What Happened to the Bloom on that Rose?

One of the first things I train my students to do is to not just raise their hand and call out, "I don't understand." My response to that is always, "What is it that you don't understand?" They are expected to think through and formulate a question. "Why does it equal 3?" for example. That's a question that can be answered and it's not one that's beyond the ability of a middle-schooler to ask.

It's a mindset of who's primarily responsible for a child's education and what are the goals of a school. Clearly, the ultimate responsibility is with the child. The teacher is there to facilitate and to help the student learn to learn. Obviously, more is expected of a 12th grader than a 7th grader, but the earlier good expectations and goals are established, the more sense the whole process makes to the students when they're required to learn new skills. That's why, when students ask the old "what I am I ever going to need this for?" question, I often respond "Nothing, but your life will be better in many ways if you understand math."

So we're in the second week in the new school and people are kind of settling in. This is a process that seems to repeat for people at various points in their life. A major change takes place and is met with some level of giddiness and dread and optimism and curiosity and adrenaline. Then there's a stage where information begins to overtake infatuation and people begin to make adjustments. Many of us have had experiences like this with personal relationships and we're in that stage here at the new school.

The most obvious example is the behavior of the seniors. In the old building, there was a senior lounge of sorts. Some of the lockers were in there and there were a couple of couches where the students often lounged in inappropriate proximity to each other. There's nothing like that in the new building. So the seniors appropriated this odd area underneath two crossing staircases and turned it into a lounge. The administration keeps threatening to take it away, but so far it's still there.

On a less picturesque basis, there are all sorts of petty annoyances here. They really are petty, so we all overlooked them for the first week and eventually they'll either be taken care of or we'll internalize them and won't notice anymore. But for the moment, the lack of copiers and available computers and the transsoundancy (? whatever the sound version of transparency is) of the walls in the Athletic Building and the tightness of some of the classrooms are getting on people's (students and teachers alike) nerves.

This brings me back to my point about how people respond to major change. Permanent infatuation is not an option. The only way for a new relationship to endure is if you want it to. As you gather information, there are always plenty of reasons to reject and turn away, but if you want to make something succeed, you can learn to sort out what's important and what's not, to formulate questions and seek solutions rather than complaining, and to keep your ultimate goals in mind. The new school building isn't perfect, but nothing is. If we keep our minds on the ultimate goal of creating a first class educational institution, a lot of the annoyances become just background noise. I make it a point, especially with the students, to truly listen to their concerns, to empathize with them, but to never be negative about the way things are and where we're headed.