast majority of young teachers fall into one hole or the other.
When we were writing our first charter, I came across the most horrifying factoid: three-fifths of the young people starting out as teachers quit the field within five years. Most of the “quitters” had, I imagine, fallen into the sinkhole of inadequacy: there had to be a way to earn a living in which they could at least feel good about themselves. Or if they were “lucky,” they could become the “stay at home” moms.
It was mostly the teachers who had gone down the rabbit hole of arrogance who stayed in the school systems, smug as a bug in a rug. It was the students’ fault when they didn’t learn – “I covered all the material in class.” The parents who complained when their children failed, who wanted something more for their kids, were the enemy.
Determined to make a difference for both teachers and students, we brought to our staff the same attitudes and expectations that we were bringing to our students. In math, we didn’t want students to learn solutions; we wanted them to learn problem-solving skills. We encouraged students to try, to collaborate, to compare results, to learn from each other. We encouraged our staff to keep learning as well. Teachers too would learn from each other and from their mistakes. In our schools, leaders had to become comfortable with mistakes happening all around them. Learning was happening. Celebrate learning. The cover-your-ass mentality of big bureaucracies was out of place. I always urged our people, “Tell me about your struggles; don’t just crow about your successes.”
When we opened our first school, we stumbled on a winning formula. Bright, reflective, energetic, ambitious beginners: that was our founding faculty. We lucked out with our founding principals, both for our first school and for our second. We stumbled on experienced, retired principals – we lured them out of retirement with the opportunity to work outside the education bureaucracy – who understood that their primary job was to develop the next generation of school leadership. We didn’t find out how lucky we’d been in those first principals until we started looking for more. We shifted gears and took the giant step of going with our homegrown talent, giving our rising leaders their first shots at school leadership.
I was the lead learner. I had to be. When we opened our schools, my experience with K-12 education was pretty much limited to my own student experience, and that was more than 50 years old. I was learning from everyone. I was learning the whole time. Every year, there were new challenges. Our growth demanded that I learn new things almost every year. In the first two years, we were able to hold our Christmas-season, holiday party in the founding principal’s living room. By year three, we moved the holiday party to a restaurant party room. By the time I retired, we had four separate parties going in four different restaurants. In our early years, I was learning curriculum design from Wiggins and McTighe. Toward the end, I was trying to learn everything I could about Google, reading Schmidt and Rosenberg and Bock.
It’s almost three years now since I retired (for the second time), and I’m still learning, things I never would have studied, never would have learned if I hadn’t finally pulled the retirement plug. I’ve been learning to live without so much pressure. I’ve been learning to pay more attention to my body. Some of this learning has been self-directed. Walking more and not in a rush, I’m learning to appreciate the change of seasons, though winter is still a challenge. Some of this learning about my body has been directed by my cardiologist.
I’ve plunged into fiction writing. Well, at least I’ve stuck a toe in the water. Again. As I graduated from college, I abandoned dreams of an artist life for a career of service. Starting now to learn a whole new craft is daunting. But there are other fears, other demons which scared the hell out of me until I headed off to social work school. I can see them now. Do I have the courage now to deal with them? Can I tell the truth? Will a story or novel of mine ever get published? These fears have always been there. Is this now safely a hobby? Maybe fiction writing, like learning a new language or musical instrument, will help to ward off Alzheimer’s.
I have more time for Zen, for doing my bit to keep Bernie’s legacy alive, and for taking the plunge toward empowering two of my students as teachers. As we look together at the tools and practices of the Zen life, I am enjoying the opportunity to question everything, the whole fish that I’ve swallowed – what’s been nourishing and what’s the bones? Is this the culminating practice of my Zen life?
And I have more time for the people I love the most. I don’t anymore have to say, “Sorry I can’t; I’m working.” Thirty-years ago, I put the worst of my workaholism behind me, but there is a degree of freedom now which is luxurious. I’m doing all these things while watching the sunset. The lessons are surprising and inspiring.
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