Normal sabbaticals in the physics field often involve visiting positions in some of Europe’s finest research facilities. These are professional sabbaticals, but also, for the families, there is travel and exposure to foreign culture. Looking back on it now it kind of surprises me that the family didn’t want to do that, that it didn’t seem like an opportunity for a new setting and a fresh start…some more solid ground than the swampiness we found ourselves in. Major decisions are often covered up within minor explanations, but the short of it is that it was Molly’s high school senior year and she wanted to be with her friends rather than do the travel thing. So we stayed.

Instead, I went to the superintendent of my kids’ high school and offered to teach science for free if he would cover for me by telling the school community that I was a new, certified, full-time science teacher who expected to be permanent. In exchange for this deception, I would provide him with my journal notes for the year. No teacher or parent could argue that I was not knowledgeable in the subject matter, but both parents and teachers could argue that I was not qualified as a public high school teacher, indeed not even licensed, which I supposed made the superintendent into a minor criminal. As I look back I find this also surprising. That superintendent lasted one more year after I left, and last I heard, he was plying his trade in Wyoming.

These high school kids who talked to me had had a strong effect. I didn’t know it then as I know it now, but it was these experiences that led me away from the university, away from physics, and into a studied activism about education and schools.

(An important constructivist concern is for the viability of an individual’s knowledge. Viability is a qualitative measure of the extent to which the individual is satisfied with the fruitfulness of their knowledge in making sense of, or understanding their own experiences.)

I smoked cigars and drank Blatz—skunky in flavor but locally priced. The custom was that a case of beer was kept aside the shady front door, cool there, and the kids⎯these kids who talked to me⎯could grab one if they chose. It was clear to me the difference between an open case of beer and warm saline IVs, and clear too to the kids; maybe less clear to others including Betsy, but nobody made even a little issue of it. This surprises me more now than it did then. Thinking back, I suspect that the kids instinctively knew that they had to protect this sanctuary where they could have a beer and talk to an empathetic adult. If they told their parents much about it, the sanctuary would become forbidden ground. And if they told too many of their friends, the place would be mobbed and my own family would shut it down.

I had two ninth-grade classes and two 12th-grade classes. Zippy Zetterholm was the ancient head of the school’s science program and I reported to him. He was favorably impressed by the amount of physics that I knew though a bit dubious of my capacity for “classroom management.”

And thus began what was to become my mid-life crisis year of change. Mid-life crisis jokes routinely use 40 as the defining age; I had just turned 40, and the crisis was definitely kicking in for me.

(In order to facilitate a modification to a student’s knowledge the student will need to experience a perturbation, to be confronted with convincing evidence that their theory is no longer viable.)

I enjoyed the classroom teaching very much, and adapted a self-paced program that I had used in the university. The semester was broken up into week-long segments. For each week, there was a measurable goal, such as, “Be able to solve Ohm’s Law problems where any two of the variables—voltage, current, or resistance—are given.”  On Mondays, this goal was given along with instructions on where to read about it and what to practice. I was available every class period to answer questions and work one-on-one with students. I did not lecture. On Fridays, there was a test where they would demonstrate⎯or not⎯their “mastery” of that week’s goal. “Mastery” meant exactly that: the student could solve Ohm’s Law problems perfectly. Every week mastered counted as a point and the students knew in advance how points translated into grades. In 18 weeks, for example, 18 was an A+, 17 an A, 16 an A-, and so on.

The trick to the program was that it didn’t matter how many attempts the student made, only that at some point they demonstrated mastery. The consequence for the teacher, me, was that, say, on week eight, I had to be prepared to teach and test not just week eight, but also all previous weeks if there were still students who hadn’t yet mastered that earlier material.

(Structured social interactions amongst students and teachers can provide a ready source of cognitive perturbation which can be the focus of negotiation and consensus building. Negotiation as a process leading to consensus helps the individual student to reflect on, and evaluate, the viability of their knowledge for meaningfully organizing their experiences. It also provides an opportunity to test its compatibility with that of significant others in personally meaningful circumstances).

Compulsory is not a favorite word of mine. I had been exposed earlier to compulsory education as well as compulsory military service. I wanted as little coercion as possible in my classroom, and therefore we adopted these rules: Show up at the beginning of the hour so that I could take attendance, then either stay or not. If the answer was not, then the agreement was that the student write on the blackboard exactly where they could be found in case a parent or authority needed them. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, handfuls of students would sign out, never, to my knowledge, violating their agreement of truthfulness.

One ninth grader signed out to her vacant home. A smack addict, she needed a fix. In my reckoning at that time, her life would be better off with the fix than with an intervention from me. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wasn’t 100 percent correct, but often enough: “By doing nothing all things are done” is decent advice. I hope that I am not rewriting history for the benefit of Lao Tzu and myself, but I believe that within about a year or so she kicked the habit.

The somewhat more than half who stayed chatted with each other, asked questions, or worked the recommended practice problems. On Thursdays, everybody was there. “Doc, Doc help me! I gotta pass that test tomorrow.” On Thursdays, it wasn’t just a teachable moment but a teachable hour.

After we got to know each other, I would bring my 35mm camera in my briefcase. The rules were any student could borrow it during the day for however long they chose; it needed to be back in the briefcase at day’s end. I got the black and white film developed; they got a print and I got the negatives.

(Perceived incompatibility provokes cognitive perturbations and provides a meaningful context for self-organized reconstruction, or adaptation, of an individual’s knowledge.)

As I looked at many of these photographs I began to see much more of their lives, but particularly their lives in school. They shot the girls’ bathroom where they went to smoke: “Coffin Corner” they called it. They shot Lucy seated in her locker freaking on acid, Wronsky laughing, long-haired Spunk in the back seat of a car, Jules smiling at a beer can.

I did not choose to find these stories and the lives they represented depressing. These were real people, fully alive, and fully alienated from a society that fought unjust wars, segregated blacks, and built ”nice” suburban high schools. I believed that they saw reality much as I was learning to do, and were unwilling to fold, to conform to conventions they found abhorrent. Few of America’s normal rewards are often meted to this ilk.

(My definition of learning is “To be different tomorrow because of today’s experiences.”)

Posted in chapters | No Comments