Humanity and Thank you
Welcome to this week’s issue of Traversing, as always if you find this newsletter to be interesting, if it helps to inform your thinking about progressive education or if you think it might help others, please subscribe, share it with your friends and neighbors and share your comments and questions.
Hello!
Traversing has been on a little bit of a hiatus.
Why? That is a great question.
Fundamentally, the start of any school year is an exciting time.
Students are returning to school. Old students are excited (if the school is doing things right).
New students are starting the year with excitement as well, mixed with trepidation.
Educators are finding their path, getting to know new students and reconnecting with students from the previous year.
The start of the school year, (especially in a school such as City of Bridges that strives to focus on the relational nature of education,) requires a lot of emotional labor. At its core, humane and progressive education is centered around caring about the other members of your community, the students, the families and the other educators. The goal is to strive to see the wholeness of everyone in the community and create spaces and experiences that foster growth and learning for all.
That degree of intention requires a focused awareness of each individual, and as a result, it can be hard to direct energy to other pursuits, especially ones that are sometimes so bound up in a sense of self, like this weekly letter. I don’t really feel the need to apologize because if I am truly being the educator that I hope that I am, I should be directing my energy to the students, the human beings, who are present in my daily life.
Related to caring and attention, my father has been quite ill for the past 6 months and as I think about his impact on my life, I cannot deny that his approach to education and learning shaped my own. He spent decades as a Professor of Economics at Smith College, and was known as an excellent teacher first and foremost. (His students also called him the lumberjack economist) I learned about the importance of presence and care in education from his example, and he learned about presence and care from his father, Genus Ebert Bartlett, a Baptist minister. My father always says the essential experience that helped him to be an effective educator wasn’t the Ph.D. from Stanford, it was the experience growing up in a home that practiced care and expressed it from the pulpit each Sunday. I hope that I can practice and express care in my work as an educator, every school day.
I write this (soon to be weekly again) newsletter to try to share my thoughts about the importance of increasing and supporting Progressive education. At the end of the day, what is more important are that young people with whom I have worked know that I care and feel like I helped them on their journey.
Thank you for your patience as I focused on the young people at my school. We should be back to weekly issues starting now.
With Gratitude,
Randy