The Beauty of Simplicity

Cutting and pasting.

Unless I am am using the Ctrl+X or Ctrl+V shortcuts in Microsoft Office, this is rarely an activity I participate in.

This afternoon, though, I perused a stack of magazines and searched for my identity - sort of. Tomorrow's culture-building goal is the conclusion that without the identities of the individuals, the team, the group, the family that BUILD is can not be complete. As the teacher, mine, of course, is the example.

For some time, the words that quickly came to mind when I thought about the "personality and character that make up my personality" were passionate, enthusiastic, ambitious, and often, loud. Today, though, I could not get the following phrase out of my head: beauty of simplicity. It is not symbolic of passion or enthusiasm or ambition, and it certainly is not representative of loud. The thought, the phrase, the words in succession, though, do symbolize and represent a pretty intense realization: I do not want those words to define me.

They have in the past, and I recall quite clearly that at those times -whether in the classroom or outside of it - not only was my stress level higher than the summit of Everest, but my effectiveness was compromised as well. The simple things took a back seat to the ambitious goals I set out to reach, and I lost focus of the big picture. The simple, beautiful moments of everyday were covered in fog thicker than that over San Francisco on an August morning.

I was eating a "real California burrito" a few weeks ago with my friend Erik, and he was marveling over the unique shapes and curls of the tortilla chips and devised a plan to meditate on it. Afterward, we went to 7-11 for a Slurpy, a frozen treat he was more than delighted in. During this time, I laughed at him because, of course, there were more important things to be thinking of, more ambitious things to be doing than meditating on fried cornmeal. The idea just seemed bizarre. Instantly, as if he had been waiting for years to tell me this, he said: It's the simple things, Leslie.

Since then, I have not really thought about what he said, but today, when I was searching for my identity in a stack of magazines I would never read - donated by a colleague to use in class - I remembered what he said. As I reflected on the work I do with enthusiasm and ambition for the cause I fight for with passion, the only place my mind could take me was to that phrase: the beauty of simplicity.

Oscar greeting me with a handshake before class, Alvin offering a tissue to Durell and receiving a "thank you," Freddrick eagerly asking if his answer to #1 is correct and gloating that "My Space" is in fact the answer, Natalie proudly telling of her broken heart over a middle school crush in her changing moment...

Venn Diagramming similarities and differences as a get-to-know-you activity, receiving e-mails that say nothing more than "You are a gift," smiles, funny looking magnets, fresh one-dollar bills, curly tortilla chips, 7-11 slurpies.

I think Erik was quite right. Life really happens in the beauty of simplicity.

A Culture of Comfort

I’m convinced that culture is the number one factor in student achievement. My friend Paymon backed it up (Apparently Wendy Kopp - founder and CEO of Teach For America told him). Yesterday we wrote changing moment stories, crumpled them up like the secrets they may be, and put them in a basket. We are opening them up (symbolic in the opening of the crumpled ball) and reading them. The positive risk is deciding to identify the story. Yesterday’s were not-so-intense - "Joining sports changed my life." "Coming to high school changed my life." But today we read Alvin’s, the random Chinese immigrant student in my E1 class at Tech. In it he detailed his poor upbringing in Chinese villages, his parents’ divorce and his separation from them, how his aunt and uncle saved every penny day by day, month by month to get him the proper medical care he needed to take care of the chronic asthma that almost killed him, and finally his reunion with his father here in California. He moved to America two years ago and finally received proper medical care (his asthma is nearly gone!!!). Unfortunately, he still feels uncomfortable around students because they make fun of the way he talks and the enthusiasm for our language and for learning - something they often take for granted. Inspiring that he shared it. More inspiring to me as an educator came at the end. At the end, Alvin wrote “I love you so much because you are the one who first called me sweetheart. I feel that comfortable and sweet that you called me that and pleas called nickname go-go.” Broken Chinese/English, but sweeter than my best friend Angel's mom's chocolate chocolate chip cookies.

Two days, and I already see an impact. How wonderful is the work we do? Here's to another day of strategically closing the achievement gap - culture first!

An Ideal First Day

ASWBAT complete a class Do Now.
ASWBAT define excellence in their lives and in BUILD.
ASWBAT identify a defining moment that led them to want to excel.

Agenda
Hand Shake
What is excellence?
Taking Positive Risks
Defining Moment

Vocabulary
Excellence
Positive Risk
Defining Moment

Salient Takeaways
To be in BUILD requires a Commitment to Excellence.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
Taking positive risks is necessary to excel.

Homework
Signed Commitment of Excellence
MJ Article (Optional)


The bell marking the beginning of third period rings at 10:37. As I enter the hallway I see hundreds of faces I do not recognize and have never met. Glancing down at my roster, I wonder if the smiles and the eyes that meet mine belonged to La Diamond or Oscar. Within the next five minutes I will find out.

At 10:52 the bell rings again, and the time was really now here. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” I say. Wide eyes and a few moving lips were all I saw. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” I say again. This time a few brave students responded. Looking down at their schedules, they meekly and rather quietly stated “Good morning, Miss Garner.” Pleased with their attempt at a mature salutation I begin my greeting.

“My name is Miss Garner. You may call me Miss Garner or Miss G. I will be your entrepreneurship instructor this year. Many of you may be wondering why you are standing in the hallway when every other student - I pause and give the teacher stare to a straggling upperclassman- is in their classroom. When you signed up for BUILD, you made a decision to be different. And this IS different, and it should feel that way. When you signed up for BUILD, you also made a decision to act like a professional. I wanted to start our very first class with a professional greeting. In just a few seconds, I am going to shake each of your hands as you want into the classroom. Once inside, you will find a sheet of paper and a note card on your desk. Please fill out the card completely and wait for instructions. Please do not say a word as you are walking in as I would like to maintain a calm, professional environment for our time together today.”
Finishing my opener, I see a number of bright, puzzled faces and hear the “she is trippin’” statement from a young woman in the back. I smile and shake the hands of the students walking into the classroom.

As the last student enters, I notice that they have followed my instructions: they are all silently completing the cards. After 120 grueling seconds pass, I ask all students to stop what they are doing, put their pen or pencil down, and track the speaker. Tracking, I tell them is when you focus all of your attention on the person who is giving information. I thank them for their excellent professionalism and conduct my very first role call. I instruct students to tell me something unique and special when I call their name. Modeling the expectation, I call my own name and respond “I am one of the first people in my family to graduate from college.” Timid and a bit apprehensive, they all oblige, and I begin and finish the list. I thank them again for their willingness to share something about themselves.

I now direct students to the Do Now for the day. I cold call LaRena to read it to the class. Loudly and clearly: “What is excellence? What is something in your life you excel at?” Next, I point to the objectives. This time, Brian is the target: “AhSwaBat” he begins. “All Students Will Be Able To,” I chuckle through. “Oh, All Students Will Be Able To…” I thank both “volunteers” and ask students to fill out the information on their Do Now sheet. I tell them that everyday we will begin with a warm up activity. This will jump start us into the day’s lesson and ensure we are on the right track. They begin.

After three minutes, I ask them to stop, and I cold call "volunteers” again.
Azeem tells of his success on the basketball court. Bernetta recounts her A+ in math class. Fred boldly reveals his passion for, you've got it, talking to girls and subsequently getting dates. Realizing he still has a little eighth grader in him, I smile and move on. I display Webster’s definition of the word and tell of my desire to be the best entrepreneurship teacher in the country. This desire to excel and this track record of excellence, I also tell them, is another thing that makes them different, and it is what BUILD is all about.

I provide a preface to my own personal history by telling students that the first step to excelling is TAKING POSITIVE RISKS. Byron defines risk as something you do that might not work out. I thank him for taking the risk of defining the word for the class and hand him $10. His eyes light up like a Christmas tree as do those of his peers, and with a smile I say to the class “Some risks are worth investing in, like all of you.” As I detail my own life and experiences to the place where these fantastic young minds and I meet, I see that the students are sincerely interested, and I finish telling them again: all of my accomplishments were possible because I took positive risks to excel.

Dasja eagerly volunteers (really this time) to pass out the Commitment of Excellence. As a class, we read over the entire document, and I reinforce my commitment to them. Some students have a shocked look upon their face as they realize that a component of this class will be after school and that they won’t actually start their businesses until their sophomore year. I counter this with a question: “Is it worth the positive risk?”

Continuing on with this initial lesson, I share the story of Suzanne, BUILD’s founder and current CEO. I tell them of her days as the “business lady” and her choice to support business owners and teenagers in East Palo Alto over the incredibly lucrative job at a big law firm in New York, of Michael Jordan’s determination to be the best basketball player when he was cut from the team in high school, and of a student at Tech who wanted so badly to leave BUILD but whose team made it to the final round at the Business Plan Competition. Bringing this concept back to something of relevance, I finally get their attention back.

“All of these individuals had a defining moment,” I tell the class. “They encountered something that changed the way the thought about themselves and their dreams and their goals.” For Suzanne is what the thought of what would happen to these students if they dropped out of high school to start a business. For Michael it was being cut. For Byron it was not feeling successful. For me it was eating cottage cheese.

The puzzling looks return.

“After my freshman year of college,” I begin, “I was told that I had to eat cottage cheese. I was not asked or given the option. In fact as it turned out eating cottage cheese was a matter of life or death. For the eleven months prior to this time I starved myself. I lost nearly 25 pounds, leaving only 96 on my 5’8” frame. My blood counts were at a level that should have put me down for the count. Miraculously they did not. Despite this information, I still refused to eat. I was in a selfish, self-absorbed world, and nothing mattered to me more than being thin. So, I was forced into a hospital and on my first day, forced to eat cottage cheese. As the weeks during this time passed, of the many realizations I had was that the person I had become was very unlike the person I used to be. As I started to regain strength and anticipated my return home, my spirit changed, and I made a decision to get better and to use the greater part of my life to focus not on myself but on others. For the remainder of my college career and until this point, I have not backed down from that commitment. If it weren’t for the anorexia, I may not be here with you today. I took a positive risk to get better. If that didn’t happen, I may not be here with all of you today. I took a positive risk just now, too.”

”When you join BUILD, you join a family of students, parents, mentors, community leaders and staff members who dedicate much of their time and lives to helping each and every one of you grow. What distinguishes our family is that unlike a lot of regular families and classes, one of the most important parts is developing a culture where we know one another’s strengths and weaknesses and stories. After all, our stories are what make us special.” Now, the kids look even more in shock. In fact, they are speechless.

Shocked and speechless yet focused, I hand each student a piece of paper, and I invite them to join the BUILD family by sharing a defining moment. I tell them that the moment they share should be an event, situation, or time in their life when something happened to change who they were or where they were going with their life.

“Are you going to read this?” I hear from the back. “Everyone is,” I respond. I tell the class the procedure, and as silently as they listened when I shared my defining moment, the students begin to write. With ten minutes remaining in our first class of the year, three student moments are read, and to my excitement, the day is successful. They all identify themselves. I congratulate all of them for taking that positive risk and with a smile, I close out the class.

The bell rings again. It’s 11:42, and two of my newest students are joining me for lunch. How very lucky I am. They’re sold.

The Antidote

Seven weeks ago I moved to San Francisco. It truly is a magical city, and as I write, I stare out my window onto the beautiful bay and across it to the east. When the fog rolls in during the evening, it looks like a blanket over a sleeping baby. When I drive across the bridge in the morning, it slowly recedes, revealing Oakland. The biggest difference between the figurative baby and Oakland is that, unfortunately, the infantile innocence does not exist there. I thought for some convoluted reason that living in San Francisco among the vibrance, the culture, the story-telling hills, and the rapturous elegance would leave me immune to the virus that has infected the city across the bridge. I quickly realized that immunity does not exist, and if it did, it would only leave me lonely and paralyzed, ignorant and purpose-less. So, ignorant I am not, and infected I will not become. My hope is that the young people I serve at BUILD won't either. I pray that they will see education as the antidote.

I visited Oakland Technical High School this week - one of the schools I will teach entrepreurship in this fall. When I went, other than the fact that it is a comprehensive high school, I noticed something very different. The palate making up the student body is much more colorful than before. Unlike my experience in St. Louis, only 60% of the population is African American. What is not differerent, however, is the level of achievement of these black students.

I took a look at the data from last year's state assessment. Comparatively, 73% of white ninth graders were proficient or above in English while only 16% of black freshmen were. In 10th grade, the gap increased - 79% and 13% and for juniors, 87% and 13%. Quickly it became evident: the mission of both organizations I have worked for contains the wrong language. It is not just about socioeconomic status. Serving students in under-resourced schools at large is important, but serving under-resourced, under-achieving black students is essential if we are truly going to change the community.

I have been battling this thought in my head for days primarily because the reality is too hard to face. The numbers are too hard to read and analyze. The news is too devastating to accept, particularly in the wake of a series of violent crimes and murders plaguing the city. But facing and reading and analyzing is what I must do to ensure that my black students get what they deserve and what they need to be the positive agents of change themselves.

Everyday I look at my necklace, and I read what Gandhi said: "Be the change you wish to see in the world." I actually do not know the context surrouding its initial utterance, but as I become acclimated again with being a positive change in students' lives - showing them unconditional love, investing time and resources in them, teaching them, learning from them, treating them as human beings - I realize that it is not so much about the gap or about the color of their skin or about the crime. Being the change here is about compassion and about making the choice not to lose sight of the vision of equity.

My students will achieve entrepreneur status by May 2007 whether the virus is eliminated from the streets or not. My students will be entrepreneurs regardless of the gap. My students will be entrepreneurs, and this entrepreneurial education they are given will be the catalyst. They will be the antidote. They will be the change.