4000 x 4000 x 6000

Last Friday, our seventh grade buddies came to see us. We've seen them about five times so far since we began, and it is delightful every time. The classroom becomes quiet, as both second and seventh graders get nervous to see each other, and they work together shyly, but with kindness.

The second graders had each prepared two questions to ask their buddies to get to know them better. When they arrived, 4 little boys and 3 big boys went into the half-classroom next to ours to meet. When I walked in, Anton was writing furiously on his index card while his buddy watched from the other end of a long table. Anton hadn't finished writing his questions ahead of time, and his buddy's distanced body language prompted me to walk in their direction right away.

"Anton," I said, "you don't have to write your questions down now. TJ is here, in front of you, so you can just ask him your questions. Writing them down was to help you remember them."

"Oh," he said, surprised. "Okay."

He looked down at his card, and I beckoned TJ to come closer.

"What is 4000 times 4000 times 6000?" Anton asked. When you are eight, 4000 times 4000 times 6000 is about the hardest problem you can think of.

"These are supposed to be questions to help you get to know TJ!" I laughed.

"But this is what I want to know," Anton protested.

"Why don't you ask him about his favorite things, or his family," I suggested.

"OK," he answered enthusiastically. Anton is a great conversationalist. He turned to TJ. "Where is your favorite fun place to go?"

TJ looked uncertain. "What do you mean? What kind of place?" he asked warily. This was a seventh grader who was not so sure about hanging out with second graders.

"I mean," Anton explained, waving his hands around as he talked, "Which do you like better, the circus, or the carnival, or the garden?"

"What do you mean by the garden?" I asked.

"You know, that big place where -- I can't remember what they're called, but they play hockey there," he said.

"You mean the TD Banknorth Garden?" TJ asked.

"Yes!" said Anton.

"Hmmm," TJ thought. "I think I like the Garden best."

"Yeah," Anton said. "I went to see Disney On Ice there. It was great. But, if you had to choose between the circus and the carnival, which would you choose?"

They continued their chat. Anton could be a talk show host. He is warm, loving, personable, and charming, and he drew TJ out as if he were the middle schooler and TJ were a shy eight-year-old. After awhile, they turned to a book they were reading together. I walked back next door.

When I returned a few minutes later, all 7 boys were clustered around a small round table in the middle of the room. The seventh graders were involved in a vigorous discussion of -- you guessed it -- 4000 times 4000 times 6000. The second graders were watching, fascinated.

They easily got 16,000,000, but then there were a lot of zeros to keep track of. They decided to put aside the zeros for now, and to concentrate on 16 times 6. They didn't have paper or pencil, so they were debating how to solve it mentally. Some solved 15 times 6, then added 6 more. Some did 10 times 6, then 6 times 6, and added the products. I got out a white board marker and handed it to them so they could figure out the zeros. They thought they knew the answer, but wanted to check it in writing.

I asked them questions as they worked. The second graders started inventing more hard problems. Their heads turned from left to right as they watched the seventh graders.

"Man," Anton said as they finished. "They are SMART!" I had to agree.

Male Wilderness Instructors: Old School vs. New School

Having had the opportunity this summer to lead trips with several male instructors, and to observe their habits and behaviors in their natural environment, I now believe myself qualified to share my understandings of the two major categories of wilderness guys: old school and new school.

I worked my first trip with perhaps the archetypal old school outdoorsman. In his fifties, Uncle Jeff had a wide variety of wilderness survival skills. I fully believe he could have extracted us from most kinds of scrapes we might have found ourselves in.

There was also a high likelihood of him causing us to be in a disaster. Uncle Jeff was so disorganized that he left the kids' meds behind on the first day (a 7-hour drive behind) and could rarely find the (only copy of) the map. He chastised the kids for being slow, only to be the last one ready each morning, and he never once lifted a finger to help make dinner, leaving the coordination of that task to -- who else? -- the two female leaders, of course. It was important to his ego to be first, so he led the way, whether by canoe or on the trail, rarely looking back, and usually unaware of how the group was faring. He made decisions quickly and without discussing them with me or my female co-instructor; one day, when the two of us weren't around, he suggested to the kids that we spend our last day of the trip at an amusement park instead of hiking. Upon our return, I was left with the unhappy job of being the mean lady who ixnayed that scheme. (Luckily I am used to playing the role of the mean lady, so I didn't mind too much.)

Yes, Uncle Jeff was old school: silent, stoic, tied to no one. Also, dictatorial, defensive, and misogynistic.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when I met Carl, my 24-year-old co-instructor for the second trip. To all appearances, Carl is your typical college student, concerned with maintaining a bronzed, muscular physique while still managing to consume as much beer as possible. But we had been prepping together for less than a day when he sat down beside me and announced, "I feel like we need to talk about leadership stuff." Carl, it turns out, wanted to discuss leadership styles: how we would make decisions together, how we would share responsibilities, our preferred modes of communicating and giving feedback, and when we would debrief each day. Yes, I was working with a new school wilderness guy.

Not only did he want to process each day with me in the evening and make decisions by consensus, he also wanted to check in, often more than once a day, about how we were working together. He was thoughtful, organized, and efficient, always keeping safety and Leave No Trace ethics in the forefront of his mind. When we agreed that there would be no place for homophobic comments on our trip, I asked that we also have no tolerance for the word "retarded." "I don't feel that way about that word," he responded. "But I have no problem pretending to feel that way to back you up." We were a united front. And no more evenings of the girls cooking dinner while the boys built fires: equality ruled in this partnership.

New school wilderness guys. They communicate. They check in. They process.

I may sound a little tongue-in-cheek about all of this, but the truth is, I learned a lot from this tan guy whose major interest in the frontcountry is kegstands. He set the tone, early on, of communication and mutual decision-making, and we worked well together. In fact, I am quite sure it was the closest I have come to what many couples with children experience as they make decisions together on a daily basis. The kids wanted to swim before dinner? "What do you think, Carl?" I would ask, and we would share our opinions before reaching a verdict. If I told them something, he backed me up, and vice versa -- we presented them with a united front.

At the end of the trip, I realized that this had been my first experience of teaching with someone as true, one-hundred-percent equals. I work and teach with other people all the time -- colleagues, community partners, student teachers, assistant teachers. Even when we strive to collaborate as equals, it is rarely ever the case that we truly have the same amount of power. I often work with others over whom I clearly have authority (student teachers or assistants). Or, in the case of collaboration between peers, one person often takes over as the de facto leader, whether out of personal style, experience, or just for simplicity's sake. To have the chance to operate as a true team, making constant decisions together and giving each other honest feedback, was a treat, and an unexpected one.

I didn't anticipate having that experience with someone still in college, and even less so with a guy. But that was my mistake -- I was expecting an old school outdoorsman. I had forgotten how well-trained the students of the new school are.

Intercultural communication in the woods

When I first came to teach in the city, I had to learn a new way to talk to children. Born and raised in a community of middle-class, white people, I spoke to children the way I had learned to in my culture. "Do you want to sit down now?" means "Sit down." (I know, it doesn't sound like it means "sit down," but most people raised by this culture know that's what it means.) "Is that how you clean up your dishes?" means "Clean up your dishes properly."

As outlined by Lisa Delpit in her life-altering (for me) piece "The Silenced Dialogue," working-class parents give their children more directives than do middle- and upper-class parents. They are more likely to say, very clearly, what needs to be done. (Delpit gives, as an example, the following line from a friend of hers: "'Boy, get your rusty behind in that bathtub.'") To those of us raised by parents and teachers who phrase directions as questions, these straightforward statements, which leave no question about who is in charge or what needs to be done, can seem jarring. We are used to the adults in charge pretending not to be in charge, or at least veiling the fact that they are the bosses. (Delpit contends that this reluctance to appear like an authority is "an attempt to reduce the implication of overt power in order to establish a more egalitarian and non-authoritarian classroom atmosphere." She furthermore suggests that "to act as if power does not exist is to ensure that the power status quo remains the same.")

Just as those used to indirect instructions can be discomfited by what seem like harsh words, children who are accustomed to being told clearly what to do may not know that a direction phrased as a question is indeed a direction. "Would you like to be quiet now?," when taken at face value, sounds like someone is offering you a choice. If you choose not to be quiet, a teacher unaware of this cultural divide may well label you as a disobedient child. And a working-class child taught by a teacher who couches orders in sweet, questioning tones may wonder why this teacher is such a pushover and isn't really in charge.

I highly recommend that, if you are unfamiliar with Delpit's article, you read it. There is a lot there, much more than I can cover in this blog. It is one of two or three pieces that have most affected the way I speak to children over the years, and I think about, and talk about, her ideas often. The first time Delpit's message came home to me, loud and clear, was when I was working as an AmeriCorps volunteer in a school and was sent to read with a boy who had arrived here from Nigeria the day before. "Can you read this sentence for me?" I would ask him. "Yes," he would reply, in the sweetest, most willing voice, and then he would sit in silence. "Okay, read it then!" I would be forced to say. Over and over again we went through this process. "Can you write that down?" I would say. "Yes," he would answer serenly, smiling, making no move to pick up the pencil. "Write it!" I would order, and he would. He probably wondered who was this simple-minded lady who kept asking if he could do things.

I have worked very hard over the past seven years to cultivate a clearer way of giving directions to children. When I need a child to sit down, I say, "Sit down, please," or "Sit down!," or "I am going to count from 3 to zero and you need to be sitting down when I get to zero," depending on the circumstances. I never say, "It's time to sit down now," or "Would you like to sit down?" unless I really want to know their feelings about sitting down. In my classroom, students generally know what they are supposed to do, and they generally do it. As a white, upper-middle-class teacher in an urban school, this seems like the thing to do, both in terms of acknowledging my own power, learning to communicate according to the norms of the culture of my students, and being an effective teacher.

So this little white girl who teaches in the city goes to Vermont to take primarily white, upper-middle-class, suburban youth on a wilderness trip. And guess what? She can't remember how to talk to them in their language! Isn't this the height of irony? I am so used to giving directions in no uncertain terms that the kids thought I was mad at them, or mean, or something like that. I mean, how fascinating is it that the kids literally referred to me "yelling" at them when I used a neutral tone? Do people only ever speak to them with warm, friendly, sweet voices, no matter the context? I have worked so hard on my neutral tone -- it is one of my most prized possessions! But now I must learn to temper it.

[An example of my neutral tone that they thought was mean: "It is not okay to use the word 'retarded' as an insult." Pretty straight-forward, no? Apparently not.]

I am unwilling to go back to asking questions when I mean to give a direction. I don't really believe in talking to kids in what now seems to me a duplicitous manner. But it was fascinating (and unnerving) to me that for these kids, my language was so very unexpected. Is it because I am white? A woman? And they think I will talk to them the way most people in their lives talk to them? In the end, I know I have to figure this out, become "bilingual" in white suburbia talk and urban working-class talk. I'm sure I will be able to find a way to continue to be clear in my instructions and expectations, but with more friendliness in my tone, or humor, or something that will keep me from seeming forbidding.

There is also, of course, the problem of learning to talk to teenagers, and the fact that teenagers are different from first-graders. I think I have to work on that too, on being careful to treat them more like young adults. (I don't think I did a bad job of this, but I have ingrained habits from the little kids that I'm sure come through sometimes.) The key is probably the same as with young children: having clear expectations, letting them know I trust them to make good choices, building relationships. Adolescence is just something of a new frontier for me, and one I'm not quite sure yet that I want to master.

One thing I learned about teenagers

... is that the speed with which they accomplish something is directly proportional to their level of investment or motivation in the task. After watching them "hike" at a pace so slow I had to take a step and then pause, shifting my weight from one foot to the other before taking the next step, I wrongly assumed that this was the speed at which they were capable of inching up an incline with a great deal of weight on their backs. Imagine my surprise when, at other times during the same trip (sometimes even on the same day), they moved up similar slopes so quickly that I had to nearly jog to keep up!

Now, perhaps this is not as unique to teenagers as I think it is. I imagine we all accomplish tasks at varying paces according to our motivation. I guess I have observed a similar phenomenon among first graders but, in general, first graders are often excited about many things, while a pivotal creed of adolescence seems to be that one should rarely display enthusiasm for those things suggested or mandated by adults. It is pretty easy, on the other hand, to find ways to make almost anything exciting to small children. (It has been suggested that the way I inspire my students to action, sometimes through dramatic and/or emotionally-charged means, is a form of manipulation, but I prefer to think of it as creative influence.)

So I learned the importance of finding motivation for our group of 8 to get things done, whether it was a 7-mile backpack over 4 peaks, a particularly long paddle, the straining of the dishwater, or the cooking of a meal. Internal motivation (what good teachers strive for -- we want children to learn, and to do the right thing, because they want to, not because they will earn a reward), as with first graders, was not always enough to keep this group moving. And the differences in their speeds -- their ability, as a group, to move either as if their feet were stuck in molasses or as if they were being pushed by a small, motorized vehicle -- were particularly dramatic, making the necessity for the right motivation even more essential. Sometimes the promise of good views, or a swim in a waterfall, were enough. Often the reminder that the farther we got today, the less distance we would have to cover tomorrow, had great power, especially when partnered with a promise that they could sleep in past 6:30 the next morning. S'mores, or other desserts such as no-bake cookies or brownies, could move mountains. I used M&Ms with some success on a particularly hard day.

To be fair, though, this group of 8 teens, between the ages of 13 and 15, worked very hard. We had some tough days, tough for the instructors, let alone for kids unaccustomed to carrying forty percent of their bodyweight on their backs and the accompanying rigors of life in the backcountry. Not knowing where you will sleep tonight, even as the afternoon begins to wane, even as you are already exhausted from hours upon hours of paddling, would cause despair, frustration, and certainly a great deal of crankiness among even the most stalwart of souls. And as a group, they often impressed me the most when the going was the toughest. (And frustrated me the most during the most mundane of tasks, such as tidying our camp or getting moving in the morning.)

It was after a particularly grueling day of paddling, followed by a three-mile portage that had to be done by first carrying packs, then hiking back, then carrying canoes (turning 3 miles into 9), that they all amazed me with their perseverance and humor in the face of adversity. As we stood in the pouring rain eating dry bagels with peanut butter for dinner, our raingear adhering to our skin with sweat, they willingly participated in a physical, mental, and spiritual check-in before heading for shelter. (The simple act of willing participation in such a check-in is, in and of itself, no small feat.) And despite the exhaustion and frustrations of the day, when I feared they might revolt because their wilderness trip was starting to look more like boot camp than summer camp, they shared insights that were reflective, humorous, and as optimistic as the situation warranted.

Our student Jake, one of the strongest of the group, said that he was wishing he felt connected to nature and glad to be in the wilderness right now, but that mostly he was feeling wet and tired. "I feel like I can keep going and do more," he confided, "but then I try and I keep getting tired out. My muscles are tiring more and more quickly and I just can't do more." Angelique, the quietest and, seemingly, least physically able of the group, said that despite the hard day, she felt happy because she loved the rain. And Chad, darling Chad, who kept all of us in stitches throughout the trip with the way he could make a play on words that brought tears to your eyes, mused, "Physically, I'm kind of tired, and mentally I'm kind of tired, but spiritually I'm feeling pretty good right now. When you do stuff that's hard like this, you learn a lot about yourself, you know." Finally, Kris, our tough girl from Boston who was on the trip against her will, spoke up and observed that we, as a group, never lost our sense of humor, even when things were really bad. "And I figure," she said, "if you don't have your sense of humor, you don't have anything." This last should probably be added as one of the most important rules of wilderness survival.