Thank you Ravens for teaching us what to celebrate!

I may be one of the few people in Baltimore who didn’t actually see last Sunday's play-off game against the Patriots. I was flying home from Boston (at least I was heading in the right direction!) and only caught the last 2/3’s of the last quarter—the heartbreaking part.

So all week long I’ve been moping and  commiserating with my fellow Baltimoreans. We’ve been sharing our shell shock over the disappointing defeat. It wasn’t just the end of game Lee Evan’s dropped pass (that looked like a completed pass and never got reviewed) or Billy Cundiff’s  funky field goal miss after a heart stopping 90 yard drive down the field. It was the ref’s failure to place the ball on the 10 yard line  to give us the 1^st down that we deserved followed by his failure to  call an obvious pass  interference on the 10 yard line that should also have given us a fresh set of downs.  You have to wonder.

Mighty Ravens enter the arena

It’s the kind of loss that’s hard to shake off. You keep replaying those last few minutes in your head  because it’s a game we should have won.  Ultimately we outplayed them by almost every measure. As  I  finally get the time to watch the replay and see more missed penalty calls against the Patriots (off-sides, pass interference, helmet to helmet and holding)and watch Joe Flacco’s numbers eclipse Brady’s , a funny thing happens. My disappointment finally begins to erode and I move towards uplift.  It isn’t just that time heals all wounds.  I move towards a bigger picture.  These are warriors, gladiators doing battle in a coliseum. We’ve come a long way from the lions, thumbs up for who lives and and thumbs down for who doesn't.  Still something about the epic battle stirs us and vents our lust for combat. We spectators  dress up for the spectacle, put on our favorite team member’s shirt and get a vicarious thrill while these gifted athletes amaze us with their feats of power, grace and endurance. 

Touch Unitas' toe before the game

So for the week leading up to the clash of titans, I watched with delight and amusement as  Baltimore drowned in royal purple. People drove with flags fluttering,  transforming  ordinary sedans and trucks into  zany escort vehicles.  We were clearing the way for our champions, not third world despots. I saw tiny terriers dressed in ravens sweaters and grown men sporting  stick-on Flacco purple felt mustaches. There seemed to be no limits to the absurdities we would submit to in order to demonstrate our solidarity, to reach across boundaries and say “We are all part of one big community, hoping for one great outcome together.” I even dug out purple beads , earrings and a ring to wear.  Yes, when so many of our fellow citizens are hungry, homeless and unemployed, I do wish we could achieve the same passionate connection about something more important than winning a football game. But it shows that we can connect over something.  

Every week when these men stepped out on the field whether at home or away, they carried something of us with them and we allowed them to. We wanted them to.  Week after week, they suited up, went out onto the field and did their jobs.   They gave us a great home season of one win after another. They elevated us, connected an entire city and gave complete strangers, men and women, adults and children, something to talk about in check out lines, in drug stores and restaurants. They turned casual  armchair observers into serious  amateur commentators who wondered who  hired the  professional ones to chatter incessantly about nothing. They helped us for a few short months through hope, effort , gathering and commitment  to celebrate US.

But what I loved most is what they taught us about accountability. At the end of every game comes the ritual of talking to the press whether you win or lose. What I learned from watching our head coach, our quarterback and other players—most of whom are young enough to be my children—is  that you take responsibility for your performance. It helps, of course, that everyone on national TV just saw what you did or didn’t do but our politicians and business leaders are under equally keen scrutiny and they don’t seem to have learned this very simple but crucial point.  Harry Truman put it this way: “The buck stops here.” As president, he couldn’t avoid responsibility for big decisions or their consequences.  What I observed week after week was the complete openness with which our players and coach entered the true lion’s den: the after game press conference and took total responsibility for their performance –even in this most heartrending of all games—the loss to the Patriots.

If they did well, it was because of the team effort. If they did badly, there were no excuses. “I messed up. I didn’t do what I was supposed to.”  The buck stops here. Now THAT’S a lesson worth celebrating.  Washington, are you listening?

Lessons to celebrate from the Civil Rights Movement

This past week we taught Freedom’s Feast MLK Day materials at the Kipp Ujima Academy and the Reginald F Lewis Museum in Baltimore. The idea was the same even though the learners and teaching partners were different in each place. We’ve worked hard to gather interesting resources to help Americans celebrate six national holidays and there are many ways to use them. We don’t create lesson plans because we believe that fixed lesson plans lead to dull learning.  A lesson plan reflects the person who writes it, not the person who receives it. Instead, we encourage  “feasters” to adapt our resources to fit their needs. Every classroom, home, teacher, family, student, and learning environment is different. How could one lesson plan possibly fit all situations? 

What we wanted to do was to celebrate Dr. King, the movement he played such an instrumental role in leading and the possibility of children and adults discovering what these achievements might mean for them today.  At Kipp Ujima Academy, we used “The Children March” ceremony.  Several children served as the readers and leader for their classmates which gave a few students in each of four classes the chance to read out loud in front of their peers and try on their performance chops. Discipline is a big Kipp value as is earning  a privilege like this. Some were comfortable, others struggled but all were proud to be chosen.  This important skill--public performance--could be practiced with a friendly group of peers but still carried the freight of a formal role.

Mr Reese and students read "The Children March" ceremony

At key moments, Alex Reese, their talented "Teach for America" teacher, and I stopped and used selected illustrations from one of our book list recommendations to support an open discussion about a core concept, event or historical figure. The range of media from watercolor representations to historical photos stimulated lively discussions around “segregation,” “Ruby Bridges,” “prejudice,”  to name a few.  A student asked whether any percentage of color in your skin made you “colored.” I wanted to tell him he should ask his Mom but told him instead that the custom in our country is that if you have some African American blood in your inheritance you are generally considered to be African American. He didn’t think that was “fair.”  A longer session would have allowed us to follow that detour. One girl was filled with outrageous indignation when we discussed sit-ins. “Who were they to tell us where we could sit to eat our meals at a public restaurant?  Or anywhere? That’s just plain wrong!” I complimented her on her passion and conviction. The subsequent back and forth banter soliciting definitions led to the volunteer who said that a “conviction” is “when you get sent to jail” which provided the opening to talk about multiple definitions and context.  These discussions don’t come ready made in a lesson plan. They happen because you are willing to dance a little with your students. You get on the floor together and you move to the music.  You may not cover the whole floor but everyone might remember the exhilaration of the dance because you are all involved and responding to the same music.  

 

We also used a basic internet connection and projected Alex’s laptop image to use ceremony hyperlinks to view video of “The Children’s Crusade” in Birmingham. Student reactions launched discussions about injustice, the role of television and most importantly the role of children in the movement. The fixed ceremony gave us the structure for a conversation with a beginning and end. Gifted children’s book authors and illustrators  provided a range of artwork that helped us to discover the depth of knowledge and insights our groups possessed. And students were excited to share the civil rights experiences grandparents and elders had told them about when they went home with Table Talk questions earlier in the week. Those shared memories gave them a meaningful personal context to bring to the historical discussion. When we connected service to the legacy of Dr. King it wasn’t a stretch. Asking them to do homework overnight by thinking about the different ways in which they might focus on and express their service commitments made sense. It was an extension of their month of work on service at the school. Our service medallion project that brought all 120 students together in the cafeteria the next morning was a good deal more chaotic than any of us would have preferred. But in the end, students made duck tape bracelets or medallions they were excited about. 

Our two student helpers

I(heart)tutoring

"Help Out" heart medallion (shy artist)

Scavenger hunters share their museum observations 

At the Museum, we had a different opportunity and challenge. We had the wonderful resource of the permanent exhibit but couldn’t be sure who would participate even with advance registration. Our final group of children ranged in age from 5 to 13 with young parents and grandparents. A ceremony with a diverse group of strangers can be alienating so we opted for an open ended discussion about Dr. King with prompts using illustrations from our book list books to highlight concepts we wanted our guests to search for in the permanent exhibit:” segregation,” “prejudice,”  “non-violent protest,”  “civil disobedience.” Then we sent our visitors out with clipboards and staff prepared questionnaires to find examples of these concepts in the exhibit.  Aided by enthusiastic young docents, the exhibit came alive in new ways. Participants connected it through the lens of the movement and our discussion. They were finding evidence through pictures and artifacts that these things happened in our own community.  We put tools in their hands to make deductive leaps, to connect all the dots.We weren’t telling. They were discovering.  

Excited artists wait for shrinky dinks medallions to finish baking

They asked questions we hadn’t anticipated and answered many of the ones we had.  We ended with making shrink dinks service medallions , an arts exercise so inviting and well set up by the museum professionals that even the adults couldn’t resist. One little boy asked, “How do WE shrink?” That one stumped me for a second. I smiled at him, grinned at the elders in the audience and responded, “Get old.”

medallion with quotes from ceremony

We still emphasized the special role of children in the movement. This theme captures children's attention and imagination. It lets them  build a bridge from a distant historical moment to the present in their quest for meaning and purpose. The world that Dr. King fought to change is so substantively different from the perspective of most youngsters today that they often don’t understand what the struggle was about.

And yet, if children half a century ago could move the needle on history then perhaps they can too! The belief that our convictions can lead to actions that make a lasting difference is such a crucial and exciting lesson for young citizens in our democracy.   That Dr. King could inspire other children to march across time to bring our children this message is the finest thing I can think of on this holiday to celebrate.