TeacherScribe

I was able to make it to a few graduation receptions on Saturday.  In doing so, I was reminded of the impact teachers have on their students. I pulled into the first reception and meandered my way into the garage where Brady, the graduate, was visiting.  I didn't want to bother him right away, so I visited with a former coworker who retired last year and several of my future College Comp students who were there. I saw Brady's mother and talked to her a bit.  I said, "I haven't had a chance to talk to Brady yet." She cut me off and said, "Oh, he knows you're here.  As soon as he saw you he came up to me and said, 'Mom, Mr. Reynolds is here!'' That made me smile.  I was reminded of the impact I must have made on Brady. At another reception I was able to visit with the Lunkes.  I gave their first son, Kyle, a hard time for not inviting me to his graduation several years ago.  He felt terrible about it, but I was really just joking with him.  So this year his Mom promised me at conferences that I'd get an invite to Kevin's (their youngest) reception.  I did, but it was scheduled the same time as Casey's reception, so I couldn't make it. However, I was lucky to find Kyle and his parents sitting at a table at the second reception I made it to on Saturday.  We had a great conversation, and I was able to get caught up with Kyle.  Then Kevin showed up, and we had a good talk.  I'll miss him. The final reception was a three in one - it was out at the golf course and three families decided to consolidate their parties into one, which was a great idea.  Here I was able to see many parents for the final time as their youngest graduate. I was also reminded of the impact of my honors speech from a few weeks ago.  I had several parents at various receptions tell me how much they liked it and thought it was a good message for their kids. That too was nice to hear. Sometimes I get so caught up in correcting and lesson planning and entering grades and attendance that I forget about the personal impact my job has on students and their families. Here is a rough version of the honors speech - Welcome, I would like to take a moment to have the students try and envision what their worlds will look like in five years.  Or if they are really bold, try to imagine what the world will look like when you are in your parents' places in the future when you are sitting with your son or daughter at their honors banquet.   It is almost impossible to imagine what their world will be like even five years into the future.  Most of the workforce, according to the US Department of Labor will have held around 10-14 difference jobs by the time they are 38.  The rule of 90 is no longer a rule at all.  Much of what they will learn as freshman in college next year will be outdated by the time they are juniors. That is the world these honor students are entering. I began thinking about how much the world has changed when I listened to a podcast featuring George Miller speaking to the National Press Club in reaction to the 2008 study "A Democracy at Risk," the Congressman said something that made a lot of sense: "We recognize that the students are digital and the systems are analog."   I would hasten to add that, "some of their teachers/parents are vinyl." If you know what vinyl is – or even – an eight track, well the world has changed a lot in your life times. Ever since I heard a podcast featuring Thomas Friedman talking about his book The World is Flat (and if you're thinking what is a podcast – you're so 20th century!) in which he talks about how the world has been flattened by millions of miles of fiber optic cables, satellites and telecommunications, and the internet, I have been asking people the question – where were you when you discovered the world was flat? If you're thinking, no . . .  I'm quite sure that the world is not flat.  Well, you're so 20th century. If you don't believe that the world is flat . . . let's examine just a few of the changes in our media in our life times. Anyone here – and you don't have to embarrass yourself by raising your hands – you can just smirk or laugh – remember not having TV?  Remember listening to radio shows such as The Shadow Knows, Dimension X, The Lone Ranger, and Dick Tracey? Does anyone remember when TV was black and white?  Or when there wasn't even a remote control?  Remember having to change the channel manually.  I was my father's remote control!  Remember when you had to turn the dial and it went 'click, click, click' and you got about 12 channels total?  Remember those early color TVs?  My grandmother had one made out of wood that had vinyl over the speakers and took up half a wall.  Remember when getting a VCR was a big deal?   Now we have flat screen TVs and DVRs. How about what we watched?   Remember having one chance to catch a TV show and if you were busy or gone, you had to wait a whole year before you saw it again?   Remember Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin?  A Christmas story (before TNT played it for 24 hours straight on Christmas)?  Or my father's favorite, The Ten Commandments.  Well, I wanted to be busy or gone for that!  What 8-year-old wants to spend four hours watching that!   I just downloaded the Great Pumpkin on my iPod (and if you're thinking, "What is an iPod?" You're so 20th century) and I can watch in anytime and anywhere I want. How about sports?  Remember Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football where you'd wait for the highlights at the halftime show because you never got to see any other games.  There was no ESPN or Monday Night Countdown. Ever watch a game for 20 minutes just to see the score of that game?  Not to mention scores of other games?  Now you watch a game and it has scores and stats scrolling horizontally and vertically.  It looks like the New York Stock Exchange. Now I have DirecTV and the NFL Network and Sunday Ticket where I can watch every game . . . all on the same channel if I want.  I can also program in my fantasy football team and have their stats flash up on the screen whenever Carson Palmer throws another touchdown or Adrian Peterson fumbles again or Brett Favre throws another interception. And these are just a few of the changes that have happened in our life times. The world is indeed flat.   I remember when I first discovered this. I was correcting papers one evening at our dining room table.  I heard Casey talking to someone in his room.  I asked my wife if he had any friends over and she said she didn't think so.  I could hear him playing his Xbox, so I knocked on his door and peaked in. There Casey was sprawled out in his recliner playing some World of War game with one of those headset things on and a Mountain Dew and a bag of Doritos right next to him. He smirked and said, "You want to know who I'm talking to?' I cuffed him upside the said and said, "no, smarty.  I want to know to whom you're talking.  Don't end your sentences with prepositions." He then informed me that he was talking to his friends who were playing on his team.  They were all in their rooms, in their recliners, with their Mountain Dews and Doritos.  They were using Xbox live to play on the same team via the internet. "We're fighting the Germans," Casey added. "Oh.  It's a World War II game then," I concluded. "No," Casey said.  "We are playing against Germans." Casey and his friends were playing German kids who were all in their rooms, in their recliners, with their German versions of Mountain Dew and Doritos. Sure enough, I heard some harsh sounding German coming over Casey's headset.   Then Casey's team was obliterated by their foes. "I hate it when they do that!" Casey said. It seems that whenever they wanted to communicate with Casey and his friends, the Germans spoke fluent English.  However, when they needed to devise battle tactics, they spoke in German. That is a flat world. When this happened, the floodlights went off above my head.  I thought if my step-son, who has a part time job at a local grocery store, along with a couple dollars a month for wireless internet can afford to do this with the available technology, what is happening in the board rooms of billion dollar corporations?   That is one reason the world has become flat and one reason a country as far away as India with a city like Bangalore can creep right up to our shores and outsource or offshore – pick your verb – millions of American jobs. As Friedman says, "The flat world has one rule: what can be done, will be done.  It just will either be done BY you or TO you."  That is the power of a flat world. This generation will have so many opportunities before them.  You must take advantage of them. Next year in college, you will have opportunities to . . . as Friedman states, "connect, collaborate, and compete" unlike any generation every before.  Make the most of your college education and the chances you'll have. I'll give you another example of how the flat world can impact your education. Several teachers here are part of a history grant through the MNHS and Hamline.  I was at our spring class a few weeks ago at the Swenson House.  We were told that we had to bring laptops for this session.  So 35 teachers showed up with their laptops.  And because the Swenson House has wireless internet, we were all able to open up our laptops and connect with the internet. Our presenter began her PowerPoint on the Foshay Tower in Minneapolis.  Now us dinosaurs like to think we're being modern and technologically savvy with our PowerPoint or Keynote presentations, but we're so 20th century.  They are really tantamount to writing on a green chalkboard given what these kids today are able to do.  However, by the time the presenter was on her second slide, I typed in Foshay Tower into google and hit images.  Dozens of images popped up in front of me.  I saw the blueprints for the tower as well as pictures of it being constructed.  I saw pictures of the owner and architect.  I had looked at several all before she was done with the third slide. Then I punched it into youtube.  Two videos came up right away.  One was a Ch. 9 news store that focused on three people who base-jumped off the tower.  Another was a homemade one where someone had traveled to the top of the tower and taken out their cell phone – which has a video camera built in – and filmed a 360-degree view of the Minneapolis nighttime skyline.   All by the time the presenter was done with her fifth slide. Someone asked where the tower was located. Then about a dozen on us punched it in to mapquest and we got detailed directions from anywhere . . . our front door, the Radisson, the Metro Dome, the Mall of America, right to the Foshay Tower.  And all of this by the time our presenter was on the eighth slide.  That is the power the flat world in education. So next year when you're in your dorm and you're feeling tired or overwhelmed or if your' thinking about heading out to a party, think about what Friedman says "When I was a kid in Minneapolis, my parents said, Tom eat your vegetables because people in India and China are starving.  Now I tell my daughters, do your homework because people in India and China are starving for your jobs.  And in a flat world, they can have them." If you don't believe me, think of this . . . if you're one in a million in China, there are 1,300 others just like YOU.  In India there are 1,100.  What does that mean?  Well, tonight we're at an banquet celebrating our honor students . . . both China and India have more honor students than we have STUDENTS. If that doesn't motivate you, maybe this will . . . Alan Winder, the economist at Princeton estimates that in the next 30 years we can expect to have 40 million jobs outsourced. Now that's scary.  That's a crisis.  But as one of my favorite sayings states, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."  It's been 50 years since the Sputnik crisis where America pushed her best and brightest into math and science.  But that generation is now retiring.  It is now up to this generation to start addressing and solving some of the challenges this new crisis presents.  Remember, "connect, collaborate, and compete." I don't want this talk to be all doom and gloom.  But there is plenty of room for hope.  The flat world is full of potential. Just a few weeks ago I finished reading a memoir by Tom Romano, who is a real heavy in the composition theory realm and teaches at the University of Miami (Ohio).  I thought it was great and took a chance and looked up his email address.  I shot him a quick email telling him how much I liked the book and how I was going to use one of his essays for a prompt in my College Comp class. It wasn't 15 minutes before I got a reply from Tom.  He thanked me for the praise and said he really liked my prompt and that he was going to use it with one of his classes and give me credit.  Furthermore, he suggested that I develop it into a presentation for the NCTE convention either in '10 or '11.  That is what I mean when I say, "connect, collaborate, and compete." So when you're tired or thinking about slacking off instead of doing your homework and trying your hardest, think of this quote from one of my favorite people, James Burke, "Every healthy human being has about the same number of neurons in the skull - about 100 billion.  Each one of them has up to 50,000 connecting dendrites, each of which can be in contact with other connecting dendrites up to the same number, which means that inside the brain a thought can go any one of a number of routes which are larger than the number of atoms in the known universe!  And everyone has one."     Don't waste that!     In closing, work hard and above all, "connect, collaborate, and compete."     It has been an honor to teach you and have you in my classes.