Ebullience


I was in an in-service today, and the presenters finished with a clip of a toddler learning to walk.  Of all the things I learned today, this stuck with me the most.  It reminded me of the joy of learning, which seems to foreign to schools sometimes.

I see joy in education as an ebullience.  Think of a 11 month old learning to walk.  Wobbly, almost drunk, the child manages to leverage herself up and lumber forward.  When she makes it across the room and grabs the couch for support, she breaks into this all body, screaming celebration.  Then she falls, crawls back to the start and tries again.  

What is important is the child did it herself and experienced this overwhelming sense of accomplishment such that she must scream laughter in delight.  Although an 11 month old can’t talk, she’s saying, ‘I did it!’  It is also important that what she did is nearly impossible.  Seriously?  Walking?  It took humankind thousands of years to design a robot that can sort of walk.  Walking is really complicated, but this kid figured it out in 11 months?  Even so, she fell countless times before she pulled it off.  Furthermore, an integral component of joy is self.  Learning is an individual accomplishment.  While the best learning takes a group, we each must individually learn.  So, learning must matter to the person.  I cannot experience joy if what I am doing doesn’t affect my soul.  I don’t care how many times you asked me to read Romeo and Juliet, I desperately wanted to read Rotters (I highly recommend the book!).

Walking is freedom, is independence, is the image of our parents we love so deeply, but it is also ourselves in a more efficient form.  Have you tried crawling lately?  It is painful and slow.  When we learn to walk, we learn to be a better version of ourselves.  When we learn, we are a better version of ourselves.  When we learn something incredible, who can avoid doing that fist pump of accomplishment?

I think a joyful day would be any day that I learn to be a better version of myself.  This is the difficulty of education.  How do I have a classroom of 25 students and find a way to help each one be a better version of themselves?  As an educator, I find joy when I can pull that off.  When no one is looking, I do the dance of ebullience.

To Feel Joy Again

I had a really fascinating visit to a local business the other day: Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Richard Sheridan, the CEO, is dynamic, innovative and loves sharing his company.  If you have a chance, consider scheduling a tour.  I think they are on pace to have nearly one a day.  Menlo Innovations is a cutting edge (check out all their awards on the site) software development company whose website (http://www.menloinnovations.com/)  and physical site pay specific homage to the concept of workplace joy.  Check out these four phrases directly from the site:

•Life is intended to be a joyful experience!

•Joy is central to the success of our software design and development!

•To achieve joy, everything must change!

•We can teach joy!

To paraphrase Richard, he believes in, ‘the business value of joy’.  His short monologue about the fairly harsh and unpleasant traditional working conditions--most people work 60+ hours, have little time for family, feel little reward in their work and in the end only torture the end user with frustration because the product doesn’t work well—really hit home with me.  I think in the field of education, too often teachers bring work home, have little time to develop new ideas, face the bombardment of angry parents only to find their students don’t like the work they’re doing.  The big question I was hit with was: to what degree are we torturing ourselves and our students every day?  And why?

The first answer I learned from Menlo was time.  We are torturing ourselves because we work all the time—grading, email, planning, phone, thinking.  Menlo Innovations streamlined meetings to 10 minutes and eschews any work time that detracts from actual work.   No, their heads aren’t bent to the computer all the time; they have lunch and relax.  But, like educators, they do work hard. The difference is they work at work and when work ends, they can’t work.  I know many teachers can’t accept that, but any administrator reading this will be scoffing.  That just isn’t possible!  I know.  Menlo would say we have a great reason to make changes, then.  Any industry which demands constant work from its employees isn’t getting the best from them.  Anyone out there ever felt themselves on the 'march of death' of endless, thankless work?

Another thing I learned was pairing.  The major reason people can’t work outside of work is that most of the work is done collaboratively.  It is part of the culture that each week every employee works with a partner.  There is always two people to a computer.  No one stands alone.  Now, I am not sure how this translates to education, but my first thought was to pair teachers during planning.  I have a PD day coming up and what would it look like to pair people as they develop the lesson plans?  I am not sure about how to bring collaboration to education, but I am sure that education is still a place of silos and compartmentalization.  One reason we don't feel joy is we are so alone. 

A final lesson learned was empowerment.  Richard pointed out how he’s writing a book which has forced him to be less available to his staff, which turns out to be a good thing.  He 'gets out of their way'.  A second piece to this empowerment is a very transparent work structure. To get more specifics, I again suggest you schedule a tour, but imagine visible thinking, Harvard's COT or even Nancy Atwell's workshop tools like status of the class.  The point is everyone knows not only what they are working on but also what their peers are working on. Richard connects this clarity to joy directly since ambiguity begets confusion and fear, both of which are enemies of joy and empowerment.  Finally, Richard empowers others by sharing. Hours after meeting with us he sent a thorough email of contacts and ideas. Since that email, we've connected with 5 more incredible people.  I feel energized, enriched and yes, that giddy sense of joy that I'm working on something vital, amazing and beautiful.