"Outside the Box" Thinking

Following up on a Video Blog I created this Sunday entitled, "Outside the Box," I was reflecting on how what I said in it really pushed my thinking around the things we do in education, the everyday actions we take in schools that respect students and families, the status quo that we allow without questioning it because it's easier, or because we don't think the people above us are listening and so why bother speaking up anyway...

The part I vlogged about (watch here) that I want to follow up on has to do with the little girl who was sneaking extra breakfast from the cafeteria for her mother, who was waiting for her in a little-used staircase of the school after the bell rang and all of the students and staff had begun their morning work.  My first reaction was not, as one might typically think, one of anger or surprise or "you-can't-take-food-that-you-didn't-pay-for."

My response was (much to the admonishment of our cafeteria manager) to ask what else she needed and to bring her trays full of the remaining food that would have otherwise gone to waste.
My response was to question why we didn't see this before;
My response was to challenge staff and faculty to think about the ways in which we were currently meeting the needs of our kids and families so that they didn't have to worry about coming to school hungry, or worry about their families at home who didn't have the luxury of coming to a schoolhouse during the day, where there was food and words of praise and bathrooms that worked and heat in the winter months.

These were my responses, meant to challenge and push our thinking, meant to offer something different from traditional, status quo thinking.  We didn't change the world with our discussions, but we did work hard to make a difference in the lives of the students and families we served.  We did work hard to think differently about the challenges our families faced and how we could better offer developmentally appropriate resources and services to these kids while they were in our care.

This extended beyond the school day, as well, because we know that extreme need doesn't stop when kids walk out of our doors at 3:15pm every day.  We connected with a neighborhood resource center to offer parents free English classes in the evenings, free computer classes so they could help themselves get a job and connect with the world beyond their immediate, poverty-ridden neighborhood; we worked with the local community college and one of our high school teachers who knew a thing or two about gardening, to help our families start a garden right on school property so that they could plant and grow vegetables, and then sell them at a Farmer's Market that we all worked together to set up in the parking lot every Friday throughout the summer; we created a partnership with a local church to start a weekend program for at-risk youth that met at the school to offer a safe haven and also served to provide a weekend meal and some strong relationships with adults and older teens.

My purpose here is not to brag on all of the great things we did - however, we don't do enough bragging on all of the awesome things we do for kids and families - but to make the point that Outside the Box Thinking is a desperate need on many levels.  It provides solutions for students and families that no one has ever thought of before (provided we are asking the right questions), and has the added benefit of - hopefully - giving the adults doing the serving, doing the thinking, doing the questioning, a much needed shot in the arm of creative energy.

This is passion work!
This is work of the heart!

It might even allow us to reclaim our purpose in this field,
because if you think that you are here to teach content,
you're wrong;
kids can find anything they need online.
Anything at all,
anytime at all.
What they really need is you, is
human connection, is
someone to think outside the box about the "problems" in education -
problems for which most adults have,
unfortunately,
thrown in the towel because they are too hard to solve.