Satisfaction is a Renewable Resource

Satisfaction is an elusive emotion. Yet it truly takes so little to have the warm wave wash over the body and soothe tension and longing. Instead of striving for "happiness"  in my endeavors, of late, I have been seeking satisfaction and contentment. It is so much more definable and attainable, at least as I see it, live it.

One of the greatest satisfactions in my life is constantly harvested from teaching. I love to teach. Although I did not follow the traditional path of this profession, I actively engage in teaching regularly and there is such a reward every time I lead a class to discover new thoughts, new ways of looking at the world, and new ways to engage in themselves.

Teaching is not just instruction; it is performance art. Teaching is an endeavor that requires full investment in one's own knowledge and confidence, but also in the full implementation of listening and intuition. A good teacher also becomes the master of improvisation, known in the field as "embracing the teachable moment."

Yesterday, I taught two very different classes, one in the Honors Program at Syracuse University and the other at the Syracuse YMCA's Downtown Writers Center. The morning class is a small group of vibrant young women who join me on an investigation of arts in society titled Viewing the World through Changing Lenses. Although we started this week's class furthering our views on dance, media glitches (I love the modern classroom!!) drove the discussion and videos to watch to the incomparable Lily Yeh, a personal hero. After sharing what I know of Lily, who I believe should be honored with a Nobel Peace Prize, we looked at images of her beautiful face and some of her public art. Then we watched a video of a project in which Lily worked with a community in Rwanda to create a memorial to replace a bleak, impersonal mass grave. At the end of the video, I was tearful and nearly speechless. My students were moved, of course. We were experiencing the proof that art affects change. We were witnessing that the clear intention of one determined human can change lives and communities. This is the kind of human I want to be and I keep my eyes on those who are so much more able to meet the goal so I keep myself moving forward. Click to see for yourself: Lily Yeh in Rwanda.

In the evening, I was with a class of adults pursuing the craft of writing in my DWC Foundations of Poetry class. We had an active conversation centered on questions the students had as a result of the first 4 weeks of class and all that I have thrown at them in rapid fire. We talked about the endless choices a poet faces in molding a poem from the original intention to the revision that finally satisfies the poet well enough to let the poem rest. We barely had enough time to get through five of the key questions and still hear new work from members at the table. The fact that one of the students was chomping at the bit to share a poem she had been revising since the summer course she took with me washed me in a warm wave of satisfaction. She is really excited about poetry and it is joyous to see this wonderful woman discover something new in herself.

The adage is true: teach what you want to learn. The more I have to articulate my views and intention, my patterns and habits, the better I am at exercising them in my own expression as a poet, writer, artist, human. Teaching requires lots of time to prepare, buckets full of both energy and patience, compassion for others, and enthusiasm for the responsibility. When I was a child, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I have discovered that the traditional path to that dream, that goal, was not my path. But I have been actively teaching for nearly 20 years and I can say that I love it more now than I did when I started. It is never static, always inspiring, and it is good service to the world. 

Today, I delare: I am satisfied... 

The Art of Lifelong Learning

I have been working steadily as an educator now 11 years, some of it very frustrating, most of it joyous. I will teach in any setting, will work with any age group, and the size of the group matters not a whit to me. If I can share the information I have cultivated and the passion I feel for writing, language, reading, and learning, I will do it. Often I even am paid for my instruction and that is becoming more and more a precedent, which is a good thing since this is my career.

In school settings, particularly in the one district that I served for 6 years, I was frequently scheduled to work with what I refer to as reluctant learners. Other times, I was placed in "special ed" classes in which students mostly had emotional issues and/or learning disabilities, I assume with the hope (or even expectation) that I would not only address skills needed to bring scores up on the standardized assessment tests but also perhaps excite the students. Now, those who work in education understand the delicate balance of special ed: there is often additional funding to provide the support, even if just a small budgetary asset, so that is a potential plus; the other side of the seesaw is that those students labeled with special needs will test lower and bring the overall rating of the school down (and, thus the teachers who may face evaluation and public scrutiny in the process). This will affect funding, faculty assignments, sometimes even the fate of the entire school. These are very high stakes.

I am not sure what happened with my work in that district overall. There was never any formal assessment of my work, which leads me to believe that there was a certain disconnect with the value of what I was developing to meet the needs of improved literacy as well as English Language Arts proficiency. I had hoped that there would be a tracking of the students, some of whom I met in elementary school, taught again in middle, and then in the high school. I was hoping to not only further develop my pedagogy but prove that it had merit. We never did the pre- and post-tests. There was no step to that higher level of documentation and observation. On the one hand, I had tremendous freedom in my work, often tailoring my lesson planning to specific classroom needs and requests from the teachers themselves so that was the upside. The downside is I have no data to indicate my effectiveness. I can only hope. 

In that district, I worked annually in five schools: two elementary, two middle, and the one high school. Add to this schedule the other districts where I gained contracts, plus my adult education, and a single class at the college level, and I determined that I was teaching an average of 2000 individuals a year. Most of those students were before me for an average of 3 - 5 contact sessions.

I have been observing that the philosophy of lifelong learning is fading over the horizon. Even with adults, the idea of being a learning machine is not prevalent. We are a goal-oriented society much more than we invest in the value of process. In the college level course as well as the adult writing workshops I facilitate frequently, I have discovered an attitude that I refer to as consumer-based education; in other words, "I am paying for this so you have to teach me what I want and the way I want you to teach it." I find this frustrating.

The idea that an experienced educator, or even expert in one's field, would determine how they best can convey the knowledge to the student who does not yet have it is not valued, particularly once one has presented a check or a credit card number to pay the course fee. Often, the student wants to decide how much they can be asked to read, to produce, and how the course should be structured. Just as often, the paying student does not even fully understand the nature of the course he or she has signed up for after reading the 30-word blurb in a brochure but still wants the course to meet some preconceived idea of what they will be experiencing. Additionally, some (albeit a very small minority) can be quite vocal about their perceived needs and expectations, even confrontational.

The word I use more and more often about the process of writing is discovery. I want students to discover what the poem wants to be, to discover the wonder of a great line, or the sound of the vowels, or the subconscious metaphor in their work. I want them to be curious rather than exacting. I want them to be patient in letting the work unfold, knowing that there is no deadline in creating a good piece of writing. Deadlines only apply to homework and publishing.

Racking up a pile of adequate poems is far less important that lolling about with a new work and striving for the best word, the most advantageous line end, a new stanza configuration, all with the goal of creating something magical, or even important. What does it matter if a writer spends an hour rearranging a new piece to see what will be implied in the process? After all, isn't that part of the joy of being a writer, playing with language to discover all its potential and impact?

If I ask a class of adults at the beginning of each session, "How was your week as a writer?" I am suggesting that they take the time from all their other obligations, duties, and distractions to honor that part of their selves, their identities. It is no frivolous query. Yet, sometimes those adult students balk at the question, shy from it, and then complain about it on my evaluations. They are looking to get a particular set of teachings or experience, mostly "What do you think about my poem?" rather than "What can I learn about being a poet?"

I am never complacent about my work. I demand a great deal from myself. I read other poets and read about poetry regularly, I talk with other writers, I experiment, and I push myself to grow, to never believe I know all there is to know about the art. I have determined that I know a fair amount and that I have a certain level of skill that I am now becoming comfortable in, even confident. I know I have a viewpoint that is worthy of sharing. I have also discovered that a classroom full of seemingly cranky 5th graders will often be more open to discovery than any number of adults. This is so in adult writing workshops and in teacher in-services. It is sad that we only want what we think we need. We want praise and a list of "how to's" rather than being willing to let the instructor be the driver and to sit back and enjoy the ride, while discovering that there is a new landscape beyond our own knowledge and expectation.  In the interest of discovery, I rarely forecast what I will be teaching. I am resistant to syllabi, and equally resistant to rubrics.

I teach what I want to learn. I learn more every day so I can teach it better. I love my work but I do wish that every student enters a class because they are more interested in process than product. The product will come. This much I know. Now to convince the customer.

Being a Lifelong Learner

This past couple of weeks I have been in a residency with 3rd graders, 13 classes of 3rd graders, in fact. They are lively and Spring is evident in their energy levels. They are also very engaged in our work together.

I selected a new poem to use in my lesson plan, since I have worked with many of the teachers in previous years. My goal is not just to bring a reading and inference approach to the students that creates enthusiasm and understanding while building sound learning habits but to provide more resources for my host teachers.

I sought a poem that would meet the widest range of diversity with a common experience, a poem that permitted nuance in inference and connection, and that maintained an air of play, as well as strong craft of poetry and challenging language to boost essential vocabulary. My choice this time is "Skating in the Wind," by Kristin O'Connell George.

In the poem, there is a health ambiguity that leads to very animated discussion among the students around the mystery of the poem. The skater is not identified as an ice skater, or  rollerblading, or a standard roller skater. In most classes, we had even decided that it was possible that the skater was a skateboarder. The poem seemed to allow for that last interpretation, particularly since many children refer to skateboarding as skating also. 

So after a week and a half of teaching the poem, yesterday morning, one boy raises his hand to say he has made an important observation. "Ms. Popoff, I figured out that the skater can't be skateboarding." He then cited one crucial line halfway through the poem: "My skates clattered."

He went on to explain that it could not be a skateboard because a skateboard is one thing and "skates" is a plural word. Again, poet does a happy dance in delight of the student awareness. Not only that, but the student discovered a key piece of evidence that had not really occurred to me yet. He showed me something new in the poem I had not noticed, a nuance that was very significant, while he also pointed out something important to his classmates and reflected his retention of a key component of his knowledge of grammar to his teacher.

We can always learn from our students. I live by the motto "Teach what you want to learn." This young student helped me see more clearly, as well as his classmates, and then all of the students I will teach in the future when I use this poem. I already did in the remaining classes of the day and will in the six classes left for me to teach this week.

I love this work!

When Teachers Are Engaged, All Are Engaged

I am nearly done with 2 weeks in classes of 3rd graders and what a blast it has been, although I am really whooped. With three or four contact sessions per class, four self-contacted special ed. classes and seven standard classes, I have taught nearly 230 students in 10 school days. Each class has a completely different temperament. This is particularly noticeable with the classes of students with special needs. What this work demands is an ability to be very flexible and to be able to assess needs and capabilities very quickly in order to adapt to the class for a lesson that will keep the students engaged.

Over the years, I have heard many teaching artists comment on the difference between the teacher who contributes to the process or activity, the teacher who models lifelong learning and enthusiasm for what the artist or visitor brings to their classroom vs. the teacher who thinks that our presence in their room is the gift of down time, paper-marking time, email time. Anything but teaching time. When the host teacher is involved with my lesson, it is always a better experience for us all. Students will mimic what they see. Even if the teacher is sitting with them as I teach but that teacher is marking papers, the students see a lack of attention and replicate it. In some cases, they may even shuffle papers from their desks and doodle as well.

Basically, my work is not just what I do with the students but the methods and activities that I have developed for teachers to use when I am gone. The teachers who recognize that this is an opportunity to add elements to their own pedagogy, as well as to share skills with me, are the teachers I most enjoy and who probably most appreciate my work with their students. I learn from the teachers with whom I teach every day. They give me new approaches for everything that I have to do in schools. I hope that I bring them the value that I intend to share.

I have always seen my work in the classroom as a three-way learning experience, when it is at its best. I had many such experiences these last 2 weeks and I look forward to next year, when I will hopefully be invited to return to the school with even more to bring to students and teachers both.