I haven’t posted in a long time. I’ve been writing so much in other contexts,
and have been so behind in those writings that I didn’t feel justified to write
here. I felt compelled to write today
because of a dream I had.
I also haven’t slept much in a long time. Primarily due to our newborn (woot woot 7 weeks old now), but more than that
due to myself. After talking to other
fathers with newborns who are able to sleep, I realized that my lack of sleep
is more tied to my own personal beliefs and choice, and not purely in the child
needing to feed every hour, two hours through the night. My (our) beliefs in breastfeeding, and prioritizing
the infant to feed when she needs instead of sleep training her as soon as
possible (where timing, method, structure all seem to be contentious issues,
even with the recent release of a study from a university in Australia, which I
am not linking due to it not being the point of this post). My beliefs in what I do to help my family
through this process (taking care of all except the feeding part during the
night). And so my struggles are
self-inflicted.
But these aren’t my reasons for writing this post. Not my lack of sleep; not my beliefs in
parenting.
A Dream
I felt compelled to write because I had a dream.
It’s an actual dream I had (within the 2 hours of sleep that
I rarely got).
I feel compelled to share this dream, as well as reflect on
various aspects of this dream.
And so here it is, in all of its randomness, nonsense, and
lack of clarity.
My dream spanned two days (coincidentally I slept for 2
hours). The first day of the dream I was
heading to some sort of conference, and the second day seemed to be the
conference.
At some point during the first night, I was at some sort of
building where I came across two children who were stranded at this building
with me. The boy, was waiting for his
mother to pick him up, looked about 13 or 14 years old. The girl was a bit younger, possibly 5 or 6
years old. She was unreleated to the
boy, and seemed to have down syndrome or something like it. I stayed with the two kids because I seemed
to be the only adult there. The mother
of the boy came to pick him up at around 10 or 11 pm. At this time she mentioned that the parents
of the girl have abandoned her and are not picking her up. Then she left. She simply left.
I reached out to the police and child services, and then the
scene ended.
In a flash I was in the second day, landing in a middle of a
large auditorium. The talk was something
about math education. There may have
been something about accountability.
There may have been something about curriculum. Somehow I found myself with a microphone and
asked to speak. As I looked out into the
crowd I began to tell them about my day yesterday (day one of the dream). In particular, about conversations I had with
a boy that I met. I told the crowd about
how the boy demonstrated a sense of distrust when I told him I was a math
teacher. I told the crowd about how I
worked to build trust through talking and listening to him, as well as engaging
him on various different topics seemingly unrelated to mathematics.
“Maybe” I said to the crowd “there is no point in beginning
with mathematics. There is no point in bashing
them over the head with something that they’ve identified as an enemy. There is no point in shoving content down
their throat. There is no point because
it is degrading to both the child and the teacher, and move neither party
forward in their learning.”
At this point my microphone was cut off. I was unsure whether it was because the
powers-that-be did not agree with what I was saying, or whether it was a
technical glitch, but I continued shouting.
“Maybe we don’t teach math explicitly. Maybe we don’t do that for a few days, a week,
a month, a year. Maybe we instead engage
them in activities that help build their confidence and their sense of being
safe in our classroom, in our world, in our conflicted society. Maybe there is no point in beginning with
mathematics, but that we should be beginning with the child. With connecting and listening to the
child. How can we move student thinking
forward if we cannot recognize where they are?
And if they are at a place where the very mention of mathematics or
school abhors them, then we need to sit and be with them instead of pouring
gasoline all over that fire.”
There was no applause, no standing ovations. There was no jeers or heckles, no rotten
fruits thrown in my face. Instead I woke
to a crying baby.
Possible source of this dream?
This was not scripted or made up or a metaphorical dream. It was simply a dream I had. I had to fill in a few pieces that I had
difficulty remembering, but the description was true to my dream (also cut out
parts where I was cooking for some reason?)
I felt compelled not only to share the dream somehow, but
also reflect on why I had the dream, and whether I agree with what I said. I am no Freud, nor do I follow his worldview
or ideologies. But I thought my dream
must at least in part relate to what I had been thinking about yesterday (real
day and not in the dream).
Yesterday (real day and not in the dream) I attended a
session on effective PLCs, then afterwards had a conversation with several
teachers at a different meeting, and then conversed in a network about shifting
teacher practice. In all three instances
there was concern for teachers who don’t change, who refuse to change, who
would rather stick with binders they’ve reused for years. I contributed with various ideas. Ones that aren’t necessarily ideas I 100%
believe in. But I tend to do that with
ideas – I throw them on the table for people to think about without fully
believing in them first (because otherwise I debate it many times in my head
and don’t end up actually putting it anywhere).
Throughout the three instances, I remember thinking about one thing:
instead of thinking about how we can move those teachers, what if we recognize
that we can’t move them. What if we
listen to them and support them and encourage them to move themselves. I also remember relating this to teacher-student
relationships (maybe that’s where part of the dream came from).
Reflection on this dream?
Did the dream make sense?
I found it interesting that a mother who left her child for several
hours in a strange place with a stranger, was the one that commented on yet
other parents who have abandoned their child and are not returning. I am reminded of an old Chinese idiom I’ve
heard from years back called 五十步笑百步 (I think initially from Mencius), where a deserting soldier who ran 50 steps away from battle, ridiculed anotherwho ran 100 steps. It’s a similar proverb to “the pot calling
the kettle black.” I found that
interesting. Perhaps I can relate this
to how we all have our own problems of practice that we are working on, and
that a sense of superiority or inferiority is unhelpful. Perhaps I can relate this to being wary of
comparisons of scores and an insistence on measurement instead of pouring my
efforts into moving student learning.
I also found what I said in the dream interesting. Do I really believe that? In the dream I seem to be addressing
interactions with students who deeply resent school and school mathematics. I prioritized the connections and
relationships that must be established in the beginning, and continued to require
establishing throughout the learning. I
can see myself believing in that. I also
think it does cohere with my view and experiences with how I help students
introduce mathematics in the things they do.
I struggle, though, with stating (in my dream) that we could
refrain from introducing mathematics for a month, a year.
I also struggle with how the events in the dream seemed to
point against curriculum and against accountability. I struggle because I didn’t think I saw these
as at odds with one another. I thought
of myself with the belief that we could incorporate these elements within my
activities and lessons. Just as for some
classes I have made efforts to incorporate issues of social justice within my
activities, and prioritized student conversations. But I don’t know.
Maybe it's a futile effort trying to interpret this.
Maybe it was just a dream.
I do know that I feel better now that I've written about it.
