RSS Feed

“Where is the Pinnacle?” Revisited: Skill, Delight, and the Connected Mind

2

October 29, 2015 by Tom McKenna

Bheadshotby Brendan McGrath
Grade 3 Teacher
Thomas Kenney School
Dorchester, MA
MA ’08

Screen Shot 2015-09-23 at 6.23.21 AM

Link to the full text of Brendan McGrath’s 2006 Bread Loaf Teacher Network Magazine article, “Where Is the Pinnacle?”

 

In the summer of 2005, while I was studying in a cubicle in Middlebury College’s library, I opened an email regarding my students’ Alaska state standards test scores. My students had shown massive growth with proficient scores, which was the first time in many years that had happened. I remember breaking down and crying in the library’s cubicle—not because I cared about the testing movement, but because the work we were doing, work where students took delight in their choices and their audiences for writing, was leading them to growth that showed up on these state tests. I did not teach to an exam. I put their needs and culture at the forefront of our classroom, and their growth in the state standards followed. When classrooms align themselves to accept the student and what the student brings to the classroom, success takes place. I remember one summer Michael Armstrong shared a quote from a book entitled Art and the Child: “Skill is born in delight.” When I think of the success I had with my students in Aleknagik, it had everything to do with that quote. Those students enjoyed the work. Our classroom was about them and met the demands of the state’s standards.

DSC00887

Students from the fifth-eighth grade classroom venture via their “school bus”  into the frigid temperatures for some writing about their environment on a frozen Lake Aleknagik.

 

In 2006, I wrote an article for the Bread Loaf Teacher Network Magazine entitled, “Where is the Pinnacle?” The reference to the pinnacle came from my disbelief that each year, I thought, just seemed to get better and better. As each year ended, I would think there was no way the next could equal or surpass it in successes, but somehow the next year would. A decade later, as I revisit that article in our current educational culture, I’m inspired to celebrate and acknowledge the value of teacher networking to my own professional growth, and the the growth of my students. “Where is the Pinnacle?” is the beginning of a story I’m learning to tell, a story that departs from the media stereotypes of teachers lacking training and choosing the profession for summers off.

DSC00879

Sasha braves the chill in the air as she writes while resting on Lake Aleknagik’s ice.

I am in my sixth year of teaching third grade in the  Boston Public Schools and in my 14th year of teaching in public schools. In early spring I was accepted into a doctoral program for Urban Schools, Leadership, and Policy Issues at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. I began classes this summer with stellar professors, who have already pushed my thinking on critical issues dealing with education today. After three intense weeks this summer, I turned in my final paper for August’s last class and headed to Logan Airport to board a plane with a handful of other teachers connected to the Bread Loaf Teacher Network in Mumbai, India. We were there to work with the teachers and students at the Aga Khan Academy where Bread Loaf alum Lee Krishnan (’07) teaches high school English and literature. (See http://breadloafindia.org for an account of that trip.) To say the experience was unforgettable is an understatement.

IMG_0439

Brendan McGrath encourages a student from the Diamond Jubilee School in Mumbai, India.

When I share the details of my summer networking with non-educators, most seemed surprised. This is supposed to be my summer “off.” This is when teachers “sit around” at the beach and catch up on personal books. I have never been quite sure where that narrative came from, but it sure sounds nice. My summers have taken me on different paths. For five of them, I have been at Bread Loaf campuses completing my master’s degree. I have spent others traveling for our international conferences in Haiti, Mumbai, and Nairobi (although Nairobi was actually during a school vacation time in April). The summers I have not been working towards my master’s or participating in a conference, I  have traveled to Vermont, making connections with teachers and taking part in conversations with educators that affect the work in my classroom the following year. I don’t think my work as a teacher is the norm, but I don’t think I am an outlier either. Many great teachers are doing the same thing as I am.

I recently listened to Steven Johnson in a TED Talk say, “Chance favors the connected mind.” Immediately, I thought of the work of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN). The deeply rooted and burgeoning connections of the network and chances that have come from it are countless not only for me, but for each and every person involved. For myself, each year has brought about new opportunities that have informed and inspired my classroom and me. These opportunities have opened new doors for us. Even if our connections are small, they are always strands in the dynamic web that make this network transformative.

DSC00167

Students from Aleknagik, Alaska, stand on the steps of the Capitol after their presentation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Seventeen years ago, I was a college dropout without a clue as to why I was spending money towards tuition. After finding my way towards education and teaching a few years later, I was finishing up my student teaching in rural Alaska and was in the midst of my first teaching assignment in Aleknagik, Alaska. Serendipitously, I found a connection that led me to the Bread Loaf School of English. This set of connections led me to the experiences I describe in “Where is the Pinnacle?” including leading a group of students, most of whom had never left their village, never mind Alaska, to travel to Washington, D.C., to present at the Smithsonian’s Rasmuson Theater at the Museum of the American Indian. They were invited to present a student-published book they had written about their village and culture as well as share poetry and art they had created for the event. Since then, each classroom I have been a part of has been a transformative experience because of a BLTN ethos that teaches me to learn from my students, just as I place them in contexts where they have meaningful choices and enact literacy in the context of communicating with peers. Each year has brought me in touch with new people, who are committed to the idea that “students are resources to be developed, not problems to be solved.”

This year, as I cultivate connections with my third grade urban classroom in Dorchester, MA, I’m again aware of signs of the achievement gap, inequities stemming from socioeconomic factors, and ever-higher demands for success measured by standardized testing data. Policy’s answers to it all are common standards and privatization of disadvantaged schools. Yet, if we as a profession of educators want to accept these simplistic answers, we will see the pinnacle. We will reach that ceiling of “success” and quickly begin a downward spiral and widen the gap even more. I don’t remember my students, whether in rural Alaska or urban Boston, ever coming into the classroom asking which standard we would be focusing on that day. They have always come into the classroom because they know it is a place about them. They come because they know they can express themselves through writing, or find themselves through a character in a story. They come into the classroom looking for and receiving love, delight, and skill.

Brendon Ramey shares why using electronic spaces for writing was powerful for him as a student in 2005.

In my career, the pinnacle is not a place I wish to reach. I want to keep striving for a higher level of effectiveness every day. I expect to be continuously learning, growing, and knowing that as long as students are at the center of the curriculum, there will not be some ceiling or pinnacle to my own achievement . . . and I am just fine with that.

Visiting educators at the Mumbai International Conference in front of the entrance to the Diamond Jubilee School: Alan Nuñez, Patricia Echessa Kariuki,  Rex Lee Jim, Mohsin Tejani, Brendan McGrath , Lee Krishnan, Rich Gorham, and Ceci Lewis.

 


2 comments »

  1. Dixie Goswami says:

    Dear Brendan,

    “Where Is the Pinnacle?” took me back to that day when we met in the Rasmussen Auditorium at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in Washington. The place was packed. This was the very first Rasmussen Auditorium session open to the public! What a beginning! From the front row, where I was sitting with Lucy Maddox, Meredith Reeves (Middlebury ’00) I saw you and your principal Doug, Marty Rutherford (mentor and BLTN advisor), and your students, who sure didn’t appear to have any stage fright. I’ll always remember their art, their words…their sense of humor (“I LOVE poetry….” brought down the house. ) Your quote introducing “Pinnacle” from a letter by John Keats took me to Michael Armstrong’s “Educating the Imagination” class, where reading Keats and children’s stories as literature to be appreciated and interpreted transformed our understanding of Keats, the children’s stories, and ourselves as teachers. Then back to Barn 1, where we were together for six weeks, writing to make a difference. As most recent editor of this journal, Tom McKenna has featured articles called “Bringing it Back,” narratives about how studying Keats, Calvino, Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, poetry and dramatic literature has travelled to our classrooms and then shaped and inspired the exchanges that are at the heart of BLTN. Scholars and researchers have long claimed that teacher narratives are among the richest sources of insight and knowledge about teaching and learning: Bread Loaf story-tellers prove them to be right.

    You’ve come to Bread Loaf Vermont every summer since you first enrolled as a student, staying with us beyond your graduation, continuing during your many years of working closely with Tom, Lou, David, and many other Bread Loaf students, travelled with Rich and David and Chantal and Ceci and others to Nairobi and Haiti and Mumbai…and now as a doctoral student and an urban teacher, you are still with the network, making history and shaping the present. Please start thinking now about a special BLTN Thursday evening session in Barn 1 in 2016 that will bring the Bread Loaf community a chance to hear stories like yours about how their Bread Loaf courses travel and reach teachers and Bread Loafers all over the world. Remembering Michael Armstrong’s words, “We are all in this together,” it would be good, I think, for BLTN teachers and students alike to read “Where is the Pinnacle?” at the beginning of the summer and a couple of times a year…helping us answer the constant question, “What IS the Bread Loaf Teacher Network, anyway?” by revisiting “Where is the Pinnacle?”

    This morning, reading the Fall 2006 issue of the BLTN Magazine: “Making Connections Across and Beyond the Curriculum,”recalling our 1993 Wallace Foundation program officer, Carla Asher, who inisisted upon (and funded) the first Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network magazine in 1993, remembering the editors and advisors, including Susan Walker, Chris Benson, Jim Maddox, Ken Macrorie, Sheri Skelton, Caroline Eisner, Gail Denton, Tom McKenna, I can argue that the journal itself is the BLTN pinnacle, the high point that provides teachers with superb editorial help, readers, and changes us as writers, scholars, teachers. This pinnacle (the journal) has inspired, enabled, and motivated more than 600 articles, chapters, books that have been written by and about members of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network. Caroline Eisner is preparing a new version of the BLTN bibliography, easily accessible, dynamic: Bread Loaf teachers’ gift to their profession.

    There are many ways to read “Where is the Pinnacle?” I’m reading it this morning as an important “case” in the long tradition of BLTN teacher inquiry that includes children and young people as partners in observing, recording, analyzing, interpreting, and theorizing. (Reclaiming the Classroom: Teacher Research as an Agency for Change. Heinemann/Boynton-Cook 1986) There’s a lot of talk these days about giving young people opportunities to understand reflect on, and advocate for themselves as learners. Here’s Bradley Ramey, Alegnagik, 2005 doing it:

    I’ve learned new ways of writing…I’ve learned to make an electronic portfolio, figured out what Kenya was like by participating in a BreadNet exchange, made stories into movies, and just plain wrote on paper.

    From this I learned that sometimes writing can be a key that unlocks doors.

    If you can find Bradley, and he’s willing, ask him to write to us about doors that opened—or might open—for him.

    I’m also reading “Pinnacle” as evidence of the Bread Loaf relationships that sustain us and keep us rising after all these years. Last week I drove to North Carolina with Rex Lee Jim to meet his old friends, Sam and Janet Bingham, farmers and social justice advocates who’d spent a decade at Rock Point, AZ. Sam and Janet Bingham are journalists who co-authored the classic Navajo Farming (1979) and contributed to Between Sacred Mountains: Navajo Stories and Lessons from the Land (1995), a treasured book read by Navajo students who are part of the Bread Loaf Navajo Community Health Outreach team. And here, at the end of your “Pinnacle” are Rex and Between Sacred Mountains:

    Thinking now of how my students and I arrived at that point in our work, I notice that every year we focused on audience and environment. In their introduction to Between Sacred Mountains, a book written by Navajo students [and others], the authors tell how we need to “encourage readers, no matter what their culture, to go out and actively seek many truths from the land and the people around them.” Every year my students have sought these truths—as they continue their journey toward the pinnacle.

    “Pinnacle” contributes to a narrative about teaching in public schools that is in dramatic contrast to the narratives that dominate discourse about policy, practice, and professional education and raises questions about networked professional growth that includes students as allies and advocates. “Pinnacle” and this entire issue is a significant chapter in the larger narrative about BLTN…and about the role of networked social action communities in times of rapid change and many challenges. Let’s see if there’s interest in reading “Pinnacle” and other Issue 5 narratives together, perhaps coming up with a mash-up that would invite more stories, new readings. What do you say?

    XXX,
    Dixie

  2. Dixie Goswami says:

    Dear Brendan,

    “Where Is the Pinnacle?” took me back to that day when we met in the Rasmussen Auditorium at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian in Washington. The place was packed. This was the very first Rasmussen Auditorium session open to the public! What a beginning! From the front row, where I was sitting with Lucy Maddox, Meredith Reeves (Middlebury ’00) I saw you and your principal Doug, Marty Rutherford (mentor and BLTN advisor), and your students, who sure didn’t appear to have any stage fright. I’ll always remember their art, their words…their sense of humor (“I LOVE poetry….” brought down the house. ) Your quote introducing “Pinnacle” from a letter by John Keats took me to Michael Armstrong’s “Educating the Imagination” class, where reading Keats and children’s stories as literature to be appreciated and interpreted transformed our understanding of Keats, the children’s stories, and ourselves as teachers. Then back to Barn 1, where we were together for six weeks, writing to make a difference. As most recent editor of this journal, Tom McKenna has featured articles called “Bringing it Back,” narratives about how studying Keats, Calvino, Shakespeare, Jane Eyre, poetry and dramatic literature has travelled to our classrooms and then shaped and inspired the exchanges that are at the heart of BLTN. Scholars and researchers have long claimed that teacher narratives are among the richest sources of insight and knowledge about teaching and learning: Bread Loaf story-tellers prove them to be right.

    You’ve come to Bread Loaf Vermont every summer since you first enrolled as a student, staying with us beyond your graduation, continuing during your many years of working closely with Tom, Lou, David, and many other Bread Loaf students, travelled with Rich and David and Chantal and Ceci and others to Nairobi and Haiti and Mumbai…and now as a doctoral student and an urban teacher, you are still with the network, making history and shaping the present. Please start thinking now about a special BLTN Thursday evening session in Barn 1 in 2016 that will bring the Bread Loaf community a chance to hear stories like yours about how their Bread Loaf courses travel and reach teachers and Bread Loafers all over the world. Remembering Michael Armstrong’s words, “We are all in this together,” it would be good, I think, for BLTN teachers and students alike to read “Where is the Pinnacle?” at the beginning of the summer and a couple of times a year…helping us answer the constant question, “What IS the Bread Loaf Teacher Network, anyway?” by revisiting “Where is the Pinnacle?”

    This morning, reading the Fall 2006 issue of the BLTN Magazine: “Making Connections Across and Beyond the Curriculum,”recalling our 1993 Wallace Foundation program officer, Carla Asher, who inisisted upon (and funded) the first Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network magazine in 1993, remembering the editors and advisors, including Susan Walker, Chris Benson, Jim Maddox, Ken Macrorie, Sheri Skelton, Caroline Eisner, Gail Denton, Tom McKenna, I can argue that the journal itself is the BLTN pinnacle, the high point that provides teachers with superb editorial help, readers, and changes us as writers, scholars, teachers. This pinnacle (the journal) has inspired, enabled, and motivated more than 600 articles, chapters, books that have been written by and about members of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network. Caroline Eisner is preparing a new version of the BLTN bibliography, easily accessible, dynamic: Bread Loaf teachers’ gift to their profession.

    There are many ways to read “Where is the Pinnacle?” I’m reading it this morning as an important “case” in the long tradition of BLTN teacher inquiry that includes children and young people as partners in observing, recording, analyzing, interpreting, and theorizing. (Reclaiming the Classroom: Teacher Research as an Agency for Change. Heinemann/Boynton-Cook 1986) There’s a lot of talk these days about giving young people opportunities to understand reflect on, and advocate for themselves as learners. Here’s Bradley Ramey, Alegnagik, 2005 doing it:

    I’ve learned new ways of writing…I’ve learned to make an electronic portfolio, figured out what Kenya was like by participating in a BreadNet exchange, made stories into movies, and just plain wrote on paper.

    From this I learned that sometimes writing can be a key that unlocks doors.

    If you can find Bradley, and he’s willing, ask him to write to us about doors that opened—or might open—for him.

    I’m also reading “Pinnacle” as evidence of the Bread Loaf relationships that sustain us and keep us rising after all these years. Last week I drove to North Carolina with Rex Lee Jim to meet his old friends, Sam and Janet Bingham, farmers and social justice advocates who’d spent a decade at Rock Point, AZ. Sam and Janet Bingham are journalists who co-authored the classic Navajo Farming (1979) and contributed to Between Sacred Mountains: Navajo Stories and Lessons from the Land (1995), a treasured book read by Navajo students who are part of the Bread Loaf Navajo Community Health Outreach team. And here, at the end of your “Pinnacle” are Rex and Between Sacred Mountains:

    Thinking now of how my students and I arrived at that point in our work, I notice that every year we focused on audience and environment. In their introduction to Between Sacred Mountains, a book written by Navajo students [and others], the authors tell how we need to “encourage readers, no matter what their culture, to go out and actively seek many truths from the land and the people around them.” Every year my students have sought these truths—as they continue their journey toward the pinnacle.

    “Pinnacle” contributes to a narrative about teaching in public schools that is in dramatic contrast to the narratives that dominate discourse about policy, practice, and professional education and raises questions about networked professional growth that includes students as allies and advocates. “Pinnacle” and this entire issue is a significant chapter in the larger narrative about BLTN…and about the role of networked social action communities in times of rapid change and many challenges. Let’s see if there’s interest in reading “Pinnacle” and other Issue 5 narratives together, perhaps coming up with a mash-up that would invite more stories, new readings. What do you say?

    XXX,
    Dixie

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Issues

FOLLOW @BLTNTEACHERS ON TWITTER