{"id":668,"date":"2011-01-10T23:07:25","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T03:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/?p=668"},"modified":"2011-01-11T10:09:52","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T14:09:52","slug":"668","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/?p=668","title":{"rendered":"Old Teachers never die…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m always a little jarred when I see an obituary for someone I\u2019ve known, but several\u00a0 weeks ago when I saw Jule Sugarman\u2019s it was different.\u00a0 For the 3rd\u00a0time in my life I found myself reflecting on my experiences with someone who provided an experiential classroom from which I took away significant learnings. He taught me how<\/span><\/em> to care.<\/em><\/p>\n

The complementary understandings these three helped develop began to drive my journey through theory and practice whose products are integral to the nature and content of this Sabusense<\/em> website.<\/p>\n

Two of these teachers consciously played the teacher\u2019s role \u2013 W. Edwards Deming and Seymour Sarason. But Jule Sugarman was a do-er<\/em> and creato<\/em>r — maybe best known as the original architect of Lyndon Johnson\u2019s Headstart. <\/em><\/p>\n

Deming provided a way for me to see the \u201cbox\u201d people struggle to \u201cthink outside of;\u201d Sarason, a way to understand and \u201cconnect the dots\u201d within it; and Sugarman with a way to get my hands around, and make manageable, what the others enabled me to get my mind around.<\/p>\n

In \u201cThe Impact of Deming\u2019s Legacy<\/a><\/em>\u201d I acknowledged taking away a different mental \u201cmap\u201d for understanding the reality of people in organizations.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0 \u201cBeam me up, Seymour<\/a><\/em>\u201d I reflected on the power of the role Sarason\u2019s \u201cMartian<\/em>\u201d had played in my career as a generator of different questions. (The Martian was someone 20,000 ft. above the earth who could only \u201csee\u201d what happens in a school, and then tried to understand their purposes based upon what he called their \u201cregularities.\u201d\u00a0 These are the patterns of action accepted without much thought as the way its \u201csupposed to be,\u201d but which mindlessly become the binding and connecting structures limiting everyone\u2019s capacities to make a difference. I subsequently adapted that role for my 20,000 ft. Memo<\/em> writing relationship with the school district whose story provides the experiential platform for this site\u2019s thinking. (\u201cCatching them doing something right<\/a><\/em>\u201d)<\/p>\n

As I reflected now on my relationship with Jule Sugarman, I saw a synergy among the three I hadn\u2019t recognized before.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Deming had influenced the way-of-thinking that became my way of understanding,<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sarason had influenced my \u201crole\u201d in applying that way-of-thinking to the work of a major school district I had been observing \u201cfrom 20,000 ft<\/em>.\u201d for the past 12 years. And<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sugarman had helped me drill down to a focal point exposing the fundamental purpose and nature of the work.<\/p>\n

As a tribute, I\u2019d like to tell that story here.<\/p>\n

In the late 60\u2019s, I headed up a Ford Foundation project aimed at furthering technology use in schools.\u00a0 TV was to be the silver bullet making the best teachers accessible to every child.\u00a0 At the same time, President Johnson\u2019s War on Poverty<\/em> aimed a new initiative at what he called \u201cThe People Left Behind<\/em>\u201d — including migrant workers.\u00a0 I don\u2019t recall all the details now, but somehow Jules Sugarman, who had created Headstart<\/em> for OEO, and I developed and held a May, 1968 conference in St Louis called Communication Technology and the People Left Behind.<\/span> My contribution included a presentation —\u00a0 “Problem Analysis and Planning in an Electronic Context.” (ugh!)<\/p>\n

Two takeaways from that meeting seeded the way-of-thinking I\u2019ve carried with me ever since and have shaped the way-of-\u201cseeing\u201d I used to capture the experiences of the MCPS for the past 12 years.<\/p>\n

My session included interaction with my audience of largely-minority parents. I put a list of educational resources (including the best teachers<\/span> in each subject area) on the screen and asked them to prioritize them. My hope: they would end up with identifying the need to bring those great teachers to their children, and then logically TV would be the practical \u201canswer.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not where they ended up.\u00a0 In answer to my direction to identify \u201cthe last thing they would want to give up,\u201d<\/em> their unanimous answer was \u201csomeone who cares<\/span> about m<\/span>y child.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

(Years later that would come to mind as I read Gen. Colin Powell\u2019s five things every child should be guaranteed and the priority order in which they occurred.\u00a0 First was \u201cAn on-going relationship with a caring adult<\/span>\u2026\u201d)<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This ah-ha<\/em> (for me) was followed later by the recognition that \u201ccaring\u201d is an information-<\/span>based process. It\u2019s hard to care about<\/em>, or care for<\/em>, someone you know little about. You need \u201cinformation\u201d – both objective\u2026 and the subjective kind that usually develops from regular interactions<\/em> with that person.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This started me asking a different question. How could we use these new information technologies to inform the interactions of the teaching process<\/span> so that people who care<\/em> about a child can know<\/em> that child? Not just to know them in terms of the differences <\/em>test results portray, <\/em>but to know<\/em> them in terms of the individual range of assets they bring to the teaching\/learning interactions?<\/p>\n

That question started me down a path of technology use (while I was at ASCD and AASA) different from most of my peers efforts aimed at putting technology in the hands of students. My search: ways for adults to use it to inform the teaching process<\/em> and to support the interactive relationships<\/em> that process needed. (Several papers and articles from that time are under this site\u2019s Resource section.)<\/p>\n

It also enabled me to connect-the-dots when I later encountered the information-driven principles of cognitive biology<\/span> that are embedded in this site\u2019s way-of-thinking and seeing.<\/em><\/p>\n

So, thanks, Jule\u2026 sorry it took so long to remember how much I owe you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m always a little jarred when I see an obituary for someone I\u2019ve known, but several\u00a0 weeks ago when I saw Jule Sugarman\u2019s it was different.\u00a0 For the 3rd\u00a0time in my life I found myself reflecting on my experiences with someone who provided an experiential classroom from which I took away significant learnings. He taught […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sabusense.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}