When schools suspended in-person instruction in the spring of 2020 and transitioned to Distance Learning, I found myself taking daily walks to get out and see the quiet of the world. At first, they were quick two to three mile strolls around the neighborhood, listening to music or a collection of podcasts. And everyday I passed by David Popp’s house who saw me out his window and randomly texted phrases such as “a walk again, huh?” or “like clockwork.” Eventually a text read “Do you mind if I join you?”

D-Popp (a nickname I gave him) was a former journalism student of mine in his high school days, and is now a colleague who teaches social studies, yearbook, and life skills to middle schoolers in the same district. So our walks immediately became conversations about teaching kids, transforming education, utilizing technology, and letting go of control in the classroom. Needless to say, my walk of two miles turned into six, even nine, miles when D-Popp and I got together. We got lost talking “shop.” And I had to get back to my journal simply to hold the flood of ideas between his six years of teaching and my eighteen. I love still being able to learn from a guy fifteen years my junior.

So Here’s An Idea

For the record, David started it. He was complaining about something in our education experience, something that could be better. Teachers were unwilling to take risks. It’s not that they can’t improve, but they seem afraid to try something new, to step out on a limb, to fail and try again. So the natural disposition is to default to what seems safe and quiet, to revert to what a mentor-teacher exposed him or her to during student teaching or just follow the current of a department or teaching team. Then he said it, “I have an idea for a better mentoring program.”

David knows I’m all about looking for the root cause of a problem. I hate being reactive on an issue. Seeing new teachers come into education only to struggle, feel overwhelmed, feel the failure of a lesson that snowballs into a unit, a semester, a year–and of course becomes a career that gets cut short before it even bloomed. How do we even let this happen? And what do they need before we even get to this point? We know teachers struggle. The National Education Association details “20 percent of all new hires leave the classroom within 3 years;” a number that is higher in urban school districts.

Consider this: We see new teachers have a rough go of it in the classroom as they think about their building and district demands and logistics and payroll and retirement plans; as they think about their own classrooms, levels of students and management, UBD lesson and unit plans, essential questions and what resources do I have available, learning targets and standards and competencies (and aren’t those different?); as they think about creative and innovative possibilities in the classroom, using technology and reinforcing 21st C. skills; oh, don’t forget the trend toward personalized learning, PBL and Design Thinking and a student-centered classroom; you have to go to a department meeting to be relayed information from another meeting that came from a meeting before that; parent-teacher conferences are coming; you should read this book; grading and points is up to you; this is the rubric we can use; this is how the grade book functions in this district and we use Google Classroom, Schoology, Canvas–so you should play around with those; we would love for you to coach track and sponsor the forensics club and we know you have never studied journalism but here’s a section of that for you to teach this year; I have a student who is suicidal, another hasn’t eaten for a few days…

*Mind you, the writing in the above section was horrific, full of run-ons and fragments, full of disorder, and difficult to follow at times. I think Cormac McCarthy might be proud I tried to mimic the content and what is happening in a new teacher’s world. And there is no way, we can expect this new student-professional of education to reach out consistently and effectively in the chaos of these first years–do they reach out to an administrator, the department head or team-leader, the stranger to whom they were assigned in the building?

The point is this: we can’t wait for all of this to come barreling toward a fellow-teacher. So there needs to be something before we have to react to all of this mayhem. And on that walk, D-Popp’s idea had some teeth to it. We need to be better mentors. It’s not about showing them how to use the copy machine or input a grade category; giving them a unit or lesson plan to just get by in the opening months of teaching; or to be dismissive of something in the building because you personally don’t believe it matters or think it won’t amount to anything. We have to want more for them, so they will eventually want more for themselves. So they will eventually mentor someone else.

So D-Popp Says…And Then I  Say

What if a teacher in the building had two mentors: a 5-year teacher (past probationary) and a veteran teacher (way past probationary)? What if they didn’t even meet in the building (I’m a tremendous advocate of this)? What if they met at a brewery or some place social and relaxing? What if they can just have a safe place to rant and rave? To complain about a lesson gone wrong or the behavior of some of their students? To ask questions about teaching and think about what comes next? What if we had a designated place and time to do all of this, which is, by the way, what we all do in this profession–it is just fragmented in incongruous pockets that are sometimes a neighbor-teacher (or a neighbor, for that matter), an administrator, your significant other, your poor daughter and her dog.

But all of this is necessary and healthy and okay.

The next walk, along with 18 other walks, meant an expansion of our thinking: What if it was a small cohort group of 5-12 new teachers? What if they were teachers with 1-5 years of experience? What if they could share their ideas (after all, these teachers have just come out of a teaching program and must have cool, relevant pedagogy to offer)? Can’t we honor that? What if they could commiserate? Be inspired? Support one another in an informal and inclusive and non-judgmental atmosphere? What if they could ask about pay scale jumps, getting a Masters, what they should think about now for retirement later? What if they had a space to laugh and curse, jot down ideas, encourage one another to keep going? What if it were a true support group for all of us?

What if… what if they realized it was going to be okay and they can do this teaching-gig? I mean, can really do this. They can learn to take those risks and not teach like they were taught more than a decade ago. They can aspire and reach, not default to the low-road because they are new, maybe afraid, and ironically appeal to tradition. What if they could find themselves faster? Reflect more consistently? Design more passionately?

There’s nothing like a ThinkTank, particularly an objective ThinkTank that isn’t concerned with what you are teaching or how your classroom looks, but is concerned with you finding yourself. Sometimes it is two guys just out on a walk who dream of a cohort of new teachers who inevitably need someone to listen to them, laugh with them, buy them a drink. They become a ThinkTank themselves in order to become better for their students.

It was the jazz trumpeter, Miles Davis, who said, “It took years for me to learn to play like myself.” What if a cohort helped you play like yourself sooner rather than later?

It’s Time to Just Start Trying Some Things

D-Popp got a list of new teachers at his school and reached out to them. I didn’t know he was going to do it, but he texted them:

To the wonderful educator,

This is David Popp, your unofficial local liaison for an educational creative think tank group.

Too often, great educators get burnt out before their flames are fully realized, and I want to implement a “happy hour” style mentoring program, where teachers who have been in the game for five years or less, can come together with those who are in a similar spot career-wise, but also talk with others who bring different perspectives.

This “mentoring” cohort is intended to be thought-provoking, where educators can have a safe space to talk about ideas that challenge the barriers of traditional education, while also allowing for moments to breathe and release frustrations that inevitably come with the classroom.

While obtaining my masters in Educational Leadership, I have grown tremendously, and want to pay it forward by hosting these open-forum conversations. Being in TSD for almost seven years now, I think an overhaul of the mentoring program is necessary, but do not want to wait to try something new. I have Danny Hollweg, a National Board Certified teacher with 18 years of classroom experience who will be joining us.

Topics will range from “how do you jump pay scales” to “so, if I want flexible seating, how do I acquire and implement,” all the way to “I have this sick idea for gamifying this lesson and I want to run it by all of you.” No one is judging and we will simply be there to podcast-style chat.

Please feel free to spread this initial message to anyone who you think will benefit from having a safe space to talk “shop”, whether they are a novice or master teacher. We are all trying to grow in our own way and teaching is an art form we can all improve by discussing with others.

Longterm, I envision this group (and others from other schools, etc) meeting every other week for an hour or so. Not at school, but at a location with an easygoing atmosphere.

I would like to socially distance with those who are available for the first think session in July. Let me know and feel free to text me with any questions or wonderings.

If you are receiving this message by mistake, please reply UNSUBSCRIBE to be removed from this super duper, over the top, philosophical educator experiment.

Within hours as of the date of this post, four of the recipients were, excitedly, all in. Ted Dintersmith, author of What School Could Be (2018), will tell you, “change happens slowly, until it happens quickly.”

As for my part, I wanted to reach out to a fellow teacher going into her 2nd year, just to pick her brain about what her induction and orientation was like, what she would improve, what she thoroughly enjoyed. Maybe she’ll join us. All I really want is for her to stick with this gig, because she can do this.

Education nowadays isn’t about teaching your discipline better; it’s about becoming a better teacher within your discipline. I suppose, for David and me, it’s about giving teachers a chance to do just that before they become overwhelmed. I want them to make their own long walks along the beach of teaching, because the sunset is amazing if you stick around long enough to sit in the sand and watch it.