Take a close look at the human brain in the this photo. I taught my students: “Your brain is neurologically unique.” As a teacher it became my life’s work to uncover their unique learning styles and open the doors for their optimal learning.
Nelson Mandela once wrote:
"What counts in life is not the mere fact that we lived...
it is what difference we have made to the lives of others
that will determine the significance of the life we lead."
"Sometimes it is the very people
who no one imagines anything of
who can do the things no one imagined."
--Alan Turing
Framed over the entrance to my classroom:
"Forget the struggling world
and every trembling fear.
Here all are kin...
and here the rule of life is love.”
--Irving Stone, 1947.
(If students didn't see it overhead on the way in, they would come to feel it on their way out.)
A kind of déjà vu has shadowed me since my first days in the classroom, a sensation that I'd done this before, a feeling that I'd had many lifetimes in the classroom and that I was about to embark on yet another rewarding journey to live again the remarkable life of a teacher. But from where this déjà vu? If we go far enough back into my maternal ancestry, we find samurai populating our family history. They were more than warriors, they were teachers too. This time around however a new cast of characters would populate my journey: exceptional, diverse and inspiring students and colleagues alike who would trigger my growth as a teacher, and help me become the descendent of samurai in the classroom.
ACT I: First member of the cast, Lillian Hagen, principal of Foothill High School.
But first, an invitation. Read the Afterword before going further. Why? You might ask. Because that's one of the concepts I wanted my students to learn... that not everything is linear, that not every lesson has to go from A to Z and that there are different ways of experiencing time. For more, go to Chronosphere
Lillian Hagen had been a WAC but now she'd become a high school principal. She had just hired three former nuns, Kathy Manulkin, Pat Berberich, and Jules Teissere. A group of 375 nuns had just chosen to relinquish their vows to become a lay community rather than cave in to Cardinal McKintyre who mandated they continue to wear full length habits while teaching. What sense was ther in teaching a class of kindergarteners on the floor in a full length habit? They needed more freedom to do the work that needed doing with those who "didn't have". Since they had chosen to leave their Sacred Heart Community, the three were hired to teacj ”At Risk” students expelled from the other high schools in Pasadena.
Kathy and Pat would be my earliest images of teaching excellence founded on what I’ve come to call “The Farthest Reaches of Teaching.” That was 50 years ago... What if I could find them after all these years? (Scroll down to the video at the bottom of this page.)
Together, 375 nuns took independent action and began, among other things, wearing "civilian" clothing to school.Their Cardinal, unwavering, ordered them back into their traditional habits... "or else."They were dedicated, energetic, independent thinking young nuns, but they would not abide by the Cardinal's directive. The "or else" soon found a clear definition."Wear your Habits, or leave." A catholic version of "My way or the highway.” Determined, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary held on to their principles and voluntarily left the archdiocese becoming an independent lay community. (list other important reasons here). A grave loss for education in the Catholic church, but a windfall for Foothill High School in Pasadena where three of those dedicated sisters, Kathy Manulkin, Pat Burburich and Jule Tessere continued their mission to "create community, work as advocates for the marginalized, and campaign for social and economic justice and peace . . ."
After leaving Kathy was quickly hired as a teacher aide by Principal Lillian Hagan at Foothill Continuation High School in Pasadena. Encouraged by Lillian to get a California Teaching Credential, Kathy was soon a fully credentialed teacher working with “at risk” students at Foothill High. These were kids who had been expelled from the other Pasadena High Schools. So happy was Lillian with her new teacher, she asked Kathy if she knew of other's who might be interested in teaching. Lillian soon hired both Pat Berberich and Jule Tesierre.
Ten years earlier, I had been “expelled” out of my 5th grade catechism class for asking too many questions and other reasons similar to the those of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart. But that’s another story for another chapter. (relate to kids who get in trouble in school: The Chucky Thomas story.)
I began my career as a teacher aide for Kathy. Today I realize just how much she and Pat influenced my work as an educator and advocate for the marginalized and underserved public school students, hungry for social and economic justice. Someday, I will find a way to contact them, and tell them that their humanistic influence was the brightest beginning to my 39 year career as a teacher. I wanted to teach, I wanted to inspire students the way they did.
Pinned on Kathy’s classroom walls were posters splashed in bright colors, Dillan, other pop stars and three by Sister Corita Kent, one read:
“Who you are Speaks speaks so loudy People can’t hear what you say.”
I admired these former nuns for taking a stand against the out of date educational views of Cardinal McIntyre. Together their actions spoke loudly, inspired me as a first year teacher and painted a magnificent landscape for my future as an educator.
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Kathy and Pat were two of the five most important early influences of my teaching career. After 50 years I located Kathy Manulkin, and Pat Berberich who together framed my earliest moments in the classroom. My students over the following 39 years would be the beneficiaries of their wisdom. Here is a recording of our second chat (the first was not recorded) Important influences, Lillian Hagan, Greta Pruitt, Jim Compeau.
Video #1 Pat recalls Saint James Community as a response to: What was the source that inspired your student centered teaching?
What good fortune... starting my teaching careerin the company of such self-actualized human beings.
1969 was a very good year, but there was more about to unfold. Something that would shape the scope of education across the entire nation. His name was Manuel Real.
Greta Pruitt was a most extraordinary principal but I didn't know that when I landed at the Pasadena Alternative School. She deserves a chapter all by herself, but here, it will suffice to say that she was magic with all of us at PAS, staff and students alike. She had taken Troy under her wing even though he was a troubled student. Ask Greta to tell us more.
She recently informed me that Troy had passed away but my memories of Troy remain indelible. In spite of his disability (early childhood polio), Troy Tolley signed up for my 7 day Baja California Expedition. He was not going to be held back during the trekking portion of the trip even though walking was difficult for him. Troy also carried the considerable weight of heavy armor that must have come from years of being picked on. He was quick tempered, stubborn, and prone to outbursts, rendering me reluctant to take him on such a long journey. Instead of rejecting his participation, I said his behavior on our three “shake down” trips would determine his place on the expedition. Shakedown trips were day long hikes, the last one overnight, where trip staff could gather data on how kids might fare under more exhausting trip expedition conditions.
Troy passed the shakedown rigors but showed that he required extra supervision to stay out of trouble. He agreed to travel with me so I could keep an eye on him.
Soon we crossed the border into Mexico, headed for La Bufadora, a geologic feature in Baja California a few miles south of Ensenada. It was the first day of our Baja Backpacking Trek.
As is common on long drives with kids, they were engaged in "I spy". Along the route, students in my van spied a ranch and a sign: "Horse Rides".
Horseback Riding
A surprising and mystifying swell of enthusiasm erupted from Troy as he spied the horses. It was and the and now I know why. Troy had spent alot of time with his school principal, Greta Pruitt, at her La Cañada ranch above Pasadena. There, Greta taught him how to ride and care for one of her horses. She recognized in Troy that her ranch and a stubborn horse would be a good match for Troy.
THE MEANING OF A SINGLE MOMENT
The formative years. Pre-adolescence, Teenagers, The school years. Coming of age.. The time when we are most impressionable. These are the moments when teachers have the opportunity to light the fire in the minds of students sitting in classrooms around the world. This is what I chose to do with my life, And this is the "journal" of that journey.
It was 1972 when Harry Chapin picked up the entertainment section of the New York Times and read a performance review. Inspired he wrote the first draft of one of his hit songs, Mr. Tanner. It was a story of broken dreams. It was 1973 and I was in the formative period of my teaching career. Along with Abraham Maslow, Martin Tubridy (Mr. Tanner), Dr. Barbara Clark, Chucky and Frankie Thomas and many other students became the underlying foundation of my unplanned but most meaningful career in teaching. And this is thier story
The critics, the scouts:
"Scouts saw what The New York Times later described as "a smart passer with a flawed jump shot and a thin frame, who might not have the strength and athleticism to defend, create his own shot or finish at the rim in the N.B.A."
"How many moments in my own life did I pass up the ball or hold myself small?
How many times did I turn in that assignment, or not audition for that thing or not put my name as number one on the sheet? How many times did I not wave someone off? That's what that moment meant to me.--- Hasan Minhaj For context, watch 38 At The Garden. Click HERE, or below.
38 At the Garden about Linsanity, Linpossible, the inspiring Jeremy Lin.
Even when I'm on stage and look into the eyes of my audience, I see so many broken dreams."
"Wait a second, I don't have to work at Deloitte? ...it's this moment, it broke the matrix for us ."
--quoted from same as above
"Ït represents possibility and an expansive world view at the highest possible level. The biggest thing Linsanity brought was hope, it inspired people. And it showed that when you chase your dreams, good things can happen." --Jeremy Lin I want the next generation to grow up being ... proud of your culture, your upbringing, your parents, your appearance, your talents, your personality. I want them to be proud to be themselves. To be equal and have a fair chance to be their fullest self. To not have to deal with the everything that the previous generations had to deal with.."
He is a most visceral example of getting to be a part of a world that had never really had space for you before. == asian journalist
It was a heroic moment. It was a moment so many people had not experienced but wanted to experience. Hollywood, the world, like we didn't have these heroic moments... It was always boxed into the ... stereotype.
As a teacher, I dreamed for my students that number would be small, and by the time they left my class, the number of times they held themselves small in the future, would be zero.
ABOUT TROY
So we stopped to stretch our legs. Troy became an undeniable salesman persuading me that because he had years of experience on horses, it would be safe to allow him to go horseback riding. He was the only experienced rider.
While a ranch hand went to get a saddle, Troy leaped onto the horses back. They were off in a sprint. My god, I’ve never seen a more splendid vision. I was taken a breath. Troy had become god-like riding bareback on a swift stallion. It was a remarkable transformation from a wobbling limp to a swift horse mounted warrior. I remember that ride in slow motion, Troy like a king racing to the horizon. His peers were astonished, they’d never seen this magnificent, shining image of Troy,
I thought of Troy when I was in Japan recently. Slide the video scrubber to 1:03. You will see how I remember Troy Tolley. It’s been 45 years but I can still feel that moment in time with Troy.
Include more:
1. my life passing before my eyes skydiving vision,
2. silent heart attack
3. the death of my son,
4. sitting through last breaths of a dying colleague
5. Community service student deals with the death of his new friend in a nursing home.
6. Stopped a kid sitting on the window sill, second floor contemplating suicide at Pasadena Alternative School.
7. I’m called out of my classroom to stop a suicide.
On another note:
For the Flip edition of the book: Expedition Institute,
Right side up, the student edition of the Field Guide.
Upside down and from the back, the teacher’s edition
How do teachers create an inclusive architecture for learning?
Brain Based Teaching, that is curriculum founded upon brain research seems like a no-brainer. It has never been codified, but educators have always been in the brain business. We engage not 36 students but 36 unique and diverse neural landscapes that have divergent ways of learning.
Memorizing the multiplication tables is essential making it logical to conclude that memorization is the best way to learn everything else. This is a major reason that 40-60% of kids starting in kindergarten “fail to graduate” from high school. Actually, their failure to graduate is an institutional failure to understand brain science: that kids, beyond rote learning have other learning styles that schools have failed to accommodate.
“Rote learning is of limited usefulness in the universe of education”. --tnm
If we don't know about the human brain and learning, we are like someone sitting in the pilots seat of a 747 who has never ever flown a plane.
Every teacher, administrator and educational policy maker should get a degree in the science of the brain and learning, or at least take a few courses.
That degree in the Brain and Learning might start out like this.
The Brain and Learning 101
Maximize the positive learning atmosphere of the classroom environment through trust building activities and teachable moments. See more at: coming soon.
The human brain is a novelty engine, it is designed to seek out novelty in the environment for survival. It is designed to be intolerant of repetition. It is designed to turn off repetition. Here's an example. Two of your students get a job at a Crispy Kreme shop and arrive at work for the first day on the job. They are instantly immersed in the sensory sensation: the smell of freshly fried donuts. With every breath they inhale, the brain receives neural impulses from the nose: great donuts!
But after 30 minutes, they no longer smell donuts. Well, their brains are still getting the signals, but because they are not important for survival, the brain tunes them out. The human brain abhors repetition.
So what does the brain need for learning to take place?
Historically, teachers have worked predominantly in the cognitive domain teaching science, history, literature and mathematics for example. The kids who succeed (about 40-60%) are Cognitive Learning dominant. But this only represents one of four learning modalities:
The Four Primary Learning Domains: COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE, INTUITIVE/NARRITIVE,
KINESTHETIC SENSORY MOTOR
Learners, also vary in another perhaps more important way, chronospherically, how they navigate time: chronemics.
Here is an example of how time influences what we see and what we learn.
Students on the other hand burst into traditional classrooms with a diversity of neural learning styles. Schools that recognize this and design for inclusion increase the number of students who successfully reach graduation.
1. Integrate learning beyond the cognitive learning domain by creating lessons that are also affective, intuitive and kinesthetic.
The kinesthetic physiology of neural transmission: An Example of Integrative Curriculum by Toby Manzanares.
1. Neurotypical learners: About 60 percent of public school kids graduate high school from a traditional one-size-fits-all education, where typical auditory and rote learning methods are common and based on lectures, taking notes and memorizing facts. But the drop out rate across the country at the time ranged between 40 and 60 percent. I recognized that many of my too-bright students had been in schools not designed for those with a different neural landscape and yet they tried to “fit” into the way classes were taught. They weren’t failures, but without choice, school systems were failing so many children. There was nothing left for them but to drop out of school.
Watching a TED Talk back in 2010I heard the word “neurotypical” for the first time. Something clicked, I put the talk on pause and took notes feverishly. I started running word permutations in my head looking for the right term to describe the genius class kids I’d experienced over my 39 years in the classroom who were the opposite of neurotypical.
As I thought about my first students at Foothill High who had been expelled or kicked out of their traditional high schools in Pasadena the word NeuroUnique flashed into my thinking! That was exactly the word I needed to describe my students, they were Neurounique, the opposite of neurotypical and since schools were not designed for them, they were often found in trouble or worse, they were forced out of school. I found them to be exceptional classroom assets and capable of exciting other students into rousing discussions that lifted the entire class.
Definition: When I coined the term neurounique, I had in mind students who learned in ways not honored in traditional schooling. They learned “outside the box”, in ways that were beyond neurotypical. Some were kinesthetic learners who learned best when lessons included movement connected to the lesson, some were intuitive, while others were dominated by a “social/emotional” learning style. I had just learned about integrative learning understood that these kids needed it, and were not getting it. That explained everything.
They asked insightful, brilliant questions. Such smart kids, why had they been kicked out of school? When I searched their school records, I found the opposite of what I expected. I had two to three times the number of gifted students populating my classes. So why had they not been getting straight A’s? Education was a one-size-fits-all operation with the belief that all kids learned the same way. I’d only been teaching a few weeks but I’d already seen that not all kids learned by rote learning. They were not neurotypical. From class discussions, I saw that these kids were in possession of a highly evolved sense of justice, but why? Were they were too smart for their own good? These questions would shape my career as a teacher. So why had they been kicked out of school and how did they come to be in possession of such an advanced sense of justice. Was I among future Supreme Court judicial minds? With the data in hand (triple the number of gifted students in my classes) these questions launched me on a quest for answers that took me first to the school principal, the district's gifted coordinator and to the superintendent of schools. None knew that so many gifted kids had been expelled from school, none had any answers to my ticklish questions. Then came a epiphany, hadn't I heard there was Masters in Gifted Education at a nearby university? Off I went.
At California State University Los Angeles, I found a graduate program created by Dr. Barbara Clark where I could get a master’s degree in Gifted Education. She was writing her landmark text Growing Up Gifted which she based on actual classroom experiences. As one of her graduate students with students of our own, she capitalized on our vast collective classroom experience to inform the architecture of her book based on brain research.
2. Neurounique learners on the other hand excel when 4 or more learning modalities are integrated into the architecture of learning. Kinesthetic, emotional, intuitive, and cognitive experiences are at the foundation of learning.
3. Narrative learners. The best foundation for long term memory is built on story telling. Around a campfire, Cheyenne grandparents tell the story of Jumping Mouse, a teaching myth, to their grandchildren. The story teaches a sacred value to the next generation about “giving away”, the importance of sharing even when you have little. Jumping Mouse is a chapter in Seven Arrows, a book by Hyemyohsts Storm that was controversial amongst Cheyenne elders because it revealed sacred powers to non-indians.
A small book mark fell from a book I was reading. On it was printed a bar code and an unusual reference to size from a clothing package.
Instead of large, medium, or small, it read:
“SIZE: One size fits all.”
Sounds alot like the way most classrooms have been historically organized under a belief that:
“all students learn the same way.”
It’s a flawed basis for education since there is no “one way to teach all children.” Beginning with the industrial age, schools also became assembly lines with kids coming off conveyor belts like cars exiting the end of Ford’s Model A Assembly building. Like Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, the architecture of learning historically has only worked for about 60% of all the kids in school, which explains why the drop out rate dial swings between 40% and 60%. What about the kids who have different ways of learning, different neural landscapes?
Some of us weren’t cut out for assembly line schooling. I discovered during my first year of teaching that my classes boasted two to three times the rate of gifted students. Since Foothill High School was a school for drop outs, such a high incidence of bright kids seemed like a contradiction. They asked such brilliant questions, I was puzzled as to why they hadn’t been successful in school. That’s when I met Chucky Thomas.
“One of the goals of education should be
to teach that life is precious.”
Abraham Maslow
Next outing, in sun's setting light, look for people who pause to cast westward their vision. It's not that the sun is setting as much as it is that the horizon is rising. As long as I can remember when seeing westward gazers at sunset, I habitually turned round to see what it was that they were not seeing. So too, in The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, published the same year I stepped into the classroom, did Abraham Maslow. In 1968, he wrote: "It is as if Freud supplied us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy half."
Maslow turned round to see what all other psychologists did not see. He shown floodlights on the positive qualities in people, as opposed to examining their deficits. He studied the farther reaches of our nature. From this genesis did I carry forward a new vision into the classroom. Across the arc of my teaching career it became my mission to find in each child what others did not see. Maslow died two years later, but the torch of his far reaching human nature continues to carry on through my colleagues, students and their students. In my dreamscape I wish that you too seek the best in those whom you encounter, that which others cannot see. ttps://teachersamurai.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2020-04-29T10:06:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=21&by-date=false
The first week of school is pivotal in sharing with students the explicit architecture of their new learning environment. So I begin each semester with a philosophical orientation founded on this quote:
"All life is education and everybody is a teacher
and everybody is forever a pupil."
--Abraham Maslow
Here is the landscape: I dream that each of you will teach me something this year, something profound or a thought as simple as a quotation.
One of the reasons I've gotten smarter over the years is that I have 200 students teaching me so many important things. While you have six teachers this semester, I have 200 of you each teaching me some thing I never knew. Let's make the most of it! You now know that I will become wiser because of you.
Important to me was setting into motion a properly planted seed, a thought that might grow into a theme to frame for students the passing of our time together.
So now, I hope to continue that tradition with you. Though you are reading this little book, learning some of what I have learned, I too hope to learn from you. Keep in touch. --Toby Manzanares
To overcome our fear of greatness, we must learn to move boldly towards our goals, while simultaneously maintaining humility in the awareness that we are all after all “human, all too human”. Or as Maslow explained:
“For some people this evasion of one’s own growth, setting low levels of aspiration, the fear of doing what one is capable of doing, voluntary self-crippling…are in fact defenses against grandiosity, arrogance, sinful pride, hubris. There are people who cannot manage that graceful integration between the humility and the pride which is absolutely necessary for creative work. To invent or create you must have the “arrogance of creativeness” which so many investigators have noticed. But, of course, if you have only the arrogance without the humility, then you are in fact [delusional]. You must be aware not only of the godlike possibilities within, but also of the existential human limitations….If you can be amused by the worm trying to be god, then in fact you may be able to go on trying and being arrogant without fearing [delusions of grandeur]…This is a good technique.” -Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature
Abraham Maslow was a leading-edge teacher who frequently asked his students:
“Who among you will write a great novel, or become a great leader or composer? Generally everybody starts giggling, blushing, and squirming until I ask: 'If not you, then who else?' If you deliberately plan to be less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you’ll be deeply unhappy for the rest of your life. You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.” --From his book: The Farther Reaches of Human Nature
While Maslow's iconic actualization hierarchy is widely known, I just learned that Maslow never himself depicted his Hierarchy of Needs as a pyramid. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/who-created-maslows-iconic-pyramid/#:~:text=We%20traced%20the%20pyramid%20that,motivation%20at%20the%20lowest%20cost”.
And while this revelation is surprising, what is most interesting to me is that in 1938 Maslow spent 6 weeks living in Siksika learning the Blackfoot way of life. In this context, Maslow's work on self actualization can be reinvigorated with the Blackfoot Community Actualization as a way of life. It's time for a new biography of Abraham Maslow. It's time for Community Actualization to become the new icon for the Farther Reaches of Human Nature.
“When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready… The teacher will Disappear.” ― Tao Te Ching
Teaching has been an inspiration, which is one of the reasons I'm writing* this book. That inspiration, now motivation, came from my students and colleagues. And so I wanted to tell you their stories and how their influence awakened a renewing and animating spirit that for 39 years moved me to continue teaching. But just like I told my students. "Don't believe me. Don't believe me because I'm your teacher. I could be misinformed or mistaken. You have my invitation to be skeptical of everything I say, everything you hear and see and read.*
Ask yourself, "Who said that? (based on what expertise) Who wrote this? Who paid for the making of this such and such media content or that video? What's the motivation behind this editorial or that brochure? Find other sources to prove or disprove what you learn from me or what you hear from anyone else.
*(Written in present tense, that sentence reveals that the writing of this book continues on NeuroUnique, one of my websites.)
Try these questions on this next sentence.
Teachers make a remarkable and unimaginable difference in the lives of their students.
My thesis: teachers make little known but unimaginable differences in the lives of their students. But don't believe me... here's more.
Before we end, here is a list of “Must Sees” and “Must Reads”.
Film: 1. Dead Poets Society. When watching, take notes about what Keating does that are characteristic of a great teacher. We’ll compare notes when you’ve seen the film and read “Oh Captain, My Captain”.
Books: 1. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Abraham Maslow
"Your children are not your children They are the sons and daughters of life's longing ... They come through you but not from you And though they are with you yet they belong not to you You may give them your love but not your thoughts For they have their own thoughts You may house their bodies but not their souls For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams You may strive to be like them But seek not to make them like you For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday You are the bows from which your children As living arrows are sent forth The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite And he bends you with his might That his arrows may go swift and far Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness For even as he loves the arrow that flies
So he loves also the bow that is stable." --Kahil Gibran
It occurs to me that teachers are, at the same moment, both the archer and the bow: we imagine our student's mark upon the path of the infinite.
And we bend so that our students may go swift and far from bows which are stable. We do this in gladness for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow and we might strive to be like them. Teaching is not for the faint of heart but for those with strong open hearts capable of bending when students need us to go beyond the curriculum of academics and reach for what our students need most.
