Maybe You Pictured Someone Else

Something a bit unusual happened here last week. This post traveled a good deal further than I expected it to, and it seems that I have quite a few new subscribers as a result. Welcome! I’m really glad you’re here. I’m also noticing that a few of you found me through Trevor, too. And I have to be honest: All of this new traffic is worrying me a bit because regardless of how you landed here, I fear that I’m at risk of confusing you.

I Owe You An Origin Story of Sorts

So, here’s me and what I’m up to here, if it helps: I was an intense kid who grew up in hard places. I hated school, but I loved writing. And I loved writing because I spent a lot of time confined to my bedroom without any source of entertainment other than books, borrowed on semi-regular visits to our local library with my mom. Those trips were pure bliss, but when I returned home, I often found myself escorted back to solitary confinement. So, I read. And when I ran out of stories to read, I wrote my own. Then, I read them back to myself.

Most teachers and social workers assumed a great deal about kids like me back then. Some still do. And sometimes, those assumptions are a tiny bit accurate. Most of the time they aren’t though, and that’s often because teachers are privileged in ways that the kids they’re making assumptions about are not. They can’t really wrap their heads around their experiences and the strengths they have. They tend to see and speak deficit. They tend to assume that their literacies are the only ones that matter. They tend to develop a bit of a savior complex. They center themselves in the learning experience a bit too confidently.

But those kids like me? At least a few of them are privileged in ways that their teachers cannot imagine.

It’s true.

The Real Gifts of My Imperfect Upbringing

My childhood experiences offered insights about relationships, learning, and trauma-informed practice that are hard to intuit or learn absent of that often brutal reality. Those experiences made me an enthusiastic, joyful reader and a writer. They attuned me to power dynamics and individual behaviors that many need training and a set of red flags to even notice as well. They also fostered a deep appreciation for learning. No one should have to endure pain in order to appreciate learning, but I did, and I do.

Learning is liberation.

Learning is life.

And learning makes me very wary of stuffy academics who cling to conventions in order to protect their own power and comfort. I was fortunate to have just a handful of teachers who were able to inspire my learning at school. Most knew how to distinguish their authority from their earned credibility. They taught me much. They informed my perspectives.

I held them close when I entered my own classroom in 1993 and when I became an instructional coordinator for a local board of cooperative education services here in NYS in 2004. These perspectives inspired me to open a writing studio for kids and teachers in 2008, too. I became an independent professional learning facilitator at the same time. Those perspectives kept me grounded. It was there, in my studio and facilitation work, that many young writers who presented as “reluctant” or “resistant” became my greatest teachers. I’m well read and take care to keep up with dominant discourse.

Studying children, documenting that learning, and doing a far different kind of data work than most were doing 2004-2019 taught me more, though.

For instance, I learned a great deal about graphocentrism in those spaces. I began to notice the way we tend to privilege print, too. It took a little more time for me to realize how my passion for reading, writing, and teaching English was a problem. How my own perseveration on print was limiting some of my students’ potential to produce it well (and yes, of course, print matters very much).

It took even longer for me to turn my research interests outside of my English education bubble, too. Interrogating how western schools—and English classrooms in particular—came to be was a hard and necessary education. It continues to be, but I have far more company now.

I took my unlearning one action research project at a time, documenting and blogging and building a community as I went. Each time a research cycle ended, I published my findings and gave them back to the field. I didn’t expect to make a dime, I didn’t negotiate my marketing terms with my publishing team, and I didn’t ask to be platformed, put on stages, or paid attention to.

I didn’t want to be, honestly.

I wanted to continue learning beside kids and teachers in classrooms. And this is what I still get to do. I spend most of my days in K-12 company, supporting multiliteracy curriculum design and instruction and coaching pedagogical documentation in schools. It seems we’ve been solving some rather high stakes “literacy problems” together this way, while creating truly authentic learning experiences for kids. I work and live small, and I’m glad for that.

I’m also looking forward to getting to know all of you who are new here as well.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

You might understand my purposes here a bit better now. My Sunday posts are for everyone who follows my work here. Wednesdays are just for friends in professional learning facilitation. Fridays are for writers and those who teach writing.

If you found me because someone emailed you my post on the curse of expertise, here’s what I suspect: You might have read it and pictured someone you knew. That guy on the stage. The consultant who talked down to a room full of your colleagues who knew more than he did. It is satisfying to picture him. I did it too, as I was writing last week.

But I also imagine that at least a few of you felt the floor tilt a little, because you saw yourself somewhere in there. I know that I did, and that recognition might hurt because it’s a harder thing, but it’s also far more useful. It’s also the reason I’m writing about all of this again today.

When I feel that pull to perform my expertise, I recognize it as armor now. I only reach for it when I’m feeling under attack now, and that’s rare. Most of the time, I’ve been able to do good discovery work before I’m showing up to be of service anywhere. When I walk into any room full of people I haven’t had a chance to listen to just yet, I run the risk of assuming way too much, and I never want to assume. As long as I take care to listen and learn, I never feel the need to protect myself now. Even if the field continues to reward that armor.

We may continue to clap for the dazzling keynote or contract with the people who sound certain. Performing isn’t simply the easier choice, it’s very often the paid one, and that’s uncomfortable to mention in the midst of a season where everyone seems worried about the next contract. So is the criticism some facilitators carry about teachers, too. All that talk of resistance and deficit and what people supposedly do not know? It’s often protection.

It is easier to decide the people in front of us are the problem than to ask whether our own refusal to come down off the stage is casting the very shadow we keep pointing at. It’s troubling to me how many consultants perpetuate these narratives while continuing to profit off of the systems they remain so deeply cynical about.

And I guess I get it, sometimes. Even the most mighty expert in the field is only human after all, and humans get tired. We get scared. We’re messy and systems are hurtful and scarcity is intensifying the pain. Reaching for that armor is a human thing to do in these contexts. I’m no longer surprised by those who make that choice. I’m no longer surprised when I’m tempted to.

For what it’s worth, the other way of working isn’t at all mysterious, though. It looks like studying a system and its people before you design a single thing of consequence for it. Learning what’s already coming to life in a building, who the quiet experts are, what people are carrying this year in their work and in their lives. It looks like weaving small feedback loops through a day or an entire experience so you behave more like an anthropologist than an authority. So you can adjust to the people in front of you without ever relaxing the standards you were hired to pursue. It’s a slow start that saves everyone an enormous amount of time and grief later. It also asks you to be a contributor in the room rather than the point of it.

A Last Call

Here’s the part that matters most for those of you who are nodding your heads here: We can’t will ourselves off of the stages we’re paid to speak from. Nothing you’re reading here will change your posture the next time a room goes quiet before it implodes and you’re grasping for that old armor that’s still within reach.

Posture changes through practice, and practice needs good company. There’s no shame in needing that. It is simply how any of us changes anything.

That’s why I designed the Intentional Facilitator. We’re in the midst of a quiet welcome week right now. Registration closes at 6am EST on August 3rd, the same day we begin meeting in earnest. Pricing is tiered, and there’s a free seat with your name on it if cost is the only thing standing between you and this community. No explanation required. If you would rather talk it through first, reach out. I’d like that.

And if you are new here and not ready for any of that, stay anyway. Read along and connect with me in the comments. I’ve always believed that the expertise in any room—including this one—is shared. I’d love to know you better.