David Dunlap Scribbles a Dot

Last night, I decided to attend a lecture in the atrium of Luther College's Center for the Arts given by guest artist, David Dunlap. Dr. Dunlap is best known for his bizarre artwork, art materials, and art galleries ranging from topics such as Martin Luther King Junior, the common walnut, anchors, swastikas, beer that supports tyrants, underwear to be worn in tandem, and an exploration of what exactly it means to be 'obscene'. However, this lecture was started in a very simple way. Dr. Dunlap took a small notebook out from his pocket, a Bic four-color pen from his shirt, and scribbled a sizable black dot on an empty white sheet. He explained, after he numbered and dated this black dot, that the process of drawing this dot was soothing for him, and that he has notebooks filled with such collections of dots.

It was at this point of the lecture that I became skeptical of this man. What does a scribbled black dot have to do with art? As he continued to speak, it came to me. To David Dunlap, this dot of ink on his small notebook was the most basic unit of art. It is the most basic of subjects, and is nearly impossible to draw incorrectly. Of course it would be soothing to go back to the very beginnings of what art is at it's very base.

Being a music education major, I could not just leave this explanation alone. I pried into my own mind to discover my own thoughts about my own field. What is the most basic unit of education? Is it the lecture? Is it the spoken word or the gesture? For me, the answer was clear. The thing that an educator can go back to over and over again and embrace to remind himself why he does this job is his passion. Much like Dr. Dunlap and his strange dot, the passion for education can be inconceivable to the outside observer. They are confounded, and scratch their heads wondering what in the world could keep a person doing a job so difficult and demanding. One has to be fully immersed in the respective professions and truly determined to make an impression on the student or the viewer.

Dr. Dunlap may have been speaking about a field that I did not fully understand. However, I could relate to much of what he spoke about. We all push the boundaries of our own professions. We test our limits, and some ideas succeed while others do not. No matter what happens, we each have a method of recharging our batteries. We go back to the very beginning and we remind ourselves why we got into the job in the first place. For some artists, like Dr. Dunlap, it is the creation of art, no matter how simple. For some educators, it is the reminder that one small step forward is a success, and that they would do anything for that step. This steady march of learning is what reminds educators how much they love their job.

Chalk - Why We Need to Be Human

For a change of pace, our class watched an interesting video today entitled "Chalk". The video comically portrayed the experiences of fictional novice high school teachers. Of course, the movie chose to portray the archetypes of educators. We've all had them before. They included, but were not limited to, the inanimate and uninteresting history teacher, an over-enthusiastic female gym teacher, the teacher who was always trying to be your "buddy", and an administrator who didn't know how to handle authority. The typical situations that these characters dealt always ended up mishandled, and at times served as a sort of "how not to teach" 'mock'umentary. From the movie, I expected to be floored at how ineffective these comical novices were, and that I would have no trouble responding to their gross inadequacies. There were a few instances where I got what I expected. However, for most of the movie, I was thrilled at how wonderfully imperfect these everyday people were.

This satisfaction got me thinking about my own teachers. Did I ever have a perfect teacher, who was always prepared, always cheerful, and always interesting? Never. There is no such thing as a perfect human being, and there is no such thing as a perfect teacher. However, we can turn our human faults into wonderful tools for effective education. That is, if a person is truly dedicated to education for education's sake, they can transform their entire selves into a beacon of educational passion, faults and all. The real life moral of Chalk's story is that things in the real world, especially in education, do not turn out the way we expect them to. A good educator is a person that can take a bumpy road and transform it into a journey.

Life and education are extremely similar in this way. If everything turns out for the best, then we are missing half of the human experience. In a classroom, if nothing emotionally charged (or, for a lack of a better descriptor, "human") happens, nobody learns a thing. The teacher's skills remain stagnant, and the students are bored to tears. The teachers in Chalk were not the most effective educators that they could have been, but that was mostly because a lampoon was exactly what they were after. In real life, every teacher (yes, even the egotistical "in it to win it" history teacher) would find positive aspects of their own personalities and employ them effectively in the classroom.

Old Hands and Starfish

Tonight, for our Monday evening class session, our class was lucky enough to be visited by Mr. Steve Chambliss, who is a forty year veteran to education. The story of his career was unconventional to be sure. After Mr. Chambliss finished his undergraduate, and then his masters degree, he went to work in Carpentersville, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago.

Mr. Chambliss's background is typical for a modern Luther student. He had a small town upbringing, and went to a modestly sized school. I was expecting him to mention that after his move to the suburbs, he experienced his fair amount of culture shock. You can say that it shocked me when Mr. Chambliss said that working in the city suburbs was the "biggest mistake of [his] life", but that would be an understatement.

Mr. Chambliss went on to explain this statement, stating that he "wasn't prepared to help so many" and that the amount of poverty he had to handle was too much for him in his early career. This is a reasonable story, and understandable. He bit off more than he could chew for his first big gig. However, throughout his conversation with us, he cites more instances about how students from impoverished families have trouble making good decisions because they didn't have the same upbringing as the typical small-town middle classer. He even went on to say "Public schools in metropolitan areas have failed and can't be rescued". I apologize if I generalize Mr. Chambliss's message too broadly, but overall, he seemed to be suggesting that more money in the schools equals better kids. This is incorrect. More money in schools means more opportunities for kids like organized sport teams, band, or other extra-curriculars, but that does not mean that better quality people come out of those schools. As a kid who grew up in Chicago, I take offense to the suggestion that city kids don't know how to deal with the real world just because their elementary school didn't have a soccer team.

There's an old story here that rang in my head as soon as Mr. Chambliss, while on the subject of poor public schools, said these words: "You can't save everybody". Please excuse my segue as I retell that story here.

There's an old man and several young children on the beach, playing in the water. Time passes, and the tide recedes, exposing hundreds upon hundreds of starfish to the sun. The children know that the starfish will die within a few minutes of being exposed to the open sun, so the children immediately begin to pick up as many starfish as they can and throw them back into the ocean. The old man stops one of them and says that their work is pointless, that the children will never be able to save all of the starfish on the beach. However, the children work on, with a smile, knowing that while they cannot save every starfish, they make a difference with every fish they save. This is the attitude that we need to approach education with. In education, there is always hope, and there is always a noble cause.

Mr. Chambliss went on to say that after his urban experience, including the turbulent era where whites and blacks were sharing a classroom for the first time, he decided he would go back to Decorah to become the superintendant for the Winnesheik county public schools. He explained that after such an intense experience, he needed to be back in an environment he was comfortable with. There is only one part of this that I feel I need to pick apart. Mr. Chambliss explained that being out of one's comfort zone was a wonderful thing, and that it more than anything makes an educator grow professionally. If this is true, why would Mr. Chambliss move to a place like Decorah, a town just like what he's used to?

Perhaps teaching during such a tough time can wear a person out. Perhaps a person does require a change of pace every so often. Mr. Chambliss's advice was wonderful and helpful, but some of his own actions required some closer examination. I respect him and thank him very much for his time, kind words, and patience with my prying questions. It is, after all, my job to ask them.