Photo Credit: Dan Asaki
I was never any good at mazes.
It didn’t matter what kind of maze: cornfield, funhouse mirror, video game. I mean even those silly mazes in the old Highlights magazine in which you had three possible paths to choose from on the way to making it from the “start” to the “end” completely befuddled me. I would inevitably get lost in those dark, black, serpentine lines, cursing myself as I meandered in the void.
So, at some point, I started to trace it back. Starting at the end, I found a renewed sense of moxy, knowing I couldn’t get lost if I began at my destination. Sure there was always the looming sense of going backward, of cheating, but neither was as powerful as the sense of accomplishment.
Take that, maze!
Now, decades later and far removed from magazine mazes, I still find myself tracing back. Starting at the end. Hacking the system.
As teachers, we’re constantly asked to trace it back, to ask ourselves what it is that we want the kids to learn before we consider the path we lead them on to that destination. Dubbed understanding by design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe (2005), the notion of starting at the end seemed long overdue, though everything in American education is long overdue.
But we can use this strategy to unlock so much more than lesson design.
Extreme student behavior traces back to significant, and sometimes unspeakable, trauma.
A seismic building culture shift traces back to the addition, or sometimes subtraction, of that one staff member who changes the game for all of us.
The direction of an entire district traces back to the hire of one superintendent.
The morale of a department traces back to that one seemingly unremarkable compliment paid to it months ago.
A student’s perception of herself traces back to the fact that you made sure you pronounced her name correctly when so many others just gave her an easy nickname.
A relationship with a family traces back to a conversation you had with them about your own child’s struggle with ADD and your decision to medicate him.
Because so much of education’s maze is made up of small moments, discrete decisions, and productive struggle, its path from beginning to end is, and should be, as twisted and knotted as that bundle of holiday lights you keep meaning to hang.
So untangle it.
Trace it back.
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