Why we need mentors

"I could not have made it to where I am without  your help. You have encouraged me in ways you cannot imagine by supporting, believing and giving me a chance to follow my dreams. You opened my eyes to what I could be, what I could do, in a way that I've never thought possible. You made me want to see the world and beyond, and because of this, I cannot wait to move on to the next stage of my life... Thank you for making me do my best. Thank you for being my mentors."

That was one of our seniors, Kasey, expressing her gratitude to her mentors, Ms. Rudge and Ms. Kegler, at our annual Mentor Appreciation Breakfast.

I had opened the ceremonies with a similar sentiment, telling our mentors that they really are the highlight of our whole program at the Depot. I told them about my son's experience with his mentor at college, and how grateful I was last week, listening to him talk about his time with Luke. I told them it was the same with our students, that though teachers are important, the mentor's relationship with our kids is special because they have chosen to invest in them, and I don't think we can overestimate the power of that interest and care.

It makes me think of the mentors in my life. Lou DeLoreto, principal of E. O. Smith High School, has given me so many hours of his time over the past few years, during my administrator preparation program and now as I direct the Depot Campus. I lean on him heavily, and his honest advice and guidance have shaped and continue to shape me as a leader. Dominique Fox, Principal of Tolland High, played a similar role in my life, and I am grateful for all the time she gave me during the UCAPP program.

And then there's Byron Martin, who runs Logee's greenhouses. On top of managing these magical tropical rainforests hidden in the heart of Danielson, Byron is a brilliant beekeeper. I was lucky enough a few years ago to connect with him, and he offered to help me get started in the craft. His guidance has been invaluable as I've "bumbled" my way through my first three years of beekeeping.

And Peter Serafin, my shop instructor at Ellis Tech, impacted me in ways he will never know. I'll never forget the way he'd tap his stout finger on his desk when we got to chatting over our drafting tables, "Time is money," he'd ring out, "Time is money."

And there are others: Julia Sherman, David Pettry, Harvey Luce. I can't thank them all enough.

Humans are not just social animals, we are hyper-social. We absolutely need each other. Some say we're not even human without each other. The mentor-mentee relationship is just one part of that, but it's a key part, and one that is all too often lost in our modern world.

The genuine gratitude many of our students showed to their mentors on Friday testified to this. They need it. We all need it.

Let's get back to it.

Me, Gramps, Brooklyn, and the boundaries of family and place

One of the things I learned, living in Mississippi during the late 90s, was the importance of a sense of place. As humans, we need to belong. But to what do we belong--a family, tribe, nationality, race, or something bigger?

When a native Mississippian asked, "Where are you from?," he didn't mean "Where have you most recently lived?" He didn't even mean, "Where were you born?" He meant, "What town are your ancestors from?"

Their sense of place blew me away, but it also resonated with me. I grew up in the woods and hills of a small town called Brooklyn, Connecticut, tucked into the northeast corner of the tiny state, right in the heart of "Swamp Yankee" country. As far as I knew, that was my nationality--Swamp Yankee, because that's what my grandpa Green always said when we asked him what nationality we were.

He had grown up in Canterbury, a town just south of us, and moved to Brooklyn as a young newly-wed. He cleared the pines on this hill in big valley of the Quinebaug River, and started raising dairy cows on its sandy glacial soil. His love of the land was so much a part of him that he spent most of his free time, after he retired from a career in politics, working it, clearing it, and tending it. He dug a big pond out back, the one that Long Brook runs through and locals fish in.

But back then it was a rough start for he and my grandmother. Stories tell of the two of them driving a car without a wind shield and sawing wood in their living room in order to make ends meet in the early days. I have often imagined grandma in her kitchen, after her morning milking duties, serving up what she called "flap jacks" to a crew of a dozen or more children, farm hands, and foster kids. It's easy to imagine, because she did the same for us, my dozen or so cousins, brother, sisters and me, later on.

Grandma and Grandpa came from a very different time. A great aunt on Grandpa's side, who hunted and cut wood well into her 70s, told me stories of growing up on that Canterbury farm. She told me how my ancestors made  apple liquor called "rot gut," in their still, steam billowing out the door of the shed. They hid the bottles behind the seat of the car in order to deliver it to a local funeral home, where it was sold in secret during the days of the Prohibition.

This is where I'm from, and it became a part of me as I grew up and worked weekends and afternoons for the family business. The dairy had morphed into a construction business that thrived for decades, and I spent my childhood digging trenches, sweeping floors, spreading loam, planting grass, and washing trucks. I can still here my grandfather saying, "If you're gonna do something, do it right," and I can still see him inspecting his car after I washed it, in his old, worn shoes and work shirt. I have him and my dad and uncles to thank for the work ethic that is rooted so deeply into my bones.

This place and these people became a part of me as I spent holidays with so many aunts, uncles, and cousins I have trouble counting them, shooting dart guns at each other, playing tag, sledding, riding snowmobiles, Big Wheels and bikes.

It became ingrained in my soul as I walked in the woods every day, setting crude animal traps, building shelters, making pine tea, camping, dipping my hands into sand springs and soaking up the earth and life around me.

It all became such a part of me that I could never separate myself from it for long. I identified so strongly with it that it always pulled me back. After spending 5 years away in graduate school, I felt that magnetism again and returned for good in 1998, dragging my patient wife back here with me. I'm glad she hasn't felt as strong a pull as I have toward her place in central Illinois and her memories of walking beans, raising sheep, and helping with the corn harvest.

Our kids were young when I was at college in Illinois and Mississippi, and my daughter's cute little southern accent didn't last long after we returned north. Now, I think, this place is almost as much a part of them as it is of me. It's been such a privilege to be able to raise them with this kind of stability.

I wonder what it would be like not to have this sense of place--this physical identity with the land and people. It seems very primal and natural--a close-knit people tied to a place with it's plants, soils and geology. I'm grateful for it, and that I could raise my kids with it.

But I know I'm lucky. I know there are millions born into millions of little Hells-on-earth, and I was lucky enough to be born into a little Eden. I just started listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me. My childhood was far from perfect and painless, but it was heaven compared with his, and there are millions who make his look like a paradise. For them, their sense of place, the culture of their childhood is more a source of pain and poison than security and strength.

And then I wonder what will happen as more and more people are displaced, living increasingly mobile lives, increasingly removed from family and homeland. Can we replace physical places with digital ones and biological families with virtual ones?

Or will it just mean adjusting to the reality that we are all family, and that the whole earth is our home? Because, after all, that's the truth. Being human means belonging to something bigger than yourself--the whole human race and the whole earth. I love what Neil deGrasse Tyson said in an interview a little while ago:

"We are all genetically related, every human being. Any two humans on Earth have a common ancestor if you go back far enough in the family tree. So the fact that you draw a circle this big around family and say 'That's my family and outside the circle it's not'--that's an arbitrary circle. That's biologically arbitrary. You've decided for yourself that inside the circle's my family, outside it's not, when we have genetic links among all human beings."

I wonder what the world would be like if we could all draw our circles larger? What if I could develop the same attachment, the same sense of identity with the whole Earth and human race that I have with my family and place here in Brooklyn?

I may have been born into a family of Swamp Yankees in the Quinebaug Valley, but I could just as easily have been born in the ghetto or worse. And more than that, this circle of family really is arbitrary, as are these boundaries of town and state and country. I really am related to everyone, and I really don't belong to this piece of land any more than any other.


I picked up pieces of Illinois and Mississipi along the way, and 15 years as a teacher in Mansfield has changed me more than I could have imagined. I am a work in progress, an amalgam of every person and place I've spent significant time with, worked with, related to. Our lives are intertwined.

It's exciting to think of the potential for absorbing pieces of other places and peoples, broadening our "circles." That's what I liked so much about Ramez Naam's awesome book, Nexus, in which he envisioned a drug that could connect people's minds, breaking down the ultimate barrier between people.

As important as family and village and tribe are, we need to somehow move those boundaries and circles out until they encompass it all. Though I am thankful for all my ancestors and homeland instilled in me, I am a citizen of Earth and a member of the human family.

That's also where I'm from.

Hugs like light through stormclouds

Let's just say the Depot is not without its crises and conflicts. Hardly a day goes by without some drama unfolding. Many of these young people are being  battered by life, and many lack the resiliency or the skills to cope. Sometimes the strife ripples out into our little community like a gathering thunderstorm, or else it hangs in the air like black magic.

But just as frequently, light breaks through the clouds.

Like the excitement of one struggling young person who landed his first internship last week, and another young lady whose internship just turned into a job at a law firm.

There's the growing confidence of a young man whose challenging technology project is finally getting off the ground, and the excitement and pride of a young man who came to tell me about his new, higher SAT scores.

There's the excitement among the staff as we plan new supports for students.

There's the generosity of a young lady who baked twelve dozen cookies for everyone, and the seven students who worked all morning yesterday cooking a delicious ham dinner for the whole school.

There are the smiles on faces that haven't seen many smiles lately, as they picked out an unwrapped gift during the Yankee swap.

And there are the courageous young women who sang impromptu songs for our open mic.

But the brightest light this week came from one powerful young man whose courage and compassion just blew me away. The past month has been just one painful blow after another for him, and on top of all that, a friend at the school has been seething with anger towards him for a week. So he decided to do something about it.

First, he approached his angry friend and tried to initiate a conversation: "Hey, man, we have to talk about this.." he began, and then explained his side of the story.

There was no response to this initial effort: the other student just turned away. But that wasn't the end of it. Later that day, as the angry student was sitting for the Yankee swap, this powerful young man approached him again. He came up behind him, and I heard him say something like, "I may get punched in the face for this hug, but I'm doing it anyway."

Then he wrapped his arms around this angry student, and that frown that had been there all week just... broke. It broke into a smile, though this angry kid tried to fight it. That bear hug broke through that anger like a the sun through storm clouds.

Thank you, young man, for reminding me what it's all about--what being human is all about.

Make it personal. Make it purposeful.

If you really want to motivate humans, you need to do these two things: make it personal and make it purposeful.

Personal: When radiologists were shown a picture of the patient along side every CT scan they interpreted, they were much more likely to notice things that were wrong with the patient.

Purposeful: When hand-washing stations in hospitals had signs reading "Washing your hands keeps patients from getting sick," they were more likely to wash their hands than if the signs read, "Washing your hands keeps you from getting sick."

The more I read, and the more I compare it to reality, the more I'm beginning to see the centrality of relationships to humanness.

I used to see life as competition, and that the most powerful motivator was self-interest. And I thought this was good--that it made us stronger, more creative, harder working.

But as Daniel Pink Pointed out in Drive, and as he pointed out in different ways in To Sell Is Human,the opposite is true.

If you really want to optimize human motivation and performance, you need to tap our pro-social instincts.

Why we're so distracted by our phones

I just saw this wild photo on Instagram today (which my daughter says I'm too old to be on, by the way), and the first thing I thought was:

"Wow. That explains a lot."

A lot about why I personally find high-tech gadgets, the internet, and social media  so distracting.

It lets me know I'm not alone. My primate cousins are the same way.

We're curious. We're social. We're... something.

Whatever it is, we all have it. So there's no need to bemoan our constant distractibility and fascination with this stuff--the pull that draws into whatever it is. It's basic human... err primate tendency.

Not that we just give in to it all the time, but it's a mistake to deny it or look at it it as a flaw of some sort.

Just watched the wordless but visually striking movie, Baraka, last night, and it opens with one of these macaques relaxing in one of these hot springs. Amazing how "human" he/she looked, eyes closing slightly, then looking off into the distance, up to his/her neck in the hot spring.

Then they switched to a night sky scene, as if the monkey was thinking about it--meditating, even.

Probably not the same monkey that played with the phone, but it could have been. We're complex, we higher primates--hypersocial, hyperintelligent, hypercreative, hypercurious animals.

My goal is to better understand what it means to be human, partly so I can better understand myself, like why I'm so distracted by the computer, and partly so I can forge a better fit between my classroom, my life, and human nature.

Understanding is always better. It's not always more comfortable at first. Sometimes it shatters cherished illusions. But if we use the understanding--adjust our live based on it, we end up better off.

But I think the power of that image of the macaque engrossed in the iPhone went deeper than this. It meant a connection--a connection with something that extends beyond time and body and place and connects us all together. And that kind of empathy...

Wow.

That kind of empathy is probably one of the key facets of what it means to be "human."

The desk of a poet

When I saw this desktop in a 3rd grade classroom this afternoon, I had to take a picture of it: the empty box of pretzels, the little teddy bear, the scattered pencils, erasers, and writing in progress.. the Husky pride button..

The young girl was gone at the time, out being an official "role model" in another class, I think.

And I was not surprised it was her desk, because a few minutes earlier, as I was reading the poems posted on a bulletin board, she walked over and pointed out hers.

"I love them," I said. Here's one of them:

Somehow her desk made sense after this.

And she was not the only poet in the class. This next poem was written by a little girl who lost her father not long ago:

Kids never cease to amaze me. human in general amaze me, but kids pack so much meaning and energy and creativity and wonder into this human frame that it just blows my mind.

Against authority

This might seem strange coming from an aspiring school leader, but I'm really not much for hierarchical authority structures and top-down leadership.

And I think I'm in good company. I've been reading Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha's powerful book, Sex at Dawn, which lays out their theory of our ancestral heritage. It's a fascinating book, and has been playing a key role in my thinking as I think about a better fit between modern life and human nature.

Hierarchical leadership structures were non-existent in the world of our palaeolithic ancestors. Instead, Palaeolithic societies were decidedly egalitarian:

"When you can't block people's access to food and shelter, and you can't stop them from leaving, then how can you control them? The ubiquitous political egalitarianism of foraging people is rooted in this simple reality. Having no coercive power, leaders are simply those who are followed--individuals who have earned the respect of their companions. Such "leaders" do not--cannot--demand anyone's obedience."

They quote Adam Smith, of all people, who wrote similarly, "In a nation of hunters there is properly no government at all... [They] have agreed among themselves to keep together for their mutual safety, but they have no authority one over another."

In fact, Ryan and Jetha say that, according to primatologist Christopher Boehm, "foragers are downright feline in refusing to follow orders... 'universally--and all but obsessively--concerned with being free of the authority of others.'"

If this is the way we evolved--if it's in our DNA, then it sheds some light on the way we humans tend to behave. (Funny that my former boss, veteran science teacher Julia Sherman, used to say trying to get all of us on the same page was like "herding cats.")

And if this is the way we evolved, let's tap into it. Let's make our schools and classrooms less hierarchical, less coercive, less authoritarian, and more egalitarian and democratic, less about about control, and more about relationships and organic, self-organizing growth.

At the school-level, we might start with strategies like empowerment evaluation, distributed leadership, Hargreaves and Fullan's concept of collective autonomy, and in general, more collaborative decision-making.

At the classroom level, let's start by treating students less as subjects or subordinates and more like equals and collaborators in their own learning.

Still working on this, but I think this is key. Any time we can make our structures fit better with human nature, it's like like letting rocks roll downhill.

It's really kind of amazing when you think about it

This week my student teacher's evaluator was in my biology classroom. He was there for the second period of a double block on Friday--not prime engagement time for my class. Most were working on their projects--just a few really off-task. But as I sat with he and the student teacher after and we discussed this model of instruction, a thought occurred to me, and I said;

"You know it's really amazing that they are doing as much work as they are. there are no late penalties in this class, and they know that. They can always redo all of their assignments for a better grade, and they know that. Yet here they are working on their projects."

No threats necessary.

And I typically see the lowest levels of engagement during that second Friday period, when the kids are all tired from a full school week and anticipating the weekend. I've said this before and I probably say it more in the future: autonomy, mastery and purpose works.

This really should surprise me. This is how human beings work. But it's still amazing.

A digital Dunbar

As we work towards creating a world more in sync with human nature, one of the obstacles we are going to run into is Dunbar's Number. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar and others have suggested that humans work best when they live in bands no larger 150, the limit on the number of social relationships a human mind can manage at one time.

According to Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, authors of Sex at Dawn, with groups sizes smaller than this, there is no anonymity: everyone knows everyone else, and our behavior changes--for the better. We treat each other better. We share everything. Over this number, anonymity kicks in, and with it, all sorts of anti-social behaviors and dysfunction.

Below this number, in primitive societies, hypersocial communal living was the norm. Communism fails, say Ryan and Jetha, because of this factor. The tragedy of the commons only happens in resources with large-scale, anonymous access (overfishing, air pollution, not on the colonial greens and in the forests of primeval man, where social relationships held everyone in check.

Below this number, egalitarian, democratic governance rules. Above it, governments and power become more and more concentrated and centralized. (I seem to remember Ghandi saying something about the ideal government being at the village level.)

We've long since passed Dunbar's Number in most human settlements, and I was wondering how this problem of discord could ever be solved. Then it occurred to me: if anonymity is the problem, what if we could eliminate anonymity altogether?

I think it's happening already. Digital and online technologies are quickly making anonymity a thing of the past. Witness Justine Sacco's unfortunate Tweet in 2013. Even the brilliant Dread Pirate Roberts couldn't hide forever in the digital world.

Anonymity from oppressive, centralized governments may be a good thing, but in the modern "tribe" of society, it's really not. In a primal tribe, there was nowhere to hide, and no choice but to treat people well or be cast out. And maybe there was more trust. Maybe more kindness. More humanity. And maybe that sort of thing is not outside the realm of possibility in the modern world.

Just thinking.