“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”
-Thomas Paine

Everyone takes sides in education.  People disagree about what’s best for students, but agree that students and their success matter most.  The dividing lines get drawn between adults debating definitions, outcomes, and processes.   What is success?  Who defines it?  By which standards?  Are the standards common or not?  How do we assess for success?  Are the assessments common or not?  People are united by their hunger for answers, and divided by the answers they espouse.

the same horizon, by Norma Desmond

This debate is essential to reform.  We need to crowd-source innovation.  We need people in the box thinking about how to get out, and we need people outside the box thinking about how to open it.  We need to talk through the box’s walls.  The more people we have working on the problem, the more likely we are to find multiple, sustainable, and scalable solutions to the problems of inequity embedded in the status quo.

When we stop thinking about the problems, the last shadows of justice, equality, and opportunity beat the scene along with liberty.

The horizon as a dividing line is a tricky metaphor, though.

To us, Earth’s physical horizon seems to travel in measured increments as we spin around and circle the Sun.  There are definite days and nights, though some last for weeks.  The sun rises and sets.  There are two parts.

In Paine’s mind, however, the light doesn’t need to end.  It ends when we give up thinking, when we stop casting the light of human thought on what it is that makes us human.  With a sustained commitment to inquiry, that light can shine forever.  The horizon can be infinite.  Night falls only when we let it, when we stop envisioning what we’d like to see in the light of day, when we stop working toward the world we want.

Since this horizon is infinite, it can accommodate more than two points of view.  It can accommodate more than the known and unknown.  It permits more types of division, but also allows for unity.  It fosters nuanced meanings and negotiation.  It provides room for things that are becoming, growing, and transforming.  Paired with action, the infinite horizon of human thought enables persuasion, reflection, and innovation.

We need to meet up and tweet up under that bright and endless sky.  We need to share thoughts and deeds across the dividing lines, rather than imagine that there is nothing to shared across them.

We also need to recognize that our classrooms belong under the infinite horizon, that the boundary between American schools and the real-world is increasingly imaginary.  Lines do not divide them from one another, but rather connect them to each other.

Paula asked me if authentic work has to be published outside the classroom.  I confess that at first I wanted to say yes.  Then I thought about the horizon, and googled quotes, and decided to blog.  Where in the big country of cognition is the authenticity of that task?  In creating the metaphor or posting about it?

The authenticity is in both.  This metaphor matters.  So does sharing it.

“A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows.”
-John Powell

In our classroom practice, as we work to foster students’ authentic engagement with learning, we have to design learning that’s personally meaningful to our students.  We need to make sure that they connect the learning to their inner lives and real world experiences.  We also have to be ready to let them share their learning.  Think of an actor rehearsing a script.  There are rewards from learning the part, in exploring a role and discovering its ties to life.  Now think of an actor performing a script.  There are rewards in creating and sharing work with others, in the affirmation that comes at the end of a performance.

Some students will be happy to rehearse, and we can take the next instructional step to offer them authentically engaging opportunities to publish.  Some students will be eager to publish, but need help rehearsing first.  There are certainly an infinite number of types of student across our classrooms.

Consider Popham’s learning progressions; in explaining them he encourages us to be ready to adjust instruction tactically according to student performance.  To flow between personal and public instances of authentic engagement and work, be ready to extend the audience for students’ authentic learning.  Be ready to provide authentic opportunities for publication.  Be ready to provide incrementally higher levels of affirmation and product-focused learning for your students.  Help them feel what it’s like to get a standing ovation from a novel audience.

It could happen like this:

Teacher: What did you learn today?

Student: We learned how you can keep splitting one thing into smaller fractions.

Teacher: Tell me about times in your life when you do that.

Student: It’s like when we split up to play football at recess.

First Down by cobalt123

Teacher: That connection seems to fit really well.  What made you think of it?

Student: We keep splitting up the whole group until we have two halves, but sometimes we have an odd number.

Teacher: [Here come the tactics.  Rip, mix, & invent.] Do you want to share that with the class?  Do you want to make a drawing of that to put on the bulletin board, to put in the class notebook, or to take home?  Do you want to make a comic for the bulletin board or notebook or class webpage or blog that shows us what happens and explains what you mean?  Do you want to post about your connection on the class blog?  Do you want to allow comments?  Do you you want to post a picture of a team on the class blog and VoiceThread what you said about fractions?  Do you want to let people add their voices to your picture?  Do you want to tweet what you said to your parents? Do you want to email your idea to our university partner and ask what he or she thinks?  Would you rather call?  Would you like to film this at recess today and then make a movie tomorrow where you explain what’s happening with math?  Do you want to think back over the course of the week?  Is there something else you think is more important or exciting to share?  How do you want to share it?

Authentic learning happens under an infinite horizon that lets students create personally meaningful connections to learning.  We can’t preclude that connection-making with “event-horizon” work that never escapes the classroom in terms of relevancy.  Don’t limit a student’s horizon; partner with him or her to see how far learning can go into real-world application.  Let the student set the waypoints for learning so long as its authentic to him or her.  School work is not relevant enough on its own to create authentic engagement with learning for struggling students or students collecting good grades by rote means.  These students are afraid of taking academic risks.  Moreover, they are conditioned to accept the false and unnecessary horizon of either/or, the cruel systemic divisions between “winners” and “losers” in America’s schools.  Authentic engagement with learning can help all students break out of the box, our 3D metaphor of division, and  into the light of thinking, of authentic engagement and learning through meaning-making.

Don’t give up the infinite horizon, teachers; keep thinking; keep debating; shine the light of human thought on success and failure alike; help each other out of the box; look at the future all around you and act.