I Answered a Call from Room 301 in 2007. Two Years Later it Was Published. Fiteen Years Later I Share It with a Colleague. This Time Traveler Has Me Thinking

From 1997-2007, I was fortunate to work in a Coalition of Essentials Schools, urban-missioned, K-12 public school in Louisville, Kentucky, who hosted senior research and culminating projects for all of its graduates. The work aligned well with portfolio assessments, college-readiness, inquiry, and the vision of the school for diversity and inclusivity. I wrote about that from my classroom and "Senior Boards: Multimodal Presentations from Yearlong Research and Community-Based Projects" came out in 2009 in Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st-Century Classroom. 

I recalled this chapter last night when I was reviewing a piece for a colleague and offered it as a model of how they might want to frame an article they are writing. My OCD kicked in, because I didn't have a .pdf of the article and couldn't find the book in either of my on-campus offices. I ended up finding it in the library, 2nd floor, and to calm my fixation, I took photos of each page, turned it into a .pdf, and mailed it to her. Of course, I also reread the chapter. 

I've been out of the K-12 classroom as a teacher (still there as a giver of professional development, workshop presenter, and researcher) since 2007. I've been all over the country since then. And that is why I am laughing, somewhat, because I've yet to see schools doing what my team and I did at the Brown. And it was 15 years ago...using technology and advancing writers to be successful beyond high school. Of course, we also had portfolio assessments in Kentucky to guide us. 

Community-engaged learning was the mission of the school, and doing better for the world was a cultural norm. High staandards for all kids were expected, but flexibility on the faculty was a necessity. We didn't track. We loved our kids and we guided them - - - helped them to grow. They succeeded.

15 years out from those days, I'm finally understanding why so many of my students from then have contacted me to say they used their writing from my classroom for projects in college. Many have said college writing was easy, because our school set them up for success. 

Meanwhile, 15 years have gone by, and what I knew as normal is highly abnormal from what I witness in schools elsewhere. Covid came and many were perplexed by the changes, but those who are technologically-savvy simply rolled with the inevitability of classroom change. I feel like a dinosaur, truth be told, but what we were doing 15 years ago in Kentucky is still decades ahead of what I see most states doing now. I'm still not sure what I want to do with this...because another truth needing to be told is that administrations came in and destroyed such excellence at the local and state level. Both the portfolios and the senior projects have disappeared, very much like most of the faculty who worked their at the time.

But it is my memory and I have that history within me. 

I'm preparing for an NCTE panel on 30 years since the New London Group's thinking on multilitracies and I'm like, "I was in London, England, Literature to Exile and the Black British Experience while the New London were esoterically pontificating literacy in New Hampshire." My entire career was with digital technologies and the need to adapt to changing times, and I continue to laugh to see how digitally behind higher education is as compared to K-12 schools. Our K-12 teachers and their students rock...yet the University continues to hold the claim on knowledge. It boggles my brain.

I didn't pursue technology, though, in my doctoral studies because it's like catching a moving train. It's inevitable. We adapt or we lose. It's old schools as soon as it is new.

Yet, when I think of normal in my K-12 teaching days, and what Universities are just now coming to terms with, I'm scratching my head wanting to sing, "Ten years later found them in the Delaware, chewing on their underwear, couldn't find another pair..."

I think it is because publications in higher education take so long, and K-12 schools change much quicker than they can keep up. That, and for the most part, academics ignore the realities in K-12 schools (even when they are in Schools of Education). 

All this is to say, "Trust teachers. Trust youth. They will keep you on top of what works and doesn't work. Expertise in higher education? The verdict has always been out on that. I'm more inclined that University life is more a jockeying of privilege, power, and projection than work of authentic change-agents. Ah, but I digress. That publications out of my classroom is 2007 was pretty good. I've moved away from Kentucky and stayed away from digital research, but rereading it, I still see that the piece is still way ahead of most of what I'm reading now. That I credit to the mission of the school and the brilliance of its design. If only such schools existed everywhere.