Considering Mr. Keating As I Age: Dead Poet Society, Risks, and Introductions to Economic Realities

While doing coursework with the Bread Loaf School of English, I often took classes with teachers from America's greatest boarding schools - individuals who competed to claim  they were the real school in which Dead Poets Society was filmed and, later, "Parts of Harry Potter was filmed here as our school is most like Hogwarts."

Dead Poets Society came out my senior year of high school and, of course, we were all enraptured. Who doesn't love Robin Williams? The story was good - perfect for a generation, even those of us who attended large, working class, mostly white public schools. The film, too, was good enough for years and years of teaching in urban schools - it is easy as an English classic because of the story about language, conformity, and writing.

In Connecticut, I'm often asked to do professional development in private boarding schools and I always find the faculty to be intellectual, dedicated, creative, and STRESSED just like you find in any school. With boarding schools, however, you also realize that faculty live with and parent the kids, too. At $60,000 a year, parents send their kids expect a quality education and push so their boys and girls get into the best colleges. The tuition is higher than the teachers are paid, but for many families, a $240,000 high school education is a blip on the financial radar.

I always do the same workshops and professional development no matter the school that hires me. Yes, I cater instruction to meet the specific needs of each school.  I don't change much with my approach. It's the National Writing Project way and I'd say I bat about 98% - there's always that one teacher that every so often destroys me in their evaluation, but the majority of feedback is positive. I am more self conscious in some schoosl over others, but I've learned that no matter where I do the work, the teachers are the same...especially when it comes to writing.

Yesterday, I did professional development on assessing writing and I borrowed from my days in Kentucky, my work with the incredible Joel Barlow High School, and the 2017 publication of the National Writing Project book, Assessing Writing, Teaching Writers: Putting the Analytic Writing Continuum to Work in Your Classroom.  I've used the book in my undergraduate and graduate classes and found it to be a wonderful tool. Working in K-12 schools for professional development, I'm also learning that many teachers need such a guide. There is no solidarity in writing curriculum or measurement. In my workshops, I present multiple assessment rubrics just so teachers can begin to discuss the similarities and differences. They, like me, become partial to one or another (I still think the Kentucky Holistic Scoring rubric is perfect - it is most logical).

What has interested me, however, is that the models of writing I typically use are those that come from urban school youth h (only because they have been in closest proximity). When I go to suburban schools and/or private schools, I'm always amazed when teachers will say, "Oh, this is how our students write, too. He could be in our sophomore class." What trips me up a bit, however, is that some of these models come from kids who have tremendous obstacles against them - like, if it is out there to stop them from succeeding, they have it.

I am thrown off, I suppose, that an impoverished kid who attends a school with the least investments, the most choppy curriculum, and usually underprepared teachers, write in a way that parallels the kids that attend more affluent communities (even those where families pay $60,000 a year).

It just makes me think about the term "Opportunity Gaps" over "Achievement Gaps." There are also tremendous "Foundational Gaps" and "Support Gaps."

I surmise that parents choose schools (if they can) because they feel the purchasing power of their decision - that is, if a kid goes to an elite boarding school he or she will have a superior education. Yet, I hear teachers report the same thing about students in every school - there's always that one kid who super shines and outdoes everyone else, and there are always those kids who are several grade levels behind. But, I wonder who is better off? I speculate there's a larger system at play here that is more like India's caste system. I know that for many of my urban kids, they will not have the chances to rebound and grow if they mess up just a little bit.

This made me think about Mr. John Keating a little more. I know myself enough to realize that I'm the out-of-the-box, non-conforming rebel who poetically likes to stimulate intellectual thinking in unusual, non-conventional ways. I also know that I wouldn't last a month in a more traditional school because my style would be too unusual. I was thinking about the power of money and how families who pay into such schools really do want their children to conform to a particular way of being: best schools, best companies, best zip codes, best summer homes. It's a norm, and pushing them to see anything beyond this "best-ness" would be dangerous. They could always say, "We pay a lot of money for this education. We don't need your teachers to encourage creativity and original thinking."

It really is strange, because yesterday when I left a school I began to feel even more concerned for how a John Keating might be viewed in relation to the power structure of the haves around the world and have nots. For me, too, I wonder if I'd be challenged with my statement that the writing occurring in low-performing schools assessed by state systems is not that different than those in high-powered, expensive schools. The spectrum is consistent. The teachers work just as hard at each. The conversations shared with me are all the same....

....yet....some of these kids attend schools where tuition for one year is the starting salary of two teachers in some states. I guess I'm more conscious of Keating and why he would threaten the tradition of "excellence" that was portrayed as a scholastic norm.

I guess my excellence is a little more universal.

How wonderful it would be if all kids could attend beautiful environments to learn with the same sort of support from home, their communities, and afforded opportunities?

It will never happen, but I do like to think about it.