I wanted to write a deep, profound, meaningful intro for the next video, but I think Severin Suzuki’s words say it all. I have also embedded this clip on the Ning, so feel free to comment in either place. I encourage you to share the video widely with as many people as you can, and have whoever you send it to come and join our conversation about it here at Intrepid Classroom. I am curious what you think. Sixteen years have gone by, and not only have things not gotten any better, they have gotten worse.

The entire speech can be found here. Some questions to entertain:

What is our next immediate action?
What are the reasons why nothing has changed?
What can we do about that?
Is she just an idealistic child? Is it that simple?

Please write, discuss, share ideas… I challenge you, please, make your actions reflect your words.

Salutations, memorials, bromides: let us commence.

I want to talk about love — not romance, not love l-u-v.
I want to talk about a particular kind of love, this love: classroom teaching.

I have my posse of gaily clad classroom teachers behind me.

They like to be called college professors.
And we can’t all work for the government.

We gather together because of classroom teaching.
We have shown you our love in our work in the classroom.

Classroom teaching is a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event.
It is not built on equipment or the past.
It is not concerned about the future.
It is in existence to go out of existence.
It happens and then it vanishes.
Classroom teaching is our gift.
It’s us; it’s this.

We bring nothing into the classroom — perhaps a text or a specimen. We carry ourselves, and whatever we have to offer you is stored within our bodies. You bring nothing into the classroom — some gum, maybe a piece of paper and a pencil: nothing but yourselves, your breath, your bodies.

Classroom teaching produces nothing. At the end of a class, we all get up and walk out. It’s as if we were never there. There’s nothing to point to, no monument, no document of our existence together.

Classroom teaching expects nothing. There is no pecuniary relationship between teachers and students. Money changes hands, and people work very hard to keep it in circulation, but we have all agreed that it should not happen in the classroom. And there is no financial incentive structure built into classroom teaching because we get paid the same whether you learn anything or not.

Classroom teaching withholds nothing. I say to my young students every year, “I know how to add two numbers, but I’m not going to tell you.” And they laugh and shout, “No!” That’s so absurd, so unthinkable. What do I have that I would not give to you?

Bringing nothing, producing nothing, expecting nothing, withholding nothing –
what does that remind you of?
Is this a bizarre occurrence that will go into The Journal of Irreproducible Results?
Or is it something that happens every day, all the time, all over the world,
and is based not on gain and fame, but on love.

There are those who say that classroom teaching is doomed and that by the time one of you addresses the class of 2033, there will be a museum of classroom teaching.

Ever since the invention of wedge-shaped writing on a clay tablet, classroom teaching has been obsolete. It’s been comical. Why don’t we just write the assignments and algorithms on a clay tablet, hang it up on the wall, and let the students come who will to teach themselves from our documents?

Why, since the creation of writing with a pen on a piece of paper, do we still bother to have schools?

Why, since the invention of movable metal type, don’t we all just go to the library?

Why do we have to have class? Why do we need teachers?

Why, since the advent of the microchip, don’t we all stay home in our pajamas and hit send?

Technology is nipping at the heels of classroom teaching, but I perceive no threat.
How could something false replace something true?
How could a substitute, a proxy, step in for something real and alive?
How could the virtual nudge out the actual?

The other great threat to classroom teaching is the rush to data — data-driven education.
We must measure everything — percentages, charts, tables.

I’m not entirely opposed to this.
If data-driven education were a pie graph, I would have a piece.

But I was not educated and did not become a teacher to produce data.

I love the classroom.
I loved it as a student, and I love it as a teacher.
I can name every teacher I ever had:
Mrs. Mulshanok, Miss Williams, Mrs. Clark, Miss Bogan, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Muys, Mrs. Parker, Mr. Eldridge, Miss Bush — and that’s just through sixth grade.
I could go on, I promise.

I loved coming to class: the chairs, the windows, unzipping my book bag.
And I loved my teachers.
There was content, I suppose, but that’s not what I remember.
I remember my teachers.
I remember being in the room,
and no data and no bar graph will be assembled to replace that, or even to capture it.

This week my students worked on dividing a pizza between two people, and they realized that if you make the line down the center of the pizza the two sides will be equal. After much trial and error, they came to this conclusion on their own, and I welcome you to try it. I think it’s really going to take off, and let this be where it begins.

When they take a standardized test, they will be able to fill in the bubble next to the pizza that is cut exactly in half. Do they know that will be the correct answer? Yes. But I don’t care that much. What I care about is how they got there, how they figured it out for themselves.

This skinny little high school senior got herself into Smith College by writing an essay about Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s theme, “The journey, not the arrival, matters.” It worked for me.

Standardized tests measure the arrival, but they have nothing to say about the journey, about having wonderful ideas. Do you know it/do you not know it is second, and how do you know it, and who are you, is first.

The only way this knowledge grows inside a student is with a teacher, a classroom teacher. Of course, my students will insist they did it themselves, and I don’t try to disabuse them of that.

But the work you graduates have done was in the classroom with your teachers.
That’s the miracle of today.
Why don’t we talk about it?
Because it doesn’t show up.
There’s not a bar graph for classroom teaching. There’s no data for classroom teaching, and yet it persists this year and the next year and the year after that.

Telling tens of thousands of people what to do is not teaching, it’s shouting, and there’s a lot of that going around.

Showing somebody how to do something exactly the way you’ve always done it is not teaching, it’s training. And there’s plenty of that, too.

But the reality that is neither shouting nor training is classroom teaching.
Nobody can touch it because nobody can point to it.
You have it forever.
When it grows inside you, it’s doing its work.

We can disappear.
We’ll never see you again, probably.
The chairs will be folded.
It will be as if we were never here.
There will be nothing we can count after today.
But not everything that counts can be counted.
Not everything that matters can be put into a pie chart.

The Board of Trustees has set a very great challenge for itself:
to educate us all for lives of distinction.
You are never going to be able to make a bar graph out of that.
That is immeasurable, and that’s what makes it so real.
I admonish you — because that’s my job — to think about the things that float away:
your love for your friends,
the smell of the lilacs,
the feeling your families have on this day.
You will have nothing to take with you.
The diploma you receive will be someone else’s.

Everything meaningful about this moment, and these four years,
will be meaningful inside you, not outside you.

I’ve been a classroom teacher for sixteen years–as long as you have been in the classroom. We started the same year. And I hope to go on for fourteen more years.
That will make thirty, and I’ll be done.

At the end of that time, someone will bring me a box, and I will put in it a ceramic apple somebody gave me thinking it would be symbolic somehow. I will have nothing, and that will be proof of the meaning of my work.

If you can point to something, you might lose it, or you might break it, or someone might take it from you. As long as you store it inside yourself, it’s not going anywhere — or it’s going everywhere with you.

This day is a day of love.
It’s a day of your family’s love for you,
your love for each other and your teachers,
and your teachers’ love for you.

In time, the bar graphs may tumble,
the clay tablets may crumble.
They’re only made of clay.
But our love
is here to stay.

Thank you.

Please pass it on to wherever it needs to go.

Now did you want to see me broken,
bowed head and lowered eyes,
shoulders fallen down like teardrops,
weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my confidence upset you?
Don’t you take it awful hard cause I walk,
like I’ve got a diamond mine breakin’ up in my front yard.

So you may shoot me with your words,
you may cut me with your eyes,
and I’ll rise – I’ll rise – I’ll rise – rise – rise.
Out of the shacks of history’s shame,
up from a past rooted in pain,
and I’ll rise – I’ll rise – I’ll rise – rise – rise

I remember the day I first heard Ben Harper. It was sometime in the early nineties. I was young and falling in and out of love. I was on a porch in San Francisco, and the day before I had told my girlfriend at the time that I just wanted to be friends. She was due to come and talk. I wasn’t sure about what or why, but I had agreed. The sun was getting ready to set, and the fog waited in the Richmond to be unleashed.

I share this story with you, because as writers I think it is important to remember that all of our writing no matter how structured it may appear is anchored in real life experiences, and connecting to those memories is one of the most important aspects of writing. Back to the story…

She arrived. Broken. Smiling. I offered her something to drink. We sat on the porch. She had been crying. I have some songs to play for you she said. I have a new favorite artist she said. You will love him she said. I hated that she knew me so well. It made it harder to make the break. Before I knew it, I was heairng the basic three-chord progression of the song Walk Away by Ben Harper. You can hear the song on the Ning.

The words floated from the speakers and disappeared over the edge of the porch:

Oh no- here comes that sun again.
And (that) means another day without you my friend.
And it hurts me to look into the mirror at myself.
And it hurts even more to have to be with somebody else.

And it’s so hard to do and so easy to say.
But sometimes – sometimes,
you just have to walk away – walk away.

The connection I made to that song on that late afternoon was so strong that even as I type these words years later, I can feel the same tears welling up in my eyes. We sat listening to the entire album- Welcome To The Cruel World. The girl and I remained friends. I was just invited to her wedding this August. But it was the music that helped solidify that day in my memory.

My admiration and love of Ben Harper was born that day years ago, but his music has been a constant source of inspiration and comfort to me throughout the years. We chose his song Forever as our wedding song, and whenever I am in need of honest, truthful, soulful, spiritual music it is to Harper I turn. He is a true artist in the sense that he is more than a musician. He is an activist, a father, and a beautiful human being. These characteristics shine through the words of his song and can be seen in his amazing live performances. I have been lucky enough to see Harper live on several occasions and each show is a carnival of soul, blues, rock and roll, and folk. He blends his political anthems with a tender grace reserved for vespers and lullabies.

I am sharing Ben Harper with this class because I want to show that musicians and artists need not be labeled as merely political. Harper is not a political artist; he is simply a human being aware of the state of the world; he is a man in touch with his spiritual need to bring peace to those he touches with his art. Whether through love or protest songs, he is a man of action and style.

He may not be on top forty lists, but Harper is a spokesman for members of a generation looking for something more than blind consumerism and greed. He stands for peace, love, and the assembling of the human family. I encourage readers of this blog to explore his website and more importantly listen to his music. Watch him on Youtube or at his site see how his work connects with you.

Where to start? His website allows you to stream many of his songs. His album Fight For Your Mind is a great place to start. As always there is his wikipedia page. Here are some song titles to explore:

Better Way
With My Own Two Hands
Oppression
Excuse Me Mr.
Black Rain

Let me know what you think! Please upload your favorites on your Ning pages! Write a post about how his music affects you.

Take your face out of your hands
And clear your eyes
You have a right to your dreams
And don’t be denied

I believe in a better way

First, I have a shikayat, a complaint against anyone reading this. Currently only two people are commenting on this blog. I put a lot of work but I guess it’s going to waste. The amazing two people I’m talking about are Mr.R and Julia. Thank you both. I would probably give up if it wasn’t for you. So those of you reading comment and you two amazing people keep on commenting and please send my blog link to anyone you know. Why? Well I don’t are if they think it’s a blog by a wired girl who has an average life. Even if they think so I don’t care just get them to mention that they came; by comment.

This is for you Leila:

Let me start by saying I feel your pain. As a much younger man or was it last week, I felt the pain of not being noticed. I poured my heart out into the world and realized the world didn’t notice, and if it did detect my presence it didn’t seem to care. I feel writing in general and blogging in particular is about communicating and connecting, and it can be very difficult to continually participate in a one-way conversation with what often feels like an abyss. Here is my advice:

We write because we have no choice. It may take some time for you to realize you are a writer; I hope you realize that most people never realize it. Be patient. You are young, observe, live, experience life. The calling will come; I already see it in you. I didn’t hear it until I was nineteen, but it comes to those of us who are passionate and constantly yearning for things we can’t explain. We write because the universe pours too much into our souls for us to handle. We write when awake and we write when we dream. We hear the words as they dance in every song we hear and see them in every face we meet. We write because the world is too perfect not to be documented. We write because we connect with the intangible and spiritual. We write because we appreciate the practical. We write because we are idealist and because we are realist. We write to reawaken magic and put to sleep apathy.

Sometimes we hope that people will read our words and perhaps pat our backs, but when we really start to write we do it because we can’t stop. Writing is bigger than ego and the writer. Writing belongs to the world; we simply catch it and give it form. We scribble on napkins and on the backs of our hands. We write by the way we dress and the way we walk. We realize that life is an on going story that we are writing even as we are living it.

Don’t concern yourself with who is reading your work and what they are or not saying. Just observe, listen, live, love, be young, and enjoy every experience in your life. Each one, good or bad is material for your story. That is the beauty of being a writer, you are constantly ready to work. Some see this vocation as a disease, and in a sense they are right, but once you are infected you have no choice but to continue. Just be glad that you know you are alive, many people in the world have no idea! Spill your guts and tears into words, paintings, music, art. They will never let you down.

I used to think that to be a writer one had to be published, or famous, or paid, but now I see that to be a writer you have to simply write. Rest assured that Julia and I are here and are reading, but don’t concern yourself with any of that. Just write!

• What advice do you have for writers?
• What does writing mean to you?

Please either comment below or write on your blog and give us a link.