A Re-Evolutionary Glossary
A beginner’s guide for the language it will take to refashion schools as joyous sites of connection and community. A democratic glossary for reawakening a world made safe by kindness and the wholesale rejection of its madness. A field guide for talking differently about the education we are just beginning to imagine with our children.
A
Activism (noun) The inner and outer work of sustainable, resilient social change. What Tom Paine meant when he said “We have the power to begin the world over again”. What youth globally have self directed their energies to in climate change, and environmental and social justice. The opposite of indifference or despair.
See also:
A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues for Transforming Education, Paulo Freire and Ira Shor
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
Education ReImagined, Spake House
No One is too smallto make a difference, Greta Thurnberg
Teaching the Personal and the Political, Essays on Hope and Justice , Bill Ayers
Activate (verb) The mojo of great teachers is to stir up and ignite the social imaginations of learners to envision the world as it should be. What transpires when learning is personalized and purposeful. “I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance”. ee cummings
See also:
Young Geographers, Lucy Sprague Mitchell
How to Survive in Your Native Land, James Herndon
Agency (noun) According to Dewey is “the development of social power and insight in conditions that are purposeful and concern life”. What over a century of mass education has sought to eradicate. Cognate to voice. It is the light teachers can spark triggering the natural impulses of children and youth to make sense of the world and make it a better one. Key aspect of learning democratic behavior.
See also:
The Power of their Ideas, Deborah Meier
How Children Succeed, Paul Traub
My Education Credo (1897), John Dewey
Teaching to Transgress, A panel discussion with bell hooks
The Hill We Climb, Amanda Gorman
Affirm (verb) A way of saying YES to learners every day they show up. When people are fully present to each other. Finding ways to insert acknowledgment and celebration as essential parts to continuous feedback. Schools that appreciate learners begin with teachers themselves.
See also:
Teacher with a Heart: Reflections of Leonard Covello and Community, Vito Perrone
The Herb Kohl Reader: Awakening The Heart of Teaching, Herbert Kohl
Affirmative (adjective) Supportive. Hopeful. Encouraging. How emotionally intelligent leaders and teachers behave every day. The kind of adult interaction every kid needs and asks for. No matter what mask or defiance they wear. A tone of acceptance and unmitigated love. What abounds in schools and community spaces populated with adults who honor students as learners and seek to bring out their best as human beings. Close cousin to belonging.
See also:
Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer
Letter to Teachers, James Baldwin
Monroe’s Doctrine, Lorraine Monroe
Our Children, Our Schools, Lucy Sprague Mitchell
To Teach: Journey of a Teacher, William Ayers
Academic Acceleration (adjective) A practice taken from the assembly line. Also known as “a rush order.” Systems that seek to expedite the loss of free minds by intensifying the amount of tests the human brain can withstand.Fast track to lobotomizing learning from feelings, experience and knowledge. Closely associated with achievement.
See also:
What Does it Mean to be Well-Educated, Alfie Kohn
How Children Fail, John Holt,
Achievement Gap (noun) A concept closely aligned to schooling. The result of the mythification of IQ and worship of standardized tests to define intelligence and reduce cognition to ventriloquism. Pretext for nearly a century of “fixing” mostly brown and black children in public schools, in all the wrong things. Cognate to urban renewal, another social policy of erasure and the ways systemic racism works.
See also:
Insult to Intelligence, Frank Smith
Framing Dropout: Notes on Politics of an Urban Public High School, Michele Fine
Adaptive (adjective) The ability or tendency to adapt to different situations. Synonymous with agility. Able to reconcile, bring into harmony. A biotic way to lead, and to live. Able to change without the need to control the change.
See also:
Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect, David Orr
Ardor (noun) Word not frequently uttered in schools. A state or feeling like love, happiness or integrity that uplifts and enlivens. The generative energy required to bring something better, more life giving, into the world. Arduous (adjective) What every tear, bead of sweat and test of doubt it takes to realize a dream.
See Also:
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Journal 1837-1861, Henry David Thoreau
Asset Based (noun) A framework for seeing human development in a state of continuous growth. An ethic of trusting humans to do and make the right choices when life is allowed to happen. A counterpoint to the deficit model that demonized and nullified black and brown students and perennially sought to fix them.
See also:
Positive Education: Positive Psychology and Classroom Interaction, Martin Seligman
At Risk (noun) Expression from the “old world” of a broken system. A term that coincided with “urban renewal” and became the label and rationale for the systemic undervaluing of children of color. Synonymous to underprivileged, underachieving, etc. When the real risk is that of losing the brilliant idea that all citizens in a democracy can be taught to use their minds well.
See also : The classic texts of passionate, dissident teachers who rejected the labels
Growing Up Absurd, Paul Goodman
The Light in Their Eyes, Silvia Nieto
Lives on the Boundary, Mike Rose
The Lives of Children, George Dennison
B
Belonging (noun) The linchpin factor. One of the cardinal points that every child and adult requires, besides Trust, Communication and Love, to feel like they matter. Be+longing = a need for human connection. To be a part of something larger than oneself. To become one, with many selves. Contrary to conventional wisdom transpires when children and young people feel seen and heard.
See also:
Schools with Spirit: Nurturing the Inner Lives of Children and Teachers, Linda Lantieri
Most Likely to Succeed
Become (transitive verb) What we are always doing as a species. A condition for being alive and … A way of framing education not as schooling but a process for continuously evolving. Verb that exists in both the present and future tense. You become with all your being.
See also:
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Backwards Design (noun) An approach to planning with the end in mind. As in: Growth, development, unfolding, discovering: human beings learning to use knowledge and experience to the benefit of the community. A way of looking at the world imbued with kindness and civility. Start with who and what we want children to be. Do not neglect the arts.
See Also:
Teaching as Possibility: A Light in Dark Times, Maxine Greene,
Healing the Heart of Democracy, Parker Palmer
Growing up Absurd, Paul Goodman
Creating a Culture of Thinking, David Perkins
Joy in School, Steven Wolk
C
Classroom Management: (noun) The ideology of rows and factory systems. “Repeat after me.” The theory that if you can control kids then and only then can you teach them. An ideology supported by extensive testing and test prepping where learning gets reduced to remembering.The inverse being human centered. Guiding learners to discover their gifts.
See
The Schools our Children Deserve, Alfie Kohn,
Capacity: (Noun): ”Provide opportunities for people to grow.…in environments that nurture islands of decency, Where people can learn in such a way that they continue to learn.” Myles Horton.
When you believe in someone, you give them permission to become themselves.
See
Looking Back and Looking Forward: Reflections of Teaching and Schooling,Lillian Weber
The Long Haul: An Autobiography of Myles Horton
Coaching: (verb) A pedagogical method of instruction. Phil Jackson slipping books and notes of inspiration and encouragement in the lockers of Kobey Bryant, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal. Good coaches are like conductors and choreographers. They feed souls and elevate excellence by coaxing the best from people. Knowing when to be assertive, when to listen, and when to get out of the way.
Curiosity (noun) from Latin cūriōsitās, from cūriōsus "careful, diligent, curious", akin to cura "care.”
1. Close affinity with wonder, amazement and inquiry. Root to All learning. What industrialized ed has for over a century sought to stymie, sabotage, and control in children and adults. All in the name of the holy trinity: test scores, efficiency and achievement.
2. A sense and sensibility indigenous to all infants and toddlers, dogs, school children until approx. grade 3-4, and a growing colony of older adults 60+.
3. Disposition found amongst artists, radical educators and citizens of the democratic republic of Life
Cooperative Learning (noun) What we all have witnessed in playgrounds, sandboxes, baseball and soccer fields and basketball courts. The natural propensity for learning where kids exhibit a capacity for getting along, abiding by the rules, and being happy through play. Play as a template for emergent schools intentional about keeping joy alive.
See
The Children’s Crusade, Seymour Pappert
Project Zero
Lifelong Kindergarten, Mitch Resnick
Our Children, Our Schools, Lucy Sprague Mitchell
Conscience: (Noun) What the education of the young will need to incorporate now and in the forever shifting future. A global migration of teachers, nurses, lawyers, engineers, artists, doctors, citizens– descending on our communities, without borders but care and compassion, to restore balance to our lives.
See
“This I Believe”. Albert Einstein
Curiosity (noun) from Latin cūriōsitās, from cūriōsus "careful, diligent, curious", akin to cura "care.” Close affinity with wonder, amazement and inquiry. Root to All learning. What industrialized ed has for over a century sought to stymie, sabotage, and control in children and adults. All in the name of the holy trinity: test scores, efficiency and achievement.
2. A sense and sensibility indigenous to all infants and toddlers, dogs, school children until approx. grade 3-4, and a growing colony of older adults 60+.
3.Disposition found amongst artists, radical educators and citizens of the democratic republic of Life
Chutzpah (noun) Yiddish word meaning "impudence or gall." Bravery that borders on rudeness, On a bad day, it is arrogance. On good ones, you say what you think without worrying about hurting someone's feelings, looking silly, or getting in trouble. See Jack Nicholson “One Flew Over the Cookcoos Nest.” Chutzpah Is a courage of indignation required to heal the hurt we have brought upon ourselves and the planet.
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