Day Zero: Pioneer

From Merriam Webster:

pioneer (n.):

• a member of a military unit usually of construction engineers;
• a person or group that originates or helps open up a new line of thought or activity or a new method or technical development;
• one of the first to settle in a territory;
• a plant or animal capable of establishing itself in a bare, barren, or open area and initiating an ecological cycle

pioneer (v.):

3

• to open or prepare for others to follow;
• to originate or take part in the development of.

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I don't think of myself as a teacher that does anything new. It has been nearly eleven years since I began my first teaching assignment at Noble High School in 2006. Now, just as then, I feel like I'm doing things just a little differently, but not enough to constitute deviation from the norm.

That's how it feels. It's easy to make light of the daily grind when you're a teacher. Day One becomes Day Two, and then Day Two becomes Day 181. It's over before you know it. The days are long, but the years are short. 

Upon check in at my hotel here in Chelsea, it wasn't five minutes of unpacking clothes before I got a phone call. The phone call was from Jeff Riley, who wanted to talk to me for a while. Forget how he knew I just got here, I thought. I stumbled down to the lobby in my kilt and my Diversified Ink shirt and met him.

Jeff Riley is an interesting man, and great to talk to. If you met him on the street, you might never know he is a superintendent. But, talk to him for just two minutes and you get a whiff of decades of wisdom in the so-called trenches of education. The man has taken receivership of a district, so he's probably seen and done it all. And he's asking me how I'm doing, what I think of where I'm teaching. He tells me that the folks choosing the Sontag winners are ecstatic that I'm back. Wait, what? 

You're a pioneer here in Chelsea, Mike!

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Jaime Escalante is my personal hero in education. He is one of those teachers that I think of as a pioneer. Escalante offered AP Calculus at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles and worked to reform their mathematics program despite heavy administrative opposition. The movie Stand and Deliver and the book Escalante: The Best Teacher in America are about him. His first students were suspected of cheating on the AP Calculus exam in 1982, and so were made to take the exam again. At its peak, the Calculus program at Garfield High was producing exceptional rates of passage. Eventually, he left Garfield, and the Calculus program slowly died with his departure. I can't do his story justice, so just go look him up.

He is who I think of when I think of a pioneer.

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I've helped blazed many trails, but I feel like they are modest. I started a cross country program and a chess program because no one was there to run them, despite having motivated and dedicated kids ready to bring the programs to growth. I taught classes when there was no one there to teach them. I've been aboard schools in their infancy, both brick-and-mortar and online. I've largely eschewed homework and tried so many new ways of assessment and inquiry that I could probably fill a binder with all of them. I'm doing new things with teacher observations in my current school. There's always a new trail to blaze.

This feels different. It's a new program of acceleration academy classes in a similar district to Lawrence, where I taught in my first two acceleration academies for the past two years. I'm joining seven other teachers, three alumni of the Lawrence Sontag Academies, and four teachers here in Chelsea. The emails exchanged so far have the feel of raw motivation. The teachers from Chelsea are already designing packets and creating plans for the full week. Two of them are arriving early tomorrow to get things ready. This feels different because so much more is riding on it. A new program like this one requires that the right trail be blazed. 

I worry about the balance between motivation and foresight. I worry about planning too far before I know my students and what they can do. I worry about that first moment, when my kids need to know that I'm serious enough about the goal, but not so focused on it that they become collateral to it. I worry about blazing trails. How do you choose the right one? Who will be watching? Who will follow? Will anyone follow?

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The thing that is always new in education is the beginning of a class, when the kids sitting in the seats barely know each other and the dynamic is not yet set. There are always new trails to blaze, and this is the hardest. It requires listening and patience and quiet. It requires a gentle sort of intervention, not a forceful romp.

What trail will I blaze tomorrow?

I wonder what trail Jaime Escalante thought he would blaze. I wonder if he knew I'd be on it, in my own way, 3,000 miles and 35 years away.