Bird Droppings May 12, 2025

Teaching can be successful, and it can happen at any time.

When I am home, I try to search for a sunrise almost every morning. When we go to the beach at Pawleys Island, I am always on the beach for sunrises. Even at the beach, strands of spider webbing are still hanging, connecting everything. The scientist part of me knows they are simply webs from wandering spiders the previous night out hunting, but the mystic in me sees the connections. I do see the interconnections, but many do not. As we walked, looking for shells, specifically Pawleys Island shells, my wife said she felt we were drawn to them. I jokingly said that is something I would say. I was intent on my shell-watching and taking pictures of odds and ends along the beach. Pat walks faster than I do and gets ahead of me just about every time.

I was looking at a bit of washed-up seagrass when I saw a tiny shell. I spotted my first Pawleys Island shell of the day, an extremely small orange one. The shell was so small that as I wiped off the sand, I was afraid I would lose it, so I put it into my pocket. I continued my journey observing nature, enjoying the peace and solitude of the ocean sounds, a slight breeze, and the salt smell; out of nowhere, a small girl appeared. She was perhaps a first grader. I noticed she was missing a couple of front teeth and was wearing a bright red swimsuit. “Hello,” she said, “are you looking for shells?” I told her I was taking pictures of things I found interesting. She asked me if she could take my picture hunting for shells. I said, of course, and set my phone for pictures. She stepped back, sized me up, and took a photo. I asked her if she was looking for shells, and she said her father and she were staying on the Island and looking for shells too.

So often in life, I find myself in situations where I know why I am here at this moment. I reached into my pocket for my Pawleys Island shell. I asked if she and her father had ever heard of Pawleys Island shells, and they said they had not. It is said that when you find a Pawleys Island shell, it is good luck, and if you share a Pawleys Island shell, it is good luck for the giver as well. I reached into my pocket, took out my tiny shell, and told her it was the smallest Pawleys Island shell I had ever found. It must be special. I told her she could have it. She got her shells from her dad, picked out a tiny conch shell, and gave it to me. We traded shells. I walked further down the beach and met up with Pat, and we headed back to our car. I noticed a child coming towards me from one of the walkways, and it was my little Pawleys Island shell girl. She had a huge broken conch shell in her hands and gave it to me. I try to learn as I talk to people as we walk along the beach throughout the day. So often, it is those special moments where we learn what it is to be human, and for me, that was one of those moments, and it made my day.

Back to my writing for the day, I am concerned about learning more than the word education. That is a strange statement to make coming from a teacher by trade. We have established institutions called schools, where learning is supposed to occur. Sadly, various interfering elements within the state and federal policy contradict and destroy the ability to provide learning experiences for children. Yesterday, several editorial cartoons were sent through the internet showing a group of students all connected with wires from their heads staring ahead, and one trying to climb out a window to the outside and nature; it has been around for some time, but caught my attention. The gist of the image was that education reform wants us all to be education zombies, all learning the same thing simultaneously. If we cannot reverse the decline in learning, our children will be simply pawns of whoever is or whatever is in power at the time.

“The first object of any act of learning, over and beyond the pleasure it may give, is that it should serve us in the future. Learning should not only take us somewhere; it should allow us later to go further more  easily.” Ted Sizer

I received an email a few days back, or I should respond to a Facebook post I shared with a friend. The video clip I shared many months back was directed at the Teach to the Test mentality that has taken over education due to mandated high-stakes testing by states and federal law. A recent college graduate, a young man, stated he could not get a job because his teaching method was more hands-on than what administrators sought. I used to see my son’s frustration; he was trained to teach experientially and was limited by what was on the curriculum map that day. Fortunately, he was able to move schools and counties. I used to co-teach with a physics teacher who liked to provide context for learning. One day, one of our physics classes, in getting ready to study the concepts of velocity and acceleration, did a slip-and-slide lab to take data to calculate acceleration and velocity. Seeing how physics came alive for those kids and still complies with the curriculum requirements was interesting. If I were wagering, I would say they learned.

“A vision without a task is a dream – a task without a vision is drudgery- but a task with vision can change the world.” Black Elk

“Too much emphasis has been placed on reforming schools from the outside through policies and mandates. Too little has been paid to how schools can be shaped from within.” Roland Barth

Just a few days ago, I addressed the fact that we are educating more diverse students in the United States than anywhere in the world. I borrowed from Black Elk, a Lakota Sioux Holy Man who passed away nearly sixty years ago. Black Elk believed in the power of visions. Roland Barth was a Harvard University professor at the Graduate School of Education. His book Improving Schools from Within was a best seller in 1991. His latest book, Learning by Heart, addresses the need for school reform and changes, and that they need to come from changing the culture of schools. As I read both pieces, I thought of a Sioux holy man talking about making a vision real and a renowned educator saying we must look within to elicit change. Maybe we should be listening to them and not politicians.

“Rarely do outside-of-school remedies work their way into the fabric of the schools or the teachers’ lives, and more rarely into the classrooms. Therefore, they only offer a modest hope of influencing the basic culture of the school.” Roland Barth

“Community building must become the heart of any school improvement effort.” Thomas Sergiovanni

“The best we educational planners can do is to create the conditions for teachers and students to flourish and get out of their way.” Theodore Sizer

I find continuity as I ponder the various authors I am reviewing and borrowing from today, including Barth, Sergiovanni, and Sizer, in the quotes above. These men are innovators and have made significant and influential educational suggestions nationwide. Many school systems use the concept of learning communities that Sergiovanni promotes in his writing. I know Roland Barth’s ideas are taught and re-taught in graduate schools nationwide, and teachers seldom leave college without hearing the name of Ted Sizer. What concerns me is why it can potentially change education; we seem to be in a rut and going nowhere but different. Why do we continue to know what to do to educate kids better and then not do it? I wish an answer were simple to place in writing, but I see blame as being in the school’s leadership. I see blame in school boards, state education boards, and eventually at a federal level. As the ideology leaves the classroom, it goes from being honest and meaningful to being business, and is it cost-effective? Can we afford this? Should we spend dollars on this? Somewhere, children get left out, and learning gets left by the roadside.

“To cope with a changing world, an entity must develop the capacity of shifting and changing – of developing new skills and attitudes; in short, the capability of learning.” A. DeGues, The Living Company

“The challenge of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” Marcel Proust

“You cannot have a learning organization without a shared vision…A shared vision provides a compass to keep learning on course when stress develops. The gap between vision and current reality is also a source of energy. If there were no gap, there would be no need for any action to move towards the vision. We call this gap creative tension.” Peter Senge

Dr. Peter Senge is a professor at MIT and a renowned scholar in the field of learning. His books and theories are used in management schools and education studies. The idea of a collaborative effort in learning falls back into many ideas mentioned in previous droppings dealing with Foxfire and John Dewey and the democratic classroom. Students learn more when it is relevant to them, and they have some buy-in. Proust suggests that we need a new perception rather than using the same old mythology to view education and learning. We have to develop new skills, not just use what is available. Although John Dewey’s ideas are still considered progressive at over a hundred years old, they always strike me as interesting.

“We learn best from our experience, but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important decisions. In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails. Shred visions foster risk-taking, courage, and innovation. Keeping the end in mind creates the confidence to make decisions even in moments of crisis.” Peter Senge

“You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from non-conformity, the ability to turn your back on old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesteryear for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.” Thomas Sankara, African leader

“Schools are among the very few institutions that have remained almost entirely unchanged for most of this century.” Judith Aitken

“No other organization institution faces challenges as radical as those that will transform the school.” Peter Drucker

“Today’s Schools are not Tomorrow’s Schools. That’s a fundamental misconception.”
David Lange

Authors, speakers, management consultants, professors, educational leaders, and great teachers in their own right have been outspoken for years about our schools and learning. Why do we let politicians decide what our students should be learning or how we should be evaluating these students? Why do we put arbitrary numbers on children with disabilities who can and cannot be exempt from state-mandated tests? One IQ point separates two students, one who, because they cannot pass the High School graduation tests is and receives a special education certificate of attendance and is counted as a dropout because they did not graduate, and the other by submitting a portfolio of what learning occurred in high school graduates with a legitimate high school diploma and is a graduate. One IQ point separates the two, and how they are assessed.

“The overwhelming number of teachers …are unable to name or describe a theory of learning that underlies what they do.” Alfie Kohn

“It is my approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather… I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.” Haim Ginott

“In teaching students to think, the emphasis is not on how many answers they know. Rather, the focus is on how well they behave when they don’t know.” Art Costa

I recall reading Alfie Kohn for the first time in 2001 at the suggestion of my principal, who had formed a book club. The title of the book is The Schools Our Children Deserve. As I read through these authors and quotes last night and researched for my morning wanderings, I wondered if we could ever really change the industrial complex that drives education. Can we unseat lobbyists and politicians who seek profits at the cost of our children’s learning? I wonder, as I finish up today, if we can overcome it.

“In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails. Shared visions foster risk-taking, courage, and innovation. Keeping the end in mind creates the confidence to make decisions even in moments of crisis.” Peter Senge

I started and ended with a vision. “A vision without a task is a dream – a task without a vision is drudgery- but a task with vision can change the world.” Black Elk, the great spiritual leader, spoke of his visions, and Peter Senge offered a shared vision. I was once told it took leaders with a vision to lead indeed. I wonder if we can find those people within education who care enough about children and learning to pave the way to a new understanding and realization of our educational system. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and hearts, and always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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