Dear Next President

In the midst of this election year, the National Writing Project and KQED have created Letters To The Next President. The idea: motivate students and teachers to get involved. The point is not to campaign for a particular person, but to articulate issues and raise questions that the next leader should consider, regardless of who it is.

Regardless of specific policy positions, I want the next president to be thoughtful, honest, and tolerant.

With that in mind, here's my (first) letter, multimedia style:

Thanks for watching!

They're Not Students. They're People.

Over the last few years, I have grown more and more disenchanted with the traditional research paper. Specifically, I felt like the questions students selected lacked emotional resonance. This dissatisfaction led me to experiment with different ways for students to generate questions that mattered. Then, not long ago, I read an interview with Brian Grazer in which the Hollywood producer talked about his use of curiosity conversations. Immediately, I saw the potential application and set out to have my students conduct their own curiosity conversations.

My idea was that through the conversations with a family member, friend, teacher, coach, or whomever, students would hear something that could become a springboard to research. Ultimately, I think the project was successful in this regard. Students ended up with questions about happiness, about curiosity and passion, about work, about leadership, about creativity.

However, as I listened to the conversations, I was struck by something deeper and more critical. I was reminded that my students are people.

Ok, so that sounds a bit ridiculous. After all, what else would my students be. But let me explain.

After 19 years of teaching, one thing remains certain: there is never a lack of things to do. The year starts fast and never really lets up. One problem with the frenetic pace is that sometimes I lose sight of who my kids are outside of class. I end up seeing them as students who appear in my room every other day at the predetermined time, work for 90 minutes, then move on. Where have they come from? Where do they go to? What fills their days and minds besides the novels I ask them to read and the questions I ask them to consider? I don't really know.

Listening to the conversations, though? Here they were. Their voices, removed from the classroom, filled the space in my house.  The surroundings certainly added to the intimacy. As my own family moved through the room where I listened, my students talked with their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and friends. In this moment, it was not about teacher and student; instead it was one person listening in as other people shared funny stories, fears, philosophies, and memories. They were no longer names on a roster who I needed to guide through a curriculum.

 Listen from 1:00-2:30

In their easy back-and-forths I heard them laugh at family jokes, sound surprised by a parent's own plans and hopes, compliment a sibling or friend on some accomplishment. I heard them as loved and loving people, full of gratitude and understanding.

Listen from 0:00-1:30

Such a powerful reminder.

And one more important point regarding technology and citizenship. While our devices can often times stand in the way of genuine connection, this is a great example of the way that they can strengthen bonds and deepen our sense of each other's humanity. Too often digital citizenship gets framed as a conversation about privacy and branding. But this reduces the idea of citizenship in a ridiculous way. The conversation must be about how we use technology to practice the same skills that are important in our face-to-face relationships: thoughtfulness, kindness, creativity. This project showed me one way to bring this conversation into the classroom.