Do I Dare?

On Tuesday we watched the Brene Brown TED talk, 'The Power of Vulnerability.' I wasn't especially hooked by it. I watched it with interest and an open mind, and it's not like she said anything I didn't agree with, it's just that I didn't feel like I left the class on a higher plane. If anything, I'd say she was stating the obvious: you can't feel joy without feeling vulnerable. True.
I think of it in the context of my wife or my baby. I love them to a great degree, but that love would really not mean anything, it wouldn't even exist, without being vulnerable to losing that. I think some physicist/mathematician guy named Newton put it in terms of equal and opposite forces. No disrespect to Brown.

We did a lot on Tuesday, actually. I'll talk about a couple of more things. What do I dare remember? What don't I dare remember? This was an interesting exercise. I just started writing and all of a sudden it was time to stop (that was only 5, and not 10 minutes, Rob!). I had spewed some garble about being known for wearing cat pants in elementary school - I wore the all the time - my mom sewed them for me ... multiple pairs.
Now that I've been able to digest that inquiry a little longer, I'll share some of my thoughts on my own experiences with inclusion in school, specifically middle school.

You reminded us that it is when people are asked about inclusion that the whopper stories about exclusion come to light. I tried to avoid anymore stuff about feeling excluded, but I didn't seem to have a lot in the memory bank about my positive experiences with inclusion. Were they just not substantial enough, or were they not present at all? Perhaps inclusion for a middle school person is equivalent to feeling a little less excluded than usual.

Here is what you need to know: I lived in Bower. The designated school for the area was Piper Creek. My mom sent us all to Grandview; we had a history with that school. At home in the neighbourhood of Bower I played with Mark who was my age and attended Piper Creek. Kids in Bower went, after completion of grade 6 (this was the last year that grade 6 was in the elementary schools), to West Park Middle School. Off we went - and I only knew one guy: Mark. It turns out he was unpopular to his peers. That was it for me. I never stood a chance - I was unpopular by association.
One way or another I held my own. I went to school, went to class, and just did my thing. Some days were better than others. I made other friends - we were bound together in our unpopularity. Sometimes we had to throw each other under the bus so as not to look quite so pathetic in the eyes of the more popular kids.
I knew I was a decent guy; I didn't have a lot to add, but I didn't have a lot to take away from anyone either. I would get hints of approval from the popular people. It was almost as though they were sorry that I was a loser by association and that they know it's not my fault. "Too bad you're not cool, man, you'd be an alright cool guy." Somehow, I always knew I'd be alright, so I just kept chugging through middle school.
Toward the end of this particular era, all of the eighth graders were to go on a field trip to West Edmonton Mall. Purpose: fun. Pfffffffffttthh. Not for my little group. What was supposed to be fun about this? We'll pass, thank you. We decided to fore-go the trip; instead we went to bower mall and got blizzards at Dairy Queen. Big blizzards. KJ got an 'ice-cream migraine' and made a scene on the floor of the mall. It's a valuable memory.
What is interesting about this tale to me as I really think about it is that nary a teacher or administrator batted an eye about the bunch of us electing not to go with our classmates on a farewell trip to the funnest mall ever. No one dug in the slightest to uncover our motivation. We never felt like we belonged with the entire rest of our class, and that was a product of two years of a seemingly non-existent sense of community within that school. I don't fault the teachers for this, but I can see that if the staff don't lead the school on the path to a safe, communal feeling in a school - well, the kids more times than not will fail to succeed in doing so themselves.

Another big thing came out of Class # 10 for me. One of those 'stick with you' types of things. Sometimes I can go for a couple of classes, or a month, or even a whole course without really taking anything especially valid or meaningful, and then all of sudden  something just *sticks.* (Please let me clarify that this is not the first valid point for me in your class in the last week, month, or term, Nellis).

"The greatest predictor of academic success for a child is the academic success of the parents."

Well I'll be damned. OF COURSE! It makes so much sense, but why? One might speculate (I certainly to) that it is because a child is a little miniature version of his parents. They raise him to do all of the things they like and to not do all of the things that they are opposed to. "Say thank you!" "Apologize." "We don't hit"
And after all of that training, the young apprentice of his parents has ingrained in him the similar 'ways of life' and the factory of society continues to churn out representatives of generations past.
My mom often tells me that she remembers me telling her and my dad when I was in high school that they may as well quit bothering me to get A's - I knew that I was capable of doing it, but I didn't feel like it. I was just going to do what I needed to do to finish high school and I'd do it my way - I'm sure I'll be fine. Interestingly enough, I re-entered the education system as a mature college student after taking the better part of a decade off. More interesting yet: this is the time line of both my parents' education as well.

A reason that particular mention (academic success indicator) caught my attention is because it is so stifling. We are all sitting in class, having discussions and dreaming out loud about how we are going to have an inclusive classroom and make sure that every student reaches their full potential, when suddenly we hear that it's actually statistically supported that we need only look as far as the parents to get an idea of what to expect the child's success level to be. It's scary because it takes away an element of control which we may have never had in the first place.
It made me think of this old ditty which actually came out when I was in grade 9. It's a very 'you'll be just like your parents' song. Close your office door, crank it up, and shout along!

 "You know it's never going to end; the same old cycle's going to start again. What goes around, well, it comes around"

http://youtu.be/Xsp8DmgtjHY