Semesters seem to happen in great spurts of time and energy. Time is quite different before and after them. Within the semester, focus is concentrated on each of our graduate students and their learning. Preparation hopes to create a learning place that is open and stimulating, yet structured and supportive. By November, all is created. Focus changes, much as the leaves, toward seeing the end of the semester and cheering ourselves (self and other mentors) and students on toward the finish line. Late in the semester we refine the final assignment, the Synthesis Journal, picturing reflection, packaging and closing for the students and also for us. We envision the link between the end of Fall and the beginning of Spring semester. For some, that will be a time of refreshing and refocus - a break from the intensity of TEAM. For others, it will be a time to hone skills and build a strong base.
November also starts the holiday season.
Most holidays throughout the year are at our home. We love the preparation and the events. Each has its own characteristics. Each is special because of who is with us. In many ways, preparing is much like team - different people joined together in a place. Our best chance at what we seek to create is to make an environment in which people blossom, converse, and feel at home. It is they who are the focus.
Thanksgiving, though, is different. We don't create it. We step inside it and participate in it. Thanksgiving day is one year at my sister's and the next at my niece's. This year we'll be at my niece's. The day before Thanksgiving is my family's day at a tiny soup kitchen in Harlem, run by French nuns from La Fraternite de Notre Dame. The bishop and nuns serve about 200 people each day throughout the year except for Sundays. They have tables and chairs for maybe 20 people at any one time and people stand on line outside and then a line inside. People with their food eat, chat, and leave. All know that they need to move along to let others in. How the nuns, with a few volunteers, do this every day is beyond us because we need the 5 or 6 of us working as hard as we can for six hours to pull it off. We serve the soup kitchen's Thanksgiving feast. (Thanksgiving day has the churches in the neighborhoods open for all so the people who come to the soup kitchen regularly have their Wednesday feast at the soup kitchen and another one on Thursday in one or more of the churches.) We serve turkey (donated turkeys are delivered to restaurants throughout the city who offer to cook them). The nuns deliver them a day or two in advance and then run around town picking them up in the wee hours of the morning the day we serve them. The soup kitchen has huge ovens and refrigerators and a stovetop with a tiny prep area. In front are sterno-like units on one side of a counter where people come to get their meal. So... turkey, gravy, sweet potatoes, rice, cranberry sauce, a vegetable, juice, bread, butter, and dessert. My dad is usually in charge of the juice. He gets to stand on the other side of the counter and greet everyone. My husband is usually in the back, cutting the pies for dessert and helping the bishop and nuns preparing the food to bring out to us. Serving from the huge heated trays across the counter are my sons, myself, and usually one or two Rotary scholars (we are often hosts for Rotary scholars in the city and feel this experience is special in their year in New York). Needless to say, there are dozens of little tasks that make this work with 200 people moving through our line. We greet people. Everyone has preferences - dark meat, light meat, no vegetables, etc. All are warm and appreciative.
This day is important for so many reasons. My children (ages 31 and 35) think it's the best family day of the year. My younger son takes off from work and flies into LaGuardia in time to spend the day. Although my mom doesn't participate, my dad understands that when we were growing up, we didn't drive through Harlem. Now, we park on the street and become part of the neighborhood. My dad speaks oodles of languages and loves that he can speak French to the nuns and bishop and Spanish to the neighborhood people. My husband and I marvel at the impact on us and how tiny the effort is. Our being there for one day does not really help any of the problems or issues. It does, though, allow us to step inside the space of others who are hungry and glimpse what their lives are like. It is more of a gift to us than our gift to them. It's incredibly powerful. It leaves us with images of people and thoughts about need in community.
What does this all mean? For me, November has a rhythm that's quite different from other times throughout the year. The semester is in full blast with classes, workshops, and varied meaningful experiences throughout. We begin to plan for the closing of the semester in December. We think about the workshops and their relationship to our teaching - to life experiences and our teaching, to the growth of our students and our own learning throughout. Life changes, though, abruptly on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Whatever life looked like and however rich some of our workshops, being inside the soup kitchen tells us a different story. It's a story that we haven't created and we are not poised to fix. It's a slice of life that always leaves us with myriad questions. What can help? How might one see ways for the hungry to take charge of their lives, get jobs, and make self-sustaining lives?
Thanksgiving day follows - beautiful, plentiful, and filled with chatter and warmth. The contrast is dramatic. My family and I have acknowledged to one another that we do not feel thankful that we have our Thanksgiving day, knowing that others are not as fortunate. Rather, we feel thankful that we are able to create our lives in ways to make some things happen. We are free to do so because we can support ourselves, ask questions, decide how we wish to invest our time and energy. We are grateful to have Wednesday and Thursday of Thanksgiving.
For me... Thanksgiving and TEAM are integrally related. Life and learning continually blur. That topic is for another blog... another day...
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Friday, August 24, 2007
Time/effort/energy
Students often want to know how much time they will need to devote to T.E.A.M. We use the New York State guideline of 8 hours of homework for every six credits of in-person classes. But, it's not really 8 hours of homework tacked onto someone's already busy life. It's something else.
In T.E.A.M., faculty mentors and students rethink time/effort/energy in our lives, trying to clarify our deepest and most cherished goals and value and what part of ourselves we give to them. We seek a learning world in which what's important is continually nourished with time/effort/energy in ways that loop and fold tasks into one another rather than piling them on top of one another.
Of course, if we look at the 8 hours we suggest, we have not tackled the quality and outcomes of those 8 hours. Eight hours "playing" at the computer in a graphic software program, changing shapes and colors, or eight hours conducting google search, is quite different from the kind of 8 hours we have in mind. We seek 8 hours (a combined EEV, technology, and PG & S with assignments in each area) of high quality work that either produces outcomes or sets the stage for outcomes to be produced in the future. As all students are not equal in their knowledge and skills and we do not seek to make them equal, 8 hours for one person, stretching and learning may look very different from an equally successful 8 hours for another.
And... our most engaged students usually spend far more than 8 hours. We are starting to think about "base" and "depth." If 8 hours can yield success, that, perhaps, is the base. For each step we take, though, if we offer greater depth (optionally), we better model the kind of deep, deep learning we respect and seek for some. We see this as quite different from an "optional" reading list. We see it as more and more sunk into the world we are creating together with facets that may seek greater knowledge and skills on the one hand but simultaneously build the learning place in more meaningful and transformational ways.
So... time that is not time as we might traditionally think of it, eight hours that is of varying quality, eight hours as base but offerings of more. Mostly... time/effort/energy as concepts to consider while seeking to create purposeful learning and the building of learning environments we most want to build.
In T.E.A.M., faculty mentors and students rethink time/effort/energy in our lives, trying to clarify our deepest and most cherished goals and value and what part of ourselves we give to them. We seek a learning world in which what's important is continually nourished with time/effort/energy in ways that loop and fold tasks into one another rather than piling them on top of one another.
Of course, if we look at the 8 hours we suggest, we have not tackled the quality and outcomes of those 8 hours. Eight hours "playing" at the computer in a graphic software program, changing shapes and colors, or eight hours conducting google search, is quite different from the kind of 8 hours we have in mind. We seek 8 hours (a combined EEV, technology, and PG & S with assignments in each area) of high quality work that either produces outcomes or sets the stage for outcomes to be produced in the future. As all students are not equal in their knowledge and skills and we do not seek to make them equal, 8 hours for one person, stretching and learning may look very different from an equally successful 8 hours for another.
And... our most engaged students usually spend far more than 8 hours. We are starting to think about "base" and "depth." If 8 hours can yield success, that, perhaps, is the base. For each step we take, though, if we offer greater depth (optionally), we better model the kind of deep, deep learning we respect and seek for some. We see this as quite different from an "optional" reading list. We see it as more and more sunk into the world we are creating together with facets that may seek greater knowledge and skills on the one hand but simultaneously build the learning place in more meaningful and transformational ways.
So... time that is not time as we might traditionally think of it, eight hours that is of varying quality, eight hours as base but offerings of more. Mostly... time/effort/energy as concepts to consider while seeking to create purposeful learning and the building of learning environments we most want to build.
A new year
Planning with mentors in a team teaching environment requires us all to rethink what we value and why before we create our contributions to our semester plans. This year has some new dimensions. We have four teams in all. I teach in two of them but am planning for all four. Here's how.
The East End (EE) and Half Hollow Hills (HHH) teams enter their second year in the program. The teaching teams for the EE (of which I am a member) and HHH are constructing their plans in wikis. We are sharing ideas across the EE and HHH wikis, envisioning similarities in ways we never did before. It's quite exciting. Of special note is that students in the two teams are seasoned students in the program. What we hope to accomplish and what they hope to accomplish is already grounded with the work in Year One. Now... we can build leadership into Year Two, asking each Year Two student to lead across all four teams in some ways.
The two new teams are being conceptualized together. One, Monday nights in Herricks, will have 10 team nights. The other, in the Town of Huntington, Tuesday nights, will hold 5 sessions in-person and 5 online. What the teams do, though, will be parallel for the first time. I am a mentor in Herricks but actively planning for and with the mentors in Herricks and those in the Town of Huntington.
So... we move into greater clarity and great unity across all four teams.
The East End (EE) and Half Hollow Hills (HHH) teams enter their second year in the program. The teaching teams for the EE (of which I am a member) and HHH are constructing their plans in wikis. We are sharing ideas across the EE and HHH wikis, envisioning similarities in ways we never did before. It's quite exciting. Of special note is that students in the two teams are seasoned students in the program. What we hope to accomplish and what they hope to accomplish is already grounded with the work in Year One. Now... we can build leadership into Year Two, asking each Year Two student to lead across all four teams in some ways.
The two new teams are being conceptualized together. One, Monday nights in Herricks, will have 10 team nights. The other, in the Town of Huntington, Tuesday nights, will hold 5 sessions in-person and 5 online. What the teams do, though, will be parallel for the first time. I am a mentor in Herricks but actively planning for and with the mentors in Herricks and those in the Town of Huntington.
So... we move into greater clarity and great unity across all four teams.
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