Intrepid Teacher

A few days ago, I read the following excerpt from a post by Leila, a student, from the Intrepid Classroom. She said:

First, I have a shikayat, a complaint against anyone reading this. Currently only two people are commenting on this blog. I put a lot of work but I guess it’s going to waste. The amazing two people I’m talking about are Mr.R and Julia. Thank you both. I would probably give up if it wasn’t for you. So those of you reading comment and you two amazing people keep on commenting and please send my blog link to anyone you know. Why? Well I don’t are if they think it’s a blog by a wired girl who has an average life. Even if they think so I don’t care just get them to mention that they came; by comment.

I wrote her the following post as advice to a young writer. I think our exchange demonstrates how much writers, no matter what age want to make connections. When I had a classroom, I found it very difficult to make blogging engaging for most of my students. I was stuck in the “blog as filing cabinet for homework” stage with most of my students.

Now that I am out of the classroom and interacting with students on a purely cyber level I am realizing that not all students are ready to connect and communicate. I have assembled a small group of students from around the world and the trait they all have in common is that they understand the power of writing; they realize that it is their most powerful tool to communicate their expanding vision of the world. I am not referring to writing as a solely textual experience, but rather writing as a way to use any tool necessary to communicate and connect. To be effective bloggers must first understand the power of writing on a personal level. They must first be writers. You cannot force students to start a blog and expect them to fall in love with writing.

Leila’s post shows that although, she is not sure exactly what it is she wants to say, she wants someone to listen and respond. This is the first step in the development of a writer. It is the more experienced writer or teacher’s role to teach students that they must first find out what they want to say, show them the most effective way to say it, and then to simply write, without need for reciprocation. Once the young writer realizes the power writing has for them as human beings, they will write freely and obsessively. It is at this stage that blogging works best.

It is difficult for the writer’s ego to relinquish the need for an audience. I don’t know about many of you, but I am still learning these lessons myself. It must be pretty difficult for someone new to the game. We writers are sitting on the fence of needing to write to stay sane and wanting to communicate every experience we have with a larger audience. A blog is a great tool for any student who has come to this realization. For others it is simply another assignment or homework assignment they could careless about.

I also left this comment, albeit it was the 83rd one, at The Strength of Weak Ties:

Wow! This discussion is at the same time intense and depressing. Once again, I feel like the kid who doesn’t know the right things to say to be considered cool. I am fairly new to the “echo-chamber,” and as a new member I found it at first very exciting, but I am starting to learn what the author means about the tragedy of commons and not just in regards to Twitter.

Even as a newbie, one can feel that there are certain names that always turn up. There are the experts that everyone follows. There are the names that carry clout, and then there are the little guys like me, simply trying to make sense of this all.

Perhaps it is still the novelty of Twitter that makes it worthwhile for me, or perhaps it is my naivety of the Edublog “in” crowd that keeps me out of discussions like this, and for that I am grateful.

I am a Middle School English teacher obsessed with learning and making connections. So it is a natural link for me to use Web 2.0, both for my own learning, but also to try and figure out what can make my own teaching more productive for my students and their rapidly changing world. Which is ironic because as of now, I don’t even have students, but I haven’t let this stop me from trying to use this network of people help me make the connections I find valuable.

I have met some great people on Twitter and made some great connections. My followers are slowly growing and I periodically check to see who they are, not to see if the “popular” kids are watching me, but to see if there is someone out there operating on my wavelength that could prove to be an alley in the war against ignorance. I blogged and shared my ideas when no one was reading, and I will continue to do so when a few kindred souls might chime in.

Let me finished with a quick story: When I was young I wanted to be the next Jack Kerouac, like every wide-eyed idealist, I was going to write prose that would change the world. I quickly realized that I am not that good of a writer, but that has never stopped me from writing. I don’t want to be famous anymore, I simply must write. The same thing is true for blogging. When I started I thought I could get huge numbers of people to read my work and leave 100’s of comments a week, but now I see that I simply need to write and perhaps, I will meet a few people who like what I have to say.

In closing, Twitter may be old hat for the early crowd, but some of us are still getting good mileage out of it. So come follow that…@intrepidteacher

Day three was pretty simple. I signed up with coComment, and while I think I have it working smoothly, I still feel it is not very easy to use. I am always unsure if things are working as they should. I suppose this is the element of Web learning I love the most. The secret is to figure things out. Sometimes that means a quick Tweet, which leads to a Skype call with Sue Waters, and sometimes it means a few hours of Google research, whatever the case the answers are out there, and it is the job of the learner to figure them out.

When dealing with technology I often found my students, although they are supposed to be digital natives were very squeamish about experimenting. I often had to hold their hands through the most basic steps of a procedure, when really I feel that experimentation and “figuring” it out is vital to web learning. In short, I am figuring out coComment, and I am excited about the potential it has to make me a much more effective commenter long after this challenge is over.

Day four I was meant to ask a question in one of my comments. I liked this idea of volleying the conversation back to the writer or other commentors, and now with a commenter tracker this action makes much more sense. Here is a question I left on Sarah Hanawald’s:

How can we slowly encourage people to understand that the future is hear with a sense of urgency, but at the same time not allow them to become defensive?

Not the most profound question, but it will do.

I will be using my new tool, coComment along side my new habit of raising questions when I comment well into the future. Once again, thank you comment challenge.

I run three blogs and have been doing so for some time now. But until tonight, I have always felt blogging was a very lonely act. Perhaps it is because my readership is quite low, and I seldom get comments, and when I do they are usually from the same small group of people who comment regularly. It is true that I write and blog for the sake of writing and reflecting, but as every writer knows I want and need an audience. Sometimes this need to connect has made me a bit crazy, but usually I write and wait optimistically that my posts will somehow connect to someone out in the blogsphere.

Well, tonight something felt different, because I finally stopped being a lurker and became a commenter. (If you are lurking on this post, leave a comment! It feels good trust me.) I visited several blogs I had never read before and left my two-cents. This inconsequential act made me feel more a part of a communty than all of my writing combined.

I finally realized that like everything in life you have to give in order to recieve. How selfish I had been, sitting in my lonely room writing away, thinking that everything I say is the most important new idea, expecting others to flock to my blog and tell me how brilliant I am, when I never take the time to do the same for others.

This challenge is teaching me that commenting is one of the most important aspects of blogging. So a quick shout out to the organizers of this challenge. (Yes, I know hyper-linking is a good blogging karmic tool as well, but it is late and I am tired. Next time I promise.)

The following post is for the 31-day commenting challenge:

How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?

I am a horrible commenter. Even though I know that commenting is one of the most important aspects of blogging, I am often either too lazy or intimidated to leave a comment. I am always awed by the depth and length of some comments, so I feel silly just say, “Yeah, I agree.” Often times I will leave the site having said nothing at all. If there is a post that makes me think, I swear that I will mull over the content and come later, but I seldom do. I will leave several blog that I want to comment on later as unread in my reader, but when the next batch of 50 come through, I mark them read and say I will do it next time.

The irony is I am always disappointed, when I write what I think is an emotional charged or powerful post and get no comments. I really hope this challenge will get me into the habit of commenting more. Tonight I comment on two new blogs, and I feel great about it. I hope to hear back from both of these great bloggers. After all this is the spirit of blogging. I am through with screaming into the darkness waiting to be heard and acknowledged, I want to sit in the darkness and listen and reassure.

Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?

I never even knew this was possible. I have signed up for CoComment for this challenge, so I hope I will learn how to better keep track of my comments. I am still a bit fuzzy on how it works, but like everything else I will figure it out, or use my network to teach me. As of now it seems a bit “buggy.” Any advice or tips?

Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?

I comment so rarely, that I will not answer that question, but I will try to comment on new blogs from now on.

Are there any specific areas where you think you need to do some work? What do you want to do to address these issues?

When I do comment, I think I do well. Although I sometimes may come off as confrontational or a know it all, because I find it easier to comment on posts I disagree with, especially when it is something I am passionate about, so it may be a good idea for me to try and be a bit more cordial.

I am sure no one want to read this post, so I will stop. Although it felt good to get it down. Great first day of the challenge.

Since March 10th,  I have been out of a job and it has been difficult for me to post anything worthwhile, because after all, it is tough reflecting on teaching when you haven’t been teaching. There have been many times I have had a post brewing, but I let it slip away due to either, laziness or self-pity. Whatever the case may have been, I have a new project and I am excited to be back in the game.

Although I am not getting paid and my future is still unclear,  I feel the need to be involved with my teaching network and trying to rustle up people who are interested in exchanging ideas and learning. Those are the reasons I teach anyway, not for a paycheck.

As I sat day after day, thinking about how the educational institutions of the world are mistreating me, I started to re-think what it means to teach in an institutional environment run at best by bureaucrats and at worst by corporate interests. I also began to brainstorm “perfect” classroom ideas. I have been forced to really sell myself to potential employers, and these negotiations have got me thinking about courses I would like to teach that don’t exist in most schools.

It appears that more and more people are starting to realize the fundamental flaw of teaching in a system that is based on profit. Teachers like Clay Burel and Bill Farren are asking us to rethink the very nature of how a school should function in society. As the global consumer cultures attains more and more influnce over all of our lives, should it not be the role of schools to offer young people alternatives to current systems.

Our schools should play a role in encouraging and teaching students the basic principles of activist culture. As the authority, teachers are nervous to tell an already rebellious group of adolescents to question authority, but we owe it to them to demand more of their educators.

I hope to play with some of these ideas further at the Intrepid Classroom, but I want to use this space to reflect on the reasons behind why these themes should be taught in traditional schools. I hope to create a sort of activist training school. A place where students can question the very systems they are told to worship. I would like to create a source of resources from art, to music, to web culture that helps students understand that although the mass media may try to make them believe they are powerless, there have always been people fighting for a better world, and most importantly they too can participate. Although perhaps not for much longer!
I have written in the past about my Utopian classroom, but now I want to focus on my perfect curriculum. The reoccurring themes for most of my ideas are the incorporation of Social Justice and Peace Activism into traditional curriculums. I see a series of specialized courses that deal with political, class-based issues, and artistic and philosophical themes. One such course would be an elective, probably a semester long on music as an agent of change. I hope to outline each course in depth, but for now I want to start drawing the rough sketches:

The music curriculum would study everything from sixties protest music, to the blues, to modern day singer/activists working for change. Students would not only listen to the music and examine and reflect on the lyrics, but they would also be asked to research and learn about the social problems that were the impetus of the music. As you can see there is already a Social Studies and Language Arts element to the material. They would also be asked to collaborate and create socially conscious music themselves. Using networking tools like Youtube, they would than try to promote their music to as wide an audience as possible.

I have taught a mini-music unit every year of my career, but it always seems forced, and it takes time away from the curriculum I “should” be teaching. Now that I am out of a real classroom, I hope to teach students about the power of music in a less constricting and confined environment We owe it to our students to not only study history, but learn to be a part of it.

How do you incorporate socially conscious material into your curriculum? What obstacle to you face?

Hello colleagues, peers, fellow teachers, and friends. For those of you who have been following my trials and tribulations on Twitter you know that it has been a roller coaster ride of almosts and not quite so’s. But I have finally realized that I need to get back to work. I may not have a classroom or a paying job, but I need to reconnect with students and other teachers. In short I need to teach!

I have been thinking about what role my classroom blog, Intrepid Classroom, could take during this time of involuntary sabbatical. I have been thinking about this transformation for several weeks, and I think I finally have enough structure to re-launch the site with some tangible goals and a compressible philosophy.

I hope that after visiting the site and reading the opening post of the Blog and the about page, you will use it as a resource for your students and invite them to enter the conversations at the Intrepid Classroom. I hope that this site will become an independent place for middle and high school students from around the world to come, meet, learn, teach, and share ideas. I hope to act as facilitator, social-network liaison, web 2.0 tutor, presenter, performer, observer, and organizer.

I want the site to focus on the following topics: conflict resolution, global sustainability, peace activism, music and art as agent for social change, technology as a tool for social justice, and any other topics the readers of the blog suggest.

In short, I want the site to be a place that students find interesting and entertaining, but also a place where they can challenge, not only mass media produced propaganda, but also their own entrenched culture beliefs.

Please read the introduction to the new Intrepid Classroom and share the link with as many educators and students that you know. Let’s see if we can create something special for both teachers and students. I would love to have guest contributors. People like Clarence Fischer, Clay Burell, George Mayo, Diane Cordell, and Lindsea come to mind as potential friends of the Intrepid Classroom.

If you want to get involved please leave suggestions or ideas in the comment section below.

I am reading a book called Three Cups of Tea, by David Oliver Relin about a man named Greg Mortenson, who after failing to summit K2 stumbles into a small village in Northern Pakistan called Korphe and promises to build the people of the village a school. Reading this book coupled with my friend Jason’s work with his school the Daraja Academy has got me thinking. What am I doing? What is my purpose?

The last few days have been a series of intensive soul searching journeys for me to find out the answers to these questions. While it may appear that I am being a bit melodramatic about the whole affair, I do take my life goals and plans very seriously. I have never wanted to simply live your average middle class life. Even as a kid, I imagined that I would do bigger things. I imagined that someday, someone would write books about things that I had done, or better yet I would write them myself.

While I am not shy about admitting that I have had my share of self aggrandizing feats, I still feel like my life is building. I haven’t done enough.

That is when it hit me; tonight, here in bed, as my wife lay sleeping reading about how this guy Mortenson had a huge set back in his plan, and his girl friend dumped him, I realized just how alone and miserable he must have felt in the Richmond district of San Francisco. I felt sorry for him. He was not some hero out changing the world. He was a mortal who was broken. I felt connected to him.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we needn’t change the world all at once and all alone. We can allow it to change us, back and forth, until we become something we can recognize and live with. I have been racked with guilt that I came to Doha to make money, and that being fired was the price I paid for turning my back on my true nature, but my true nature is to simply be the peace that I want to spread. The kids I interacted with here needed education and guidance just as much as the kids in Kenya or Korphe, and I was, until the plug was pulled, getting through to them.

I am a teacher. That is what I was born to do. I was put on this earth to interact with people and try to better understand each other. I prefer working with young adults, because that is the age I felt I needed someone most, eighth grade to be specific. I am realizing that I do not need a classroom to teach. I simply need to be the peace I seek here and now. Where ever I am, interacting with whomever I meet. I am not angry at myself or others for how they perceive my actions. Perhaps there is a hint of hostility in the way I see the world, and that is where I need to start the change.

I may not be building schools in Pakistan or Kenya, but I am on a path that will lead me some place worth being. Actually this very path, my journey is in itself the most amazing thing I will ever experience. And if there is no one there to write the book about it when it is done, you could say you were reading it here all along.

End note: For all the edubloggers out there, here is my question. This was originally written for my personal blog, as a way for me to sort out my thoughts and share my thoughts with the small community of people that I have built there, but I also see the value of posting it here. This is where I am having a hard time separating private from professional. Wouldn’t other teachers or perhaps parents who would read a blog post like this not benefit, from seeing this side of a teacher? I guess I will just double post till I figure it out.

Comment I just left on The Thinking Stick:

As you, and maybe some of your readers know, what you discussed in this post has been a very real experience for me. I have written on the subject a bit, but since I am exposed and looking for a new job, I am a bit reserved on how I approach the subject.

But let me try and sort some thoughts out here now:

We want, I think, as educators to teach our students to be resourceful, expressive, open, honest, members of a global community that is rapidly homogenizing and melding in terms of social norms, cultural taboos etc…This is true at least in the developed world, where access to Web 2.0 is at all time high. But then as educators, we ourselves are terrified of who and what we are.

In my case it was a picture that represented my thoughts on censorship that upset a parent, but it could have been my thoughts on social justice, politics, religion, or many other things that, apparently, I am expected to teach but not think or write about.

My point is that there will always be things that will upset a group of people when we are exposed on the web. So the questions is are we trying to use Web 2.0 and all these tools to connect people and tear down walls, or are we still trying to hide behind as many walls as we can?

I honestly feel that if an employer searches me out and sees my work on the web, from my youtube videos, to my flickr pages, to my personal and professional blogs, they should see a complete picture of the type of person I am. I am extremely proud of that person, I have been working on him for 33 years now. He is more than just a marketable teacher; he is a complete human being. Isn’t that ultimately what we are teaching our students? To be able to create themselves and be fully expressive using the Internet tools to not only better understand themselves, but also the people who cohabitate the planet on which they live.

Perhaps I am too naïve and idealistic, I have been told this before, but I am a firm believer that the point of all this technology is connection and exposure. I guess my idea of private and public is fading fast…is the world ready for that? Are our schools?

I have learned the hard way, that they are not, but with things changing as fast as they are, we have to be ready for it when it does. If we as educators are overly cautious to use the web, we cannot expect our students to use it to its full potential.

So if you have never read my work please google Jabiz Raisdana and if you are an administrator and need a teacher please get in touch.

I do now want to write about how I met Jason Doherty, or the months we spent in his hospital room while his shattered body mended from a car crash I should have been involved with, but due to my nine lives, I missed. I won’t mention how I rescued him from yet another car crash in the Mexican desert, or the many nights we sat beside fires talking, drinking, and growing.

They say that woman are better at building and maintaining friendships, because men are afraid to open their hearts. Jason Doherty is proof that this is not true, because he is one of the most important people in my life, and I am ashamed that I have allowed my own life to be the focal point of my attention. I have allowed his victories to go unnoticed for too long. Now is the time to tell the world what he is doing, and how you, as educators, can hook your wagon to his star and see where you end up. You will not be disappointed. If you believe in education and a better future please read on:

We both had an idea that we would be teachers in Mr. Tovani’s Environmental Studies class. We were students who under achieved because we knew the system the other teachers were selling was broken. We’d eventually both get through college and jump through the hoops society demands of its educators, but we knew at sixteen that the world society was selling was not the one we wanted to buy. We dreamed of bigger things. We dreamed of revolutions. We, the two of us, would wake the world up and spread the light we found everywhere we looked. We were the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…and no car accidents or Tsunamis were going to stop us.

Fast forward sixteen years, two wives, a baby, a few college degrees, a few football teams coached, trips to every continent on earth and here we are. I am some how unemployed, gagged, and bound in Doha, and my friend is ready to make our old dream come true.

While my path has led me on my own journey, one I wouldn’t trade for the anything in the world, his path is now leading him to his dream. I am sure that one day we will be sitting beneath a tree, as a fire crackles, the stars will shine like our promises come true, and we will drink tea, we will hug; our hair maybe white, and our children will be asleep, but we will have arrived together, finally, in Africa.

Jason is the person who planted the Africa seed in my body. It is because of him, I needed to go to Mozambique and teach for two years. It is because of him that I went and met my wife and start my teaching career. This year he is finally going himself.

The story of how the Daraja Academy got started and funded and ready to admit students is a long one, and one that even I am not too clear on. I will let Jason’s work tell his own story of how he and his wife single handily started a school where girls from the slums of Nairobi will cultivate a community of individuals with a sense of cultural awareness, social conscience, and environmental responsibility, all while instilling talents that will enable them to open doors to a global society.

My job is to use my network & web presence to share Jason’s dream with as many people as I can. I have inserted links to his school’s site, Facebook groups, a video below, so that everyone who reads this post will share the link with as many people as you can. Link to this post. Write your posts. Twitter it to your networks. Get the word out their and let’s get as many people as possible to get in touch with the Carr Educational Foundation and help in any way they can. Share money, volunteer to teach, send books, send your love, send karma, send, share and then share some more. This could be a great project for your students to take up and help them become involved with fund raising, raising awareness, or perhaps your school could adopt Daraja and begin corresponding once they are up and running. The possibilities are endless. once I have a job again, I will get to work more on these ideas.

In the midst of everything that is happening in the world- all the anger, the fear, and the questions I face, I see this school as some kind of an answer. Like I said, I cannot go there myself now, because my life path is headed in other directions, but I can share Jason’s message and hope that the Daraja Academy will be a success, so when it is time for our paths to cross again, I can sit under that tree with my best friend and know that, way back in high school, we were right. We will know we won. Two old men will sit together in the darkness, and we will have proven to the world that it all it takes to make things right is a bit of love and hope.

I love you Jason and I am typing these words now with tears in my eyes. Good luck. See you soon, some how, someplace.

Daraja means bridge, and you are Daraja