Beyond the Walls

To give readers a sense of the work I do, which is indeed a radical departure from the supports and confines of traditional education, I am beginning this blog with a reflection I wrote late last spring, as I began the final stretch of my second year with the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences new outreach program, Threshold. A version of the piece below will be published in the Maine Journal of Education, as part of a collaborative effort with our program's founder, Emanuel Pariser.

Meet Them Where They Are

The diverse and beautiful women of Shepard Fairey’s “We the People” series gazed down from 24” x 36” vellum posters above the upper beadboard of my classroom walls. I had borrowed the custodian’s 10 foot stepladder to mount them up there, between the enormous vaulted windows--a graphic punch of red, white, and blue against the pale sage walls. The work of my students was on revolving display below: bright oil pastel self-portraits pinned to cork boards along with illustrations of whimsical beasts from the artificial selection game; raku pots with geometric patterns of iridescent glaze and pit-fired river clay totems shared a shelf with a bow drill from our archaeology intensive unit. The ill-fated tots of Gorey’s alphabet, clipped from an 18-month calendar, were arrayed above three giant whiteboard panels that dominated the front wall. Shields bearing individual coats of arms devised by my advisory group overlooked the long expanse of our conference table (actually six of my eight 4’ by 8’ tables arranged together so my classes sat facing each other and I could circumnavigate with ease). Christmas cactuses, jade plants, and plectranthus soaked up light and brightened the wide window sills, and an ancient, enormous snake plant reached its sword-like leaves toward the high ceiling. Our collective learning contract, the needs and expectations we compiled together at the start of each school year, occupied a prominent place above the bank of cubic shelves.

Every teacher I know works intentionally to create a space for learning, arranging elements of the physical environment to facilitate social interaction and spur curiosity. If there is disorder, it is usually the fertile chaos of production, the tumult of ideas and materials that marks the messy process of exploration and creation. And I always tried to showcase the products of my kids creativity and labor, both as collective inspiration and as a celebration of talent and accomplishment. I did not realize the power in this ability to curate the learning environment until it was gone. When I helped launch the Threshold program at Maine Academy of Natural Sciences last year, I left my classroom behind, venturing out into students’ homes and communities to meet them where they are, literally and figuratively.

Students arrive at our program for a wide variety of reasons: some are dealing with upheaval and dysfunction in their home lives that fueled chronic truancy and disconnection from traditional education; some are pregnant or parenting; many have developed severe anxiety, and their struggle to navigate the social landscapes of peer conflict and school pressures has led to profound withdrawal; others have been derailed by family demands and economic realities that force them to prioritize work or childcare responsibilities at the expense of education. Although I have reached out to families for background information and to iron out logistics, I never know what maelstrom or isolation chamber might await when I knock on a door for my first home visit. I could step into a darkened trailer, permeated with cigarette smoke and silent but for the ever-present din of daytime television, or a cramped apartment with a cacophony of barking dogs and a shrieking toddler with a full diaper and a dirty fistful of gummy worms. 

When you work with students in their homes, you see what the institutional structure of school obscures. The physical chaos and clutter often leaves little room to work, and distractions of every sort claim attention. The internal stressors that students carry with them when they walk into our classrooms are external and readily apparent. Helping kids carve out space and working with families to create accommodations for learning in homes driven by other needs and priorities requires creativity and persistence. I move furniture, donate or requisition reading lights, help establish internet access, teach students to use digital and physical tools for planning and tracking progress. If their homes are too impracticable, I try to help them find spaces and support in their communities, coordinating with public libraries, after school programs, or Adult Ed. We work cooperatively, developing organizational strategies and goals that are relevant and possible for my students to implement. 

Along with the evidence of social-emotional obstacles and challenges to organizing space and time, I am immediately looking for opportunities and connections, signs of my students’ skills and interests. I note the logging equipment, stripped down truck carcases, and partially-rebuilt dirt bikes spilling out of sheds and workshops along a driveway. I look at the types of vegetables and flowers arranged in raised beds outside a ramshackle ranch-style home, or bird feeders, or fishing gear. Inside, I habitually scan for books and magazines (in anyone’s home, actually, not just on the job), but I also look for evidence of other entertainment-- movies or video games, music posters, a 12 gauge pump shotgun leaned in a corner awaiting bird season. And a newborn, toddler, or unexpected pregnancy might be exhausting and overwhelming for a young parent, but there are few more fascinating and powerful incentives for learning and growth. I am scanning for starting points. 

During our first session with each student, we conduct an interview that covers many aspects of their learning and personal experiences, preferences, difficulties, fears and dreams. We try to identify and help them unearth their strengths as a learner, their goals and interests, from mechanics, cooking, and cosmetology to community activism, veterinary science, or horticulture. I use these conversations as a launch pad for interdisciplinary projects that draw on the resources they have and activities they are already engaged with: building ramps and producing instructional videos on learning and executing BMX tricks; planting and maintaining a kitchen garden to promote better nutrition; developing a stencil design portfolio to pursue an internship at a local tattoo studio; seeking certification as an arborist and documenting actual job experience and training, from safety gear and knots to climbing techniques and saw work. Kids are conditioned to view many of the things they are passionate about as extraneous or even antithetical to school. One immense strength of our already experiential and project-based curriculum is the ability to build learning experiences around individual interests and abilities that will allow students to demonstrate progress in diverse content areas and meet learning targets across the curriculum. This capacity to tailor projects, improvising as need and opportunity arise, is amplified in Threshold’s one-on-one sessions.

The ability to negotiate the teacher/student relationship on our own terms is likewise both difficult and liberating. The enervating, culturally-constructed dynamic of antipathy between teachers pushing for compliance and resistant students soon evaporates. The initial awkwardness of a stranger--a “teacher”-- in the home soon wears off, and the ‘performance’ of school roles, of vested authority and delinquent rebellion, becomes quite irrelevant. Deflection and disruption calculated to establish “street cred” with peers or avoid the humiliation of not knowing the answer are pointless. As a teacher, this new landscape requires intensive, honest reflection. You can’t hand things off or compartmentalize, focusing solely on your content area or even the sphere of academic development and “intellectual growth” generally. Sometimes this means a steep learning curve as I prepare support and materials in unfamiliar academic territory. Sometimes it means going with a student to renew MaineCare and apply for TANF/SNAP benefits, or searching job listings and building a resume, or developing a meal plan for the week and taking them grocery shopping. Without the expectations of the learning community and the boundaries that are created by school norms, you have to forge your own “social contract” with students. They need to know that you will invest in them, advocate for them, and support them, but also hold them to account and help them become active agents in their own learning.

While the unique difficulties and opportunities of a program like Threshold are not always applicable or practical in many classroom situations or school settings, they underscore the need for concerted mindfulness of the realities our students face. Trauma--both acute, situational stress and the slow-motion, incessant trauma of poverty that marks many students’ lives--is not confined to those so profoundly alienated from the education system that they have essential withdrawn or stumbled on alternatives like our program. There is much talk about “trauma-informed schools” and “ACES,” but little support for recognizing and remediating the level of need we encounter. It can feel totally overwhelming, and it is often simply not possible to provide solutions for the underlying problems. But we can absolutely work to see beyond a child’s frustration or withdrawal, to extend patience and empathy, to give them space and ask questions that help uncover the function of behavior. We can help students learn to identify and build on skills, assets, and motivation by making their learning experiences serve their real needs and interests. We can learn to look and work through many of the barriers that we have erected, and those that our students have constructed for themselves.