Pride and Prejudice

Although it contains nerdy language, this post is really about listening...and how I need to learn to do it better.

About a week ago, a Latin-teaching FB friend emailed me to say he couldn't make an account in Linguachet, that the web address wasn't working.

In righteous consternation, I rushed to the site, tested yet again what I'd tested so many times before, and found it working.  Then I looked at the web address he sent me, which appeared to match nothing I'd ever created on the site (a good chunk of which I can recite from memory).  Where could THAT be coming from?

Sometimes what I think I know keeps me from seeing what I don't.

I tested everything I could think of.  But a few other people came on and created accounts without apparent issue or comment.  Like many of you, I am busy starting a new school year with my own students...so - like everything else in life that seems to be working fine - that comment eventually went to the back burner. 

Well, thankfully, I got a similar email today from someone else.  And it had the same bizarre web address. And I finally realized the source of the problem. It wasn't among the 6,700 (pre-compressed) files I have labored among for years. It wasn't in the complex server configuration that has taken me months of toil to learn and covers a large whiteboard on my wall.  It was just a plain-Jane web link on my own FAQs page, which was missing a single quotation mark.

And, being a helpful and tech-savvy soul himself, the first guy had more or less suggested that sort of issue on the front end.

Now, here I was, hyper-focused on making sure my app itself was running perfectly...gearing myself up to do more reeeeally complicated things...and missing the forest for the trees for that very reason.

Sometimes what I think I know keeps me from learning.

I wish I could say I didn't recognize this problem in myself.  But at least I can take comfort in implicating OTHER people too, right?  When I read it years ago, Pride and Prejudice seemed to be ALL about Lizzy's inability to see Darcy...mostly because she was too busy looking at herself.  Then I picture a flustered Atticus Finch at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird, who has so steeled himself to turn his own son over to justice that he is momentarily blinded to a critical fact: his son isn't guilty at all.  With all the zeal and integrity he can muster, the poor man is just barking up the wrong tree.

I'm so glad that Harper Lee saw fit to include Atticus' limitations.  I'm so glad my Bible is chock full of other men who just don't get it.  I am so grateful for the patience - and the pushback - of those of you charitable enough to call yourselves my friends, because sometimes I need a Heck Tate to rattle my porch.  In a world of casual likes in which many of us just move on when we don't, honest criticism may be the office of a true friend. And if you know any of us passionate souls who throw ourselves into causes, crusades, or businesses, be aware that we can lose perspective because of our intense investment; your honest critique could prove priceless.  Even if we end up rejecting your particular advice, we still need to develop the ability to see as others see if we're going to be able to serve anybody.  In this regard, I am grateful for the providential lessons of friends and failures, repeating themselves as needed, so that I can begin to see and hear what I don't! 

Whaaat? Did you say FREE??

Salvete, Magistri et Magistrae!  This will probably not be my most eloquent post.  As the school year begins, I feel like I am returning from another planet.  And this year, my to-do list is...sorry in advance...out of this world.

Do you ever find yourself in odd or novel situations, having to make important decisions without enough information?  If you are a teacher, the answer is probably yes.  After a while, this peculiar brand of insanity becomes your new normal.

I am not a businessman by training, and there are scores of things I do not know.  However, I AM a teacher, and there are many things I believe passionately enough to work and risk for them.  We don't just act on the things we know, for we never know enough.  We act on the things we believe, then learn what we need to know to live them out.

A bit over four years ago, Linguachet was a "wouldn't it be cool if" in my head.  From 16 years of teaching, I had realized writing in Latin put a lot of things together for my students, that it could be engaging and fun, and that it could be very concise and powerful in review.  From 30 years of general nerdiness, I believed that something like this was possible given current technologies.  After discovering that no one had created what my teacher brain wanted, I decided to take the plunge. At the core, it was a simple idea. I figured I'd be done in six months.

Have you ever been thankful for what you DIDN'T know?  I am really glad I DIDN'T know that Linguachet would take me almost 4,000 hours of work, thousands of dollars...and counting!  That's insane.  But when I got my first glimpse of students responding, when I saw how their learning process started to change, I knew this HAD to become reality.

When I started, I just believed that quick, specific feedback and flexibility would be game changers. I figured we might get more of students' best answers instead of just first answers.  I hadn't yet figured out that you could design a tool to help teachers differentiate instruction without killing ourselves...to blur the lines between formative and summative assessment, to promote learning as an ongoing process, to put teachers and students back on the same team, to give us new insights into HOW our students learn that we could then factor back into more effective diffentiation.  As a teacher, I haven't fully achieved all of these things in my own classroom yet either; it scares me a little to think of it all.  But what I have seen substantiates my belief that we truly can do it...and that it can breathe even more new life into the teaching of Latin... and that is what keeps driving me back into code after full days of teaching. 

That last paragraph makes it sound like I've stumbled onto some sort of Holy Grail.  In actuality, I don't believe there is one; I believe that good teaching is an insightfully blended cocktail of divergent - even contradictory - tools and methods.  I believe it must be insightfully blended - with love - by you, the person who knows and cares for your students.  Because I believe that teaching is love, I don't believe that technology can EVER replace a teacher.  What I do hope is that this tool gives you another lens by which you can see - and an extra arm with which you can help - your students.  Maybe it can free you just a little bit more to do the things that ONLY teachers can do.

I know teachers need volume discounts.  To work out the details, I need real-world data on how many students I can serve well at one time.  The software industry has simulators, and I have tested many of them, but the ones good enough to give predictive data in this case cost serious bling...and they know nothing of rotating class schedules, etc!  So, I could go that route - and increase costs, and still be guessing - or I just beef up my server by a lot, take another chance, then crowdsource the problem, and test with real-world traffic as I explain below...

I know nothing about marketing either, but I believe you start by serving.   Unfortunately I have learned that many schools will refuse to look at a tool based on price alone...without even looking at the learning ROI...and their students will miss out.  So, fellow teachers, take this into your classroom for free between now and Sept. 12th.  Make new accounts.  Play with it.  Have your Latin I students make accounts and play with Latin.  Watch some kids race ahead because they can.  Notice what kinds of questions you get.  Give little review prescriptions to your Latin IIs...or let them choose their own areas of weakness.  Then go explore the data and see what you learn about your students.  Consider having your administrators in to see how your kids are learning...and let them see the data too.  For those at ACL this summer, I'm clearly behind schedule but haven't forgotten what you shared with me in those surveys.  Send me honest feedback and ideas at rietz@linguachet.com.  

Per aspera ad astra,

George Rietz