[An Abecedary of Cape-Wearing] H is for Helping

Superheroes are helpful. It’s sort of their job. They help ladies in distress on a regular basis. They help save bus-fulls of innocent victims from certain death. They save folks who inadvertently fall off tall buildings. And they save cities and planets from evil-doers and imminent destruction.

Some superheroes wage an internal battle with their superhero status, but are convinced as they are continually called in to help and generally save the day.

brainknowsbetter.com

Some superheroes wage a similar and equally internal battle to stay away from polite society in order to save folks from themselves. The Hulk for example. His main role as a superhero is to keep himself from hurting the wrong people--to try to be in the right place with the right amount of control to unleash fury on the baddies, but keep it away from the nice folks.

Either way, the nice folks get used to it. Metropolis, Gotham City, New York City, Smallville, Earth…the buildings collapse, the subway goes off the rails, the bridges break and the people call for their hero to help. At first they are there without a hitch and the crowd cheers. Later, they are waylaid by multiple and simultaneous disasters or nefarious evil-doers and the crowd questions their loyalty. Why aren’t they there right away?  Why are they allowing this to happen? Why do the bridges keep falling down (okay, they don’t ask that last one, but I totally would)?

At this point the iniquitous, the vile, the power-hungry, the vengeful, the diabolical--the baddies figure it out. Make the people believe the hero doesn’t want to help, won’t help, can’t help, and they will turn on him. Hold him prisoner so that he can’t, threaten him with the death of his tortured love interest, convince her she is out of control, blow up his mansion--make it so they can’t help and let disappointment to their dirty work.

cnn.com

At this point you may be wondering where I’ve hidden the silver lining, and you are right to believe it is here. Each time this happens (and it happens so often you’d think they’d figure it out more quickly), our heroes come to a similar conclusion. One person can’t be the only helper. One person alone can’t save the city. The hero has to start helping the city help themselves. Rebuild the building, shore up the dam, support the good guys. That’s how to truly save the city.

There will always be political rhetoric in education. We have made the grand and important statement that all children have a right to a free and appropriate public education. That is no small feat. We as a whole have embarked on a project that will continually require every bit of our strength, stamina, and heroism to achieve. It can’t be done by one person, one agency, one program. Each of us has some level of experience in education--as a learner, as a parent, as a teacher, and we are all stakeholders.Education and education reform require a daily promise from all stakeholder to do well by our children. We are each superheroes in this commitment and we are equally responsible for saving the day.

[An Abecedary of Cape-Wearing] Beat the Baddies like Batman

for Beating the Baddies like Batman

Batman is one of my favorite heroic characters. It's true, it is possible that Batman is not, technically, a superhero (wha-what???  Read here or here if you want to edify yourself), but I have decided I'm okay with his questionable status. I have decided to love him anway.

Let me be clear, this has nothing to do with the relative attractiveness or unattractiveness of the actors that have taken on the role. Trust me. I can only name one or two, and one of my favorites is the cartoon Justice Leage version. He has a kind of Wolverine-esque quality to him.

I love him because he has to work very hard to beat the baddies. He has to be knowledgable about global issues, he has to learn the newest technology, and he has to train to hone his super-secret ninja skills, he has to take care of his outfit and redesign his cape for ultimate effectiveness.  I mean no offense to the heroes who get their powers from planets, or spiders, or lanterns, or large hammers (okay, I judge the use of a hammer)--I like them all well enough. But Batman. He has to do it himself. He has to use the resources available in Gotham City and make them super (yes, with unimited wealth and jaw-dropping technology).

As teachers and teacher-leaders, we can hope for Superman's powers, Wonder Woman's jet, and Thor's Hammer (I don't really want Thor's hammer, but I'd take a jet.), but we won't get them. What we can do though is use the skills and tools we do have to do our work and beat the educational baddies we encounter

I won't spend your valuable time rehashing all of the educational baddies we encounter in our quest to educate our nation's children. We all have our own fight.  Each day we rise to continue the battle because we know it's the right thing to do.  We each have an aresenal of skills and tools that we can use to fight the good fight each day:

• professional development opportunities
• humor
• respected collegues
• content knowledge 
• technology
• inspiring leaders 
• deserving students
• dedication to the cause
• personal health
• professional connectedness
• the knowledge that we are doing the right thing

Take a minute and think about some tools and skills you have already, resources you may have forgotten you have, or items from this list you'd like to explore. Batman has his batcave full of fast cars, faster computers, and, of course, Alfred. Do you have a bat cave?  What do you keep there to help you beat the baddies?  Do you need to remind yourself to Be Like Batman?

Oh yeah, and Batman wears a cape. A really rockin' cape.

[An Abecedary of Cape-Wearing] A is for Caveat

Let's start off 2014 with an ABC book!  Let's call it the... Abecedary of Cape-Wearing! Let's start right now!

is for Caveat

Wait... what? Did I mean to do that?  Yes, and it's making me giggle. While that doesn't gurantee that it's actually funny, it does prove I did it on purpose and like it.  How, in the name of education, can I start an abecedary with the word Caveat?  How do I dare take a standardized structure like the ABCs and then start with the letter C?  For many reasons actually, but let me explain in a meandering sort of way.

Along with Mentor Text Mondays, Amy (of aforementioned powerhouse and does-what-she-says-she-does fame), and I agreed to try to post an abecedary to get ourselves blogging again. Click here to follow Amy's Abecedary of Reflection.

I ran through a variety of topic ideas over the last weeks of 2013 and eventually decided to go back to the roots of Wear the Cape--my belief in the empirical super powers of teachers. I have many (too many) opinions about super heroes and their application to education. I talk about it often enough that some folks might think I'm just a childhood superhero fan trying to thread my hobby into my work. Truthfully, I had to learn about superheros from scratch a few years ago. Click here to read about my Aha! moment while watching the Green Lantern movie. While I won't pretend it is laborious to watch movies and read comic books, this is still a learning curve for me. As I learn, I'm continually reminded that I'm right (hee). The history and mythology of superheroes has a depth to it that is often misunderstood. I recently started reading this book that relates intense philosophical ideas to superhero lore. It's a complex read!  Fascinating, to be sure, but not fluffy.

Why start the Abecedary of Cape-wearing with a caveat then? Well, it comes down to the capes. See here for a quick context-setting video:

So you see how a blog called Wear the Cape getting ready to post an Abecedary of Cape-Wearing might need to start with a caveat.

ca·ve·at

ˈkavēˌät,ˈkäv-/

noun

1. 1.

   a warning or proviso of specific stipulations, conditions, or limitations.

   synonyms:

   warning, caution, admonition; More

My caveat is this. As a super teacher you  may or may not choose to have a cape--literal or figurative. While I am a fan of capes as a fashion statement, when I refer to capes I am actually referring to any symbol that reminds you (and the world) that you do indeed have super powers as a teacher of children or leader of teachers. With this caveat an Abecedary on Cape-Wearing can be applied to all super teachers--cape or not.As the Wear the Cape Purpose Statement reads:

It may be that teachers need a dose of super powers in order to truly commit to the education of children. Without this magic the daily grind can be too much. At times we may forget we are, indeed, super, and might need to don our capes as a reminder. Sometimes, it isn't enough to be the super teacher in our hearts. Sometimes you gotta wear the cape.

Teaching is a deeply personal profession. Education professionals care so deeply and for so many hours a day, that we just sort of assume they will keep on caring so deeply and so consistently for ever and ever--no matter how hard it is, no matter what the news says about us, no matter what the current political tide. And we will--it's what we do. But it's hard work to maintain such a high level of vigilance and expectation of work, of ourselves. We need to pat ourselves on the back, refresh, renew, and giggle sometimes. My solution is to wear a cape. On a daily basis, my cape is only in my head. When absolutely necessary I am not averse to putting an actual cape on to make my point--either to myself or to others, but I usually mean the one in my imagination.

So, tuck my caveat in your cape pocket and join me as I work my way through an Abecedary of Cape-wearing. If you are reading this (and even if you aren't, it's just harder to prove) you have a cape. Let's celebrate it!

Things to think about as we go along:

Who is your favorite superhero? Do you have a cape?  Do you want one?

[Teacher Prep] Super-rific

Earlier this summer I was struck by a piece of brilliance. No jokes please....

I was watching the new Green Lantern movie and learning, for the first time, about the story of the Green Lanterns. Have you heard it?  I will 'splain. No. There is too much. I will sum up...

There are tons of Green Lanterns in the universe. Maybe not tons, but the movie showed a lot of them. They each have a "power ring" that is feed by strength of will. In fact, in the place where the green lanterns hang out there was a big swirling pot of "will" to feed the rings.* The lanterns have something to do with it, too. The point is, the true power of the Green Lanterns is their own strength and will. Cool huh?

Now, in the movie, their greatest enemy is Parallax. This turns out to be extra cool because it is a math term that I barely understand. The villain Parallax, according to Wikipedia, is the 92nd Greatest Villain of All Time. A dubious distinction to say the least. Or the most. Parallax has a variety of stories to his name, but the movie focused on the fact that his power comes from fear--the mortal enemy of strength of will. Fear limits our strength. We have to fight it by understanding not only our strength, but the fear as well. Deep stuff.

Where's the brilliance, you ask? I realized during the movie that my little lovies need to be Green Lanterns, and that Parallax is their greatest enemy (not their 92nd). I realized how damn cool superheroes are, and I decided to go hog-wild with them this school year.  Different superheroes have been assigned as mascot to different areas of my classroom.  

Green Lantern--Writing

Rogue from X-Men--Reading (more on that later)

Superman--Super Tricks for writing

Wonder Woman--Wonder Words for vocabulary

Wolverine from X-Men--the time away area or the  I-need-a-break-because-I'm-pissy area.

Thor--Thor's Hammer of Grammar

Captain America--I'm not sure yet, but he may be riding along with The Man on the White Horse.

Ironman--I don't know yet, but he's cool.  

As I write this, it sounds like it's too young for my students, but it is actually manifesting quite nicely. On the first day of school we used the superhero emblems as our mentor texts.*  We created a list of what kinds of things we learned from the similarities and differences of the symbols. We talked about color, symbology (yes, a word), origins--lots of stuff.  Then we each made our own superhero symbols. Next we are going to use the characters themselves as our mentor "texts" and create superheroes. This will lead into a study of graphic novels and the writing of graphic novels.  See where this is going?  We also have a world of villains to learn about!

I needed a little boost of energy this year, and the superhero theme has done it. It goes quite nicely with my whole teachers-as-cape-wearing-superheroes thing, and the kiddos are totally buying into it.  I can just feel it.   This year is going to be... super.  Yeah, I went there.

*Note--I read up on it and it's called the Central Battery on the Planet Oa watched over by the Guardians of the Universe.  Link here if you'd like to get similarly geeky.

*Note--A mentor text is a text that is used as an example of quality writing.  I am using the term "text" loosely here.  For more information about mentor texts either click here or keep following this blog since I'll be bending your ear about it all year.  

In an attempt to reach my goal of twenty posts by next Friday, I have resorted to sifting through my unpublished drafts.  Here's one from December-ish....

We are studying photography.  For two weeks we reviewed the various elements of design (e.g. line, texture, pattern) and vantage points (e.g. direct view, side view, worm's-eye view).  Their final assessment was to take a series of photographs around an object showing the six vantage points, and using the elements of design.   There are many great projects coming out of it, and I will post this all soon-like*.  Today though, on the Wednesday before the Friday before a Sunday with a Full Moon AND a vacation (read: it's crtazy 'round here), I will post the series that made me laugh.  

 

*Note--Heh.  Soon-like.  Totally didn't do that.


Goal Progress: 8/20

Super Boss

If there was any doubt that I a.) have super powers (such as lightening bolts coming from my neck, eyes, and knee) and b.) am the Boss (with a trusty sidekick), here is some proof.  Really, what more do you need? 

Note the cocky stance--that's how you stand when you are electric.

I am the one in purple with the trusty sidekick.  You can tell because there is an arrow pointing to me.  Next to me is one of my super students.

Giggle and Snort

Taylor Mali is probably best known for his "What Do Teachers Make?" poem.  I like it.  Very much.

However, I snort and giggle at this one. Even when I'm alone, and only my dog can hear me.

"The The Impotence of Proofreading," by TAYLOR MALI

A Vignette...

The Scene: A classroom of middle school trouble-makers working on computers.  All is quiet (Really!  It was!  It was freetime so they were plugged-in and all quiet-like!),  Except, for R.  He has the hiccups...

Ms. M: Who has the hiccups?

Various Voices: R... It's R... R. has the hiccups.

R.:  Me... hiccup

Various Voices: You should cure them... R.--she can cure hiccups... Dude, cure his hiccups... It's one of her superpowers.

Ms. M: I can, but R. doesn't believe in my powers, so they don't work.

R.:  (scoffing noise) I believe.  Cure 'em.  

Another Student:  You really have to believe R.  Or it doesn't work.

R.: I believe!

Ms. M: I think, perhaps, I need my cape for this to work today.  You're a tough one R.(expectant silence whilst I don my cape and glittery red mask)* Are you ready? (Magic hiccup cure ensues...)**

R.:  ... (no hiccup)...  (mutters) Thanks.

Ms. M: (removing cape and mask, dusting off hands) That's how it's done my friends.

(smattering of applause... work resumes.)

*Blessings and many thanks to some fellow cape-wearers for the gift of this cape and mask.
 

 **Yeah,right! Like I was going to tell you the cure--it's totally a secret!

Hat-Trick

This week was tough.  TOUGH, I tell you.  This caped teacher doesn't know how to explain it without taking hours and hours, but suffice it to say that the hat-trick of rampant Eighth-Grade Disease, one very troubled child, and shared issues of the foster care  and education systems, had me beat down to a pulp by the end.  

What does a super teacher do when they are all pulp-y on a Friday?  Hit the ground running on Monday, I guess. Stay-tuned.  There were many wonderful moments this week as well.  I will find them in my memory and share.  

Caped Crusader Down

This story on NPR caught my attention today and made my heart a little wobbly.  I've included the link to the story I heard, though there are many articles online.  His words and the words of his staff speak to me.  It sounds like he has left quite a legacy in education.

Remembering D.C. Educator Brian Betts by Claudio Sanchez

Got Cape?

Possible Super Teacher Costume