This is a TEDx Talk that I delivered in April of 2016 at The Country School in Madison, CT. The conference was run almost exclusively by the students of the school, who were of middle and high school age.
It's a variation of a talk that I have delivered before about the idea that teachers should be speaking less in their classrooms and expecting more from their students.
As a teacher, I admire the hell out of my colleagues. I've been teaching for almost two decades, and the vast majority of educators with whom I've worked during that time are outstanding professionals who care deeply about their students.
This does not mean that all teachers and school administrators are perfect, and sometimes they can be downright stupid.
Here are three things that educators do that need to cease immediately:
Just last week, a friend told me that her daughter - a middle schooler - was required to write a five page essay as punishment for a recent infraction.
This is backwards and asinine, and it needs to stop. It also flies in the face of all research done on this subject.
It's hard enough to get students excited about writing today. With so few teachers of writing actually engaging in the writing process in an authentic and meaningful way, writing instruction is often boiled down to a simplistic, uninspired, unrealistic, formulaic approach. Add to this the idea that writing is also a viable means of punishment, and we have all but guaranteed that students will stop all meaningful and expressive writing once they are done with school.
Writing is not punishment. Writing is a glorious means of self expression. Writing represents the ability to exist beyond the moment. It's a means by which to process thoughts and feelings on the page. It's a way to create something new and remarkable in this world.
When it is allowed to be just that, students will learn to love to write.
When you turn writing into a form of punishment, you're an idiot who doesn't understand writing. Or kids. Or education in general.
It seems like every other week, I hear some highly accomplished person in an interview or as a part of their memoir tell the story of an idiotic teacher who said they didn't have the talent to succeed in their chosen field.
"You'll never make it in the music industry."
"You just don't have the talent to compete in the literary world."
"You should think about a more reasonable career. Maybe in sales or marketing?"
A teacher has no business telling student what he or she can't do. Even if every fiber of your being says that the kid will never play the French horn in the New York Symphony or doesn't stand a chance in the world of investment banking, shut the hell up. It's not your business to squash dreams. Teachers are in the business of creating as many possibilities as possible for their students through education, inspiration, and enlightenment.
If the kid will never play the French horn professionally, let him discover that for himself.
If your struggling math student won't ever be hired by even the shadiest of investment banks, let that happen in its own time.
While we don't want students putting all their eggs in one basket, we have no business stomping on any eggs, either. It is only through incredible arrogance and ridiculous hubris that we should even begin to think that we can predict the future of a 15-year old kid.
Had you asked my high school teachers if I would ever become a novelist, storyteller, wedding DJ, business owner, or even a teacher, I suspect few would have seen any of those careers in my future.
Thankfully, none of them told me what I couldn't do. Instead, they tried to fill me with the knowledge and skills required to do whatever I damn well pleased.
Last week a high school in Pennsylvania barred a student from attending her prom because she chose to wear a tuxedo rather than a dress. The school says the student, Aniya Wolf, failed to follow a clear dress code for the prom that was laid out months in advance. “The dress code for the prom specified girls must wear formal dresses,” the school said in a statement. “It also stated that students who failed to follow the dress code would not be admitted.”
Even if that's true - and there is some evidence that this dress code was only imposed after learning that Wolf would be wearing a tuxedo - this is a bigoted, ass-backward policy that can only be described as homophobic and stupid.
Two weeks ago a North Carolina school banned transgender students from using their preferred restroom, even though the student in question had been doing so for years without incident.
Another North Carolina school system has adopted a policy allowing high school students to carry pepper spray this fall, a policy one board member said may be useful for students who encounter transgender classmates in the bathroom.
This is insanity. Schools are supposed to be places of enlightenment. They should be looking to make this world better for all students regardless of their gender or sexual preference. Instead, these school systems and others like it are standing in opposition to reform that has already been accepted by much of the country and the world.
If the White House or IBM or Disney or Apple or Ford Motor Company was hosting a black tie gala, do we think for a moment that they would bar a woman from attending the event because she chose to wear a tuxedo?
Of course not.
If a transgender person at one of these same black tie galas chose to use the restroom that matched his or her gender, do we think that President Obama or Ginni Rometty or Michael Eisner or Tim Cook or Mark Fields would require their guest to use the restroom that best matched their genitals?
Of course not.
The world is moving on and changing rapidly. We have begun to accept differences in gender identity and sexual preference at a remarkably rapid rate, but in certain corners of the world, educators are taking ass-backward stances and clinging to ancient values that only serve to marginalize students who don't quite fit their 1950's paradigm of appropriate behavior.
It's an embarrassment. It's a disgrace. It's a black eye on an otherwise noble profession. Teachers, administrators, and school boards must stop it now or otherwise be forever be remember as people who were on the wrong side of history when so many people were moving so quickly to the right side.
My former second and third grade student - now a 24 year old woman - texted me this image along a message:
I know this answer because of you.
Being a teacher, this may sound a little self serving, but if you have the chance to reach out to a former teacher and let them know how their teaching still lives inside you, please do it.
We wonder how the kids who we loved like our own for a year and then left us forever are doing. We wonder if they remember us like we remember them, and we wonder if the year we spent with them helped them to become the people they wanted to be.
We wonder more than you know.
Pick up the phone. Send an email or a text. Maybe even an old fashioned letter. It will mean the world to a teacher who you once meant the world to and probably still do.
My daughter and I pulled this book off her shelf last night, written by a former student named Maddie and given to Clara when she was born seven years ago. It's been hiding in the back between other books.
My wife taught Maddie as well. One of those rare students who was blessed with having both of us as teachers.
I just adore Maddie's inscription to Clara, and she does as well.
It is quintessential Maddie.
No one tells you when you become a teacher that former students will remain in your life long after the school year has ended, and they will continue to touch your heart in so many ways years later. It's not quite as valuable as medical insurance or a pension, but in terms of benefits, it's close.
Just over the course of the past two weeks, I've been contacted by two former students.
One of these former students decided to look me up ("It's 3:30 in the morning right now, and I randomly googled you.") and discovered that since he left my classroom, I've published novels, written musicals, and launched a storytelling career.
Back when he was in my classroom, I was still a struggling writer without a credit to my name. He was surprised to see all that I had done since he had moved on.
He is currently attending Albertus Magnus in New Haven, CT. He's studying business management and is playing on their basketball team. He's considering playing professional basketball in Europe in two years. His email was inspirational and sweet, and it made my day.
Last week the other former student - now a senior at Suffield Academy - visited my classroom to inform me that he has the lead in their school play and invited me to be in the audience on opening night. He performed in my annual Shakespearean production - King Lear that year - and credited that performance as the birth of his love for acting.
Elysha and I will be in the audience in April when he takes the stage.
Incidentally, Maddie - the author of No Socks No! - attends Eastern Connecticut State University. She's a communications major with concentrations in advertising and public relations. She's also a double minor in history and digital and art design.
No surprise. She was a remarkable student in elementary school, and she remains one today.
She graduates in May. If you have any job offers, I'd be happy to pass them on to her.
Snow day! No school!
Many of my fellow teachers surprising despise snow days, preferring to begin summer vacation as early as possible. But I've always felt it fairly presumptuous to assume you will still be alive in June.
Perhaps not one but two near-death experiences and a gun to my head and the trigger pulled have altered my view on this subject.
Maybe even clouded it, but I don't think so.
Take your days when you can get them. Don't assume anything.
On December 29, 2014, I took the stage at The Moth StorySLAM at The Bitter End in Manhattan to tell a story. The theme of the night was Rewards. I told a story about an evening of stargazing with my students that went terrible wrong.
I finished in first place.
Here a recording of the story I told that night.
You can find all of my stories on my YouTube channel.
During my current book tour, I have been asked repeatedly about my teaching philosophy - probably as a result of a story that I tell about a high school English teacher. After 17 years of teaching, I could write a book about my philosophy (and perhaps someday I will), but for now, here is a list of my most strongly held beliefs.
I watch this video from the Jimmy Kimmel Show, and it encapsulates so many of my fears for my students.
This is why I work my students so hard and insist on making every minute of the school day as productive as possible. The last thing I want is to see one of them appear in a video like this in any capacity.
I appeared on Slate's parenting podcast Mom and Dad Are Fighting this week, discussing what parents can do in the first week of school to help ensure the success of their children.
You can listen here:
There have been so many unexpected benefits to my teaching career, but none have been more surprising than the lifelong relationships that I have established with so many of my students.
I first got to know these people as seven or eight or ten year-old children, and so many of them are now adults who occupy such an important space in my life.
My wife posted this on Facebook last night about one of those former students:
“Kate, babysitter extraordinaire and former student of Matt (grade 3) and mine (grade 5) just sang a lullaby over speaker phone to Charlie who wouldn’t go to bed without hearing a song that only she knows. Can I just tell you how special it was for me to hear a kid (well, not anymore) who I taught 12 years ago when she was ten sing my little one to sleep? (The answer is: pretty damn special.) Kate, thank you for making Charlie’s and my night.”
Not every teacher chooses to forge such close ties with their former students, but I can't for the life of me understand why.
Filmmaker Kevin Smith argues that every time you are speaking to a group of people of any size, you have an obligation to be entertaining.
I could not agree more. Whether it's a staff meeting or professional development or a sales conference, you have a duty to engage and amuse your audience while transmitting the necessary information.
I think this rule can also be applied in other types of communication as well. Cleverly designed 404 pages that delight the reader and amusing road signs are two examples of opportunities to stand above the crowd and entertain your audience while also transferring the necessary information.
Here is another example of a sign that we see all the time, except in this case, it has been brilliantly written to delight its audience:
As an elementary school teacher for the last 17 years, I have learned many ways to annoy a child. Here are just a few:
For the record, I have no favorite number or color.
I have a middle name but often provide children with a false name.
And I have convinced dozens of children that unicorns were once real before laughing at their naivety.
When I entered teaching 17 years ago, I expected to the job to bring many benefits to my life:
Work that I loved.
Stable employment.
Summer vacations.
A career that afforded me the opportunity to make a real difference in the world
I taught second grade that first year. I had a class of 20 students. One of them was a little girl named Allison. She wore a purple Gap sweatshirt for most of the year. She was kind, shy, slightly under-confident, and liked to laugh.
That's her, just to my left, smiling.
When I was moved to third grade the next year, Allison was assigned to my class again. She brought that same purple sweatshirt with her, along with a little less shyness and a little more confidence.
On Sunday, that seven year-old was somehow standing beside me at her college graduation party, drinking a beer and talking to me about her upcoming trip to Europe. She's a 23 year-old woman now, and she's also in my house about once a week, babysitting my children, taking care of my pets, or stopping by to say hello. When we arrived at the party on Sunday, my children saw Allison standing in her backyard, screamed her name, and ran into her arms.
That little second grader is now my friend and a member of our family.
I had no idea that this would be one of the many benefits of teaching when I started my career.
And Allison is not the only former student in my life who has become my friend. My former students are constantly occupying spaces in my life. They attend my author talks. We chat via email and social media. They seek my advice. They visit with me after school, wandering through a classroom that looks microscopic to them today. They are my babysitters. They read the rough drafts of my novels. Two of them attended my wife's surprise birthday party earlier this year.
Five years ago, as Allison's class was preparing to graduate high school, I took the stage to introduce my class's annual Shakespearean production and was greeted by six of my students from that first class, all sitting together, waiting to watch us perform Julius Caesar, a play they had performed ten years earlier as second graders.
It was one of those moments as a teacher that I will never forget.
Job security is a wonderful thing. My summers are a treasure. The opportunity to do a job I love and that brings real difference to the world is more than anyone could ask for from a career.
But the friendships that I have developed with former students like Allison are an unexpected blessing that mean as much to me as any other benefit from teaching.
Never, ever ask a woman if she is pregnant.
Old people look weird but have lots and lots of good stuff to say.
“I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I won’t do that again,” is always the best first response to any trouble you may be in.
The people who make their dreams come true are the people who work the hardest. Talent means little.
Good listeners are the most beloved people on the planet.
Fight with your feet. If someone hits you, run. You never know what that person might have in his or her pocket.
Never, ever download a videogame on your mobile phone.
Most people settle for a career rather than chasing their passion and end up living lives of quiet desperation. Promise yourself that you won’t let this happen to you.
Remember that almost every disaster will be meaningless in a year. Maybe a week.
The unexpected thank you note is the best kind of thank you note.
The weird ones are the interesting ones.
Befriend people who are smarter than you.
Make sure that your bathing suit is securely fastened to your body before jumping off a diving board.
You care about what you look like. No one else does. Truly.
Wear deodorant everyday.
Always record video with your mobile phone in the horizontal position.
Never, ever tell a person who asks you how to spell a word to look it up in the dictionary. There is no stupider way to find the spelling of a word.
Never, ever allow a person to sit alone in the cafeteria at lunch.
Don’t be “too cool” to sing, dance, or participate in gym class.
If you learn to speak extemporaneously to an audience, you will have a skill that almost every other person on the planet does not.
Shakespeare isn’t as hard as people want you to believe.
If you want something, fight for it in writing.
Always help your family with dinner. Cook, set the table, or clean up afterwards. Work for your food.
Winners arrive on time. Losers are always unexpectedly stuck in traffic.
Any chore that takes two minutes or less should be done immediately. Dishes in the sink should never be a thing.
The single greatest thing you can do to guarantee your future success is to read a lot. Read more than everyone else.
Don’t ever expect life to be fair.
Complain less than the people around you. If possible, don’t complain at all.
Nothing good ever comes from watching reality television.
Drop mean friends instantly. There are too many people in this world to waste your time with a selfish jerk face.
Visit your former teachers often.
The most common response to a piece I wrote last month entitled 12 Things Teachers Think But Can’t Always Say to Parents was a suggested addition to the list. It was phrased in many ways, oftentimes sarcastically, and it generally went something like this:
Your child is not as gifted as you think he or she is.
There was a reason I left this particular item off my list:
It’s stupid. It’s shortsighted and narrow minded. It’s unproductive. It’s adversarial. It’s not true.
This is not to say that I haven’t heard this sentiment expressed many times in my 17 years as a teacher. But whenever I hear a teacher express this idea, I push back immediately, and I push back hard, for three reasons.
1. Parents are supposed to think that their child is gifted.
It’s only natural for them to think more highly of their child than the rest of the world does. Their child is the most important thing in their life. They will invest more time, money, and energy into their child than anyone or anything before or after. It makes sense for them to believe that the person who they love the most in the world is gifted in some way.
And we all deserve to have someone in our lives who believes in us above all others. It should be our parents. They should be our champions. To think that parents should feel differently is short sighted and stupid.
2. Wouldn’t it be a better world if every teacher thought like parents and assumed that every student in their class was gifted in some way?
I’ve taught about 350 students in my 17 years as a teacher, and I have yet to meet a kid who I didn’t believe was gifted in one way or another.
In fact, some of my most accomplished students were the ones for whom learning came the hardest. Their gift was not intellect but effort - a willingness to do whatever it took to succeed.
Give me a student gifted in effort over a student gifted in intellect any day.
I assume that every one of my students is gifted, and this assumption has served me well. When a teacher sets remarkably high expectations and demands more from his students than ever before, students perform better. The research on this is irrefutable.
Yet history is littered with presumptuous, ignorant, and arrogant educators who assumed that their students wouldn’t amount to much and were later proven wrong.
Albert Einstein. Helen Keller. Robert Strenberg. Thomas Edison. Louis Pasteur. Enrico Caruso. Ludwig Beethoven. Leo Tolstoy. Louisa May Alcott.
Many more. Too numerous to count. Myself included.
Each of these men and women were told by teachers that they were hopeless, half-witted, and doomed to a lives of mediocrity.
It turns out that it was the teachers who were hopeless, half-witted, and mediocre.
As a teacher, why not err on the side of gifted? Why not assume the best? Expect the best. Demand the best. Give students the chance to shine by assuming that they can and will shine.
3. Why promote an adversarial relationship with parents?
If a parent thinks that their child is gifted, and you – for whatever reason – disagree, why not find some middle ground?
Yes, it’s entirely possible that your child is gifted, and if he begins working to his fullest potential, we may start to see more evidence of that. Let’s find a way to make that happen.
There’s no reason to quash a parent’s hopes and dreams for their child. The teacher-parent relationship is one of the best tools available in my teaching arsenal. When it is strong and trusting, learning increases. Behavior improves. But that relationship only exists because I understand how parents feel about their children, and I embrace those feelings.
Yes, your child is gifted. I’m not sure about the scope of that giftedness, but let’s get your child working as hard as possible and find out together.
That strikes me as a more productive and respectful position than the smarmy “You’re child isn’t as gifted as you think” response that so many teachers who responded to my initial piece seemed to default to.
Every child in my classroom is someone else’s whole world. I try to remember this at all times. When I do, it’s never too hard to see every child in my classroom as gifted in some way.
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Patrick Modiano, who had this to say about the writing process during his acceptance speech:
Writing is a strange and solitary activity. It is a little like driving a car at night, in winter, on ice, with zero visibility. You have no choice, you cannot go into reverse, you must keep going forward while telling yourself that all will be well when the road becomes more stable and the fog lifts.
Similarly, here are some other comments on the writing process from a variety of accomplished and respected authors:
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.
~E. L. Doctorow
Start before you’re ready. ~Steven Pressfield
It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
~ William Faulkner
There are hundreds more like this.
Why do I bring this up?
In hopes that all of the teachers who require students to complete graphic organizers or planning sheets or move little pencils across bulletin board displays of the writing process or force their students to work on one piece at a time or assign their students specific topics for their writing assignments will knock it off and learn to write themselves instead of subjecting their students to their bizarre, inaccurate, nonproductive, and likely damaging perceptions of the writing process.
This is not to say that organization and planning should never be used when writing. About half the writers of the world plan in some way. Mystery, historical fiction, and many nonfiction writers plan their stories with great detail before they begin writing, but not all, and even when they plan, this process is often as amorphous and convoluted as the writing process itself. Rarely does it fit into little boxes and pocket charts.
If you are teaching writing but not writing yourself on a regular basis, you are probably – no, definitely – doing more harm than good. Your ignorance of the writing process – coupled with the way you teach it – is turning out ineffective, uninspired, under confident writers.
You have made the ability to write well and love writing a rare commodity. You have made people like me more singular and valuable than we should be.
The writing process is not some finely delineated series of steps. It is not a codified system of applying words to the page. It does not adhere to structure or schedule or graphic representation. It is none of these things.
If you teach writing to students of any age, my advice is simple:
Write.
Write. Write. Write. Learn about the process that you are teaching instead of making bizarre and wildly inaccurate assumptions about it or replicating the terrible instruction that you received long ago that never actually turned you into someone who loves to write or you would already be writing and wouldn’t be forcing students to do such ridiculous things.
Just write.
See how often you use a graphic organizer.
See how much you appreciate being assigned a specific topic.
See how productive you think it is moving a little paper pencil across a bulletin board from one facet of the writing process to another.
See how much you value the notion of prewriting.
See how un-delineated things like writing and revising and editing are. See how amorphous and undefined the writing process is, and how stupid stupid stupid it is to force students to work on one of these parts of the writing process and not another.
Please. Just write.
Either that or your choice is simple:
Stop teaching writing altogether. You’re doing more harm than good. Just let your students write, absent any instruction or interruption. Sit at the back of the classroom and read. Or eat a sandwich. Or take a nap.
Your students have a far greater chance of leaving your classroom loving to write than if you open your uninformed mouth and do all the ridiculous things that non-writers think belong in the instruction of writing.
I’m hired from time to time to deliver talks and teach workshops on a variety of topics. I’ve delivered inspirational speeches. Commencement addresses. I’ve hosted conferences and story slams. I’ve taught workshops on storytelling, teaching, writing, personal productivity, and more. And while I’m hardly an expert on anything in particular, I’ve always felt that if given the time, I can be effective on almost any topic.
The toughest talk I ever delivered was the inspirational address at the end of a policy conference on human trafficking.
It turned out well, but I was not without some trepidation.
Last night, I dreamt that I had arrived at a weekend retreat, thinking that I would be speaking about the effective use of storytelling in the classroom.
Instead, I discovered that I had been mistakenly assigned a six hour workshop entitled:
‘The Joyful and Effective Use of Condoms in the Latter Years of Life”
Rather than panicking or attempting to correct the mistake, I spent the rest of the dream planning my presentation, finding ways to fill all six hours of the scheduled workshop with informative, entertaining, and persuasive material about condom use in the latter years.
And by the end of the dream, it was done. Ready to go. And it was good.
I’m a little disappointed that I won’t ever be able to put my plan into action.
Unless, of course, you are a conference organizer and think ‘The Joyful and Effective Use of Condoms in the Latter Years of Life” would be a compelling offering.
If that’s the case, call me. I’m ready to go.
For the past five years, I have offered a challenge to my fifth grade students:
Write something that makes me cry.
The contest was born from Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog, a book I once read to my students but no longer do because I always get weepy at the end.
There is nothing wrong with crying. There’s nothing wrong with crying in response to something you read. There’s nothing wrong with crying in response to something you have read many times before.
But crying in front of two dozen merciless fifth graders?
Not good.
Rather than reading Love That Dog, I’ve challenged students to write something that will make me cry in the same way Sharon Creech’s story makes me cry.
Here is how the contest works:
If you write a piece for the contest, I will read it aloud to the class while the writer records my reading on video. If I cry or get weepy in any way during the reading, I agree to post the recording of the reading to YouTube with a caption of the student’s choice.
For five years, dozens of students have tried. All have failed.
Until now.
Here is a recording of me, reading Julia’s piece aloud. Unlike previous contestants, Julia decided to write memoir rather than fiction. Clever girl. And in my defense, Julia begins weeping in the middle of my reading, which may or may not have contributed to my tears as well.
Regardless, I got weepy, so Julia wins. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, so she deserves the glory that comes with her victory. Enjoy.
Parent-teacher conferences begin for me this week. I will sit down with parents and students and discuss academic progress, effort, behavior, and the students’ prospective futures in middle school and beyond.
I like parent-teacher conferences. I have excellent relationships with the vast majority of my parents over the years, and in some ways, the parents of my former students once saved my career.
Nevertheless, if I could, this is what I wish I could say to parents during my upcoming parent-teacher conferences. While these 12 things pertain specifically to me, I strongly suspect that they will also pertain to most teachers as well.
_____________________________
1. I love your child just a notch below my own children. Truly. And oddly, that love kicks in almost immediately, just like it did with my kids.
2. I will miss your child for the rest of my life. Even if your child was incredibly difficult and made my days long and exhausting at times.
3. My primary goal as a teacher is to make my students and the parents of my students happy with my performance. Students and parents are both my customers and my bosses (though I’d never let my students know this). If you are happy, then my administrators will also be satisfied with my job performance. If they are not, something is wrong with my administrators, and their opinions will matter very little to me.
4. You are so very wrong if you view our relationship as adversarial in any way.
5. When I ask you to call me by my first name, it’s because I want to have the kind of relationship with you that requires first names. There is no need for artificial barriers in our relationship. We are two adults who both love your child. Why would we not be on a first name basis?
6. Some of my closest friends (and the godparents of my children) are the parents of former students. These relationships developed because we treated each other as equal partners in their child’s education. If you and I are doing our jobs well, we should be friendly, if not actual friends, by the end of the school year.
7. There is nothing wrong with questioning my decision. I only ask that you don’t question my intent. Know that I am always trying to do my best on behalf of your child, and that despite my best intentions, mistakes will be made.
8. If I have done something that disappoints or upsets you, always come to me first. You can’t imagine how hurt I am when I hear about your feelings secondhand, either from an administrator or (even worse) through the parent, teacher, or student rumor mill.
9. The single greatest lesson that I have learned in my 16 years of teaching is the importance of follow through. Always do what you say you will do, and never make a threat or a promise that you cannot make happen. This is given me a hard earned reputation with students and has allowed me to be as successful as I have been. It’s a lesson I have brought into parenting, and it also serves me (an my children) well. It’s the one parenting piece of advice that I pass onto you.
10. Please know that both legally and ethically, there are times when I want to say something or agree with you but cannot for a multitude of reasons, usually pertaining to the privacy of another student. It’s frustrating for me, and I’m sure it is for you, but it’s also my professional responsibility.
11. A lower-than-desired grade on a report card is only my honest assessment of your child’s performance and not an indictment of your parenting or your child’s potential. It’s probably just an indicator that there is room for improvement.
12. I will wonder (and worry) about your child’s future for the rest of my life.
