Paul Cumbo's Blog, page 2

The Road Has Many Turns

This was a rough year to start a travel business. But it was a great year to learn the fine art of adaptation. Let me tell you a tale. 

My friend Adam Baber and I spent years leading service-learning programs for high school students—mostly in the Dominican Republic. We worked mostly in a mountain farming community called El Faro, and we built strong friendships there. Over time, Adam and I envisioned a company that would offer service-oriented international retreats for families, companies, or other groups. We spoke with our friends in El Faro. They were welcoming. 

That vision became 

In the two years leading up to COVID, Adam and I had raised just shy of six figures from a small group of investors. In February, as the second of five campus buildings was nearing completion, we were booking our first groups, and reality was aligning nicely with our conservative revenue projections. Then everything changed. 

Starting Camino wasn’t easy. We’re based in New York, not known for streamlined bureaucracy. Complexity was compounded by the international factor and language barrier. I have “conversational fluency,” but that doesn’t cut it when negotiating real-estate contracts. We required several attorneys, American and Dominican. Securing insurance was no easy task, and it isn’t cheap.

Yet we are fortunate. First, Adam and I were disciplined in terms of our debt. We could have raised and spent double or even triple what we did. Secondly, our investors couldn’t be more supportive. Finally, we have savvy advisors who have helped us immensely. After all, neither Adam nor I has an MBA. We’re career educators.  

When COVID threw a wrench in the gears, we felt compelled to maintain momentum. This required creativity and adaptation, quick. When your company is predicated on something that suddenly becomes impossible or at least impractical for the foreseeable future—international air travel, in our case—you have to pivot quickly or fail.

Adam and I reflected upon a key question: What could we do in these circumstances—and do well—in keeping with the company’s vision? We realized that our combined experience teaching and mentoring young men was an asset we could leverage. Many were feeling isolation and disconnection, especially early in the pandemic. College students and young adults in particular were in limbo. Well, Camino’s vision was always about helping people discern their path. (Camino means “path,” “way,” or “road” in Spanish.) 

So we built the

The Seminar taps into something essential for young men at this age—the deep need for genuine connection and the strong desire for honest conversation. Camino isn’t religiously affiliated, but Adam and I have spent our careers at Jesuit schools, and Camino is inspired by Ignatian Spirituality. It’s centered on reflection that enables discernment of our authentic desires—the kind that help us understand our lives beyond our resumés, on a vocational level. The Seminar challenges guys to “get real” about where they’ve been, where they are, and where they really want to go on the path—the camino—of life.

I don’t know when we’ll be able to take groups to El Faro. It might be six months away, or it might be a year. Meanwhile, we have debt service and a construction project on pause. Sure, it’s unsettling. But we also have a creative mindset, an optimistic disposition, and, most importantly, belief in the value of what our company offers. 

If you believe in the value of what you offer, and you have the humility to let go your preconceptions, what’s left over is a resilience that makes room for creativity. And that, in turn, builds confidence. The irony is that we now have more clients and more brand awareness about Camino than we would have at this point, had all this not happened. The road, indeed, has many turns. Know why you’re walking, and then tread carefully but confidently. 

#reflection #travel #adaptation #agile #pilgrimage #service #international #discernment

Since The Ides of March: 6 Lessons from 2 Months of Online Teaching

In the Wake of The Ides of March

"Beware the ides of March," I told my students as we got ready to dive into studying Julius Caesar. With cruel irony, on March 15, COVID-19 took down regular school for a good long while. Two months of online teaching later, a few lessons have emerged. Upon reflection, what I find most interesting is that while our current circumstances precipitated these lessons, their relevance is not limited to online teaching. Some aspects of schooling will change permanently because of this--and some of that change will be positive.

I have to begin by acknowledging that I teach in a college prep school with hardworking, above-average students. Moreover, our faculty and students have been, from the get-go, beneficiaries of our school's longstanding embrace of educational technology. If anyone was relatively well-positioned to respond to this, we were. These factors play into what I say here. Different teachers are, of course, having different experiences based on any number of variables. 

Lesson 1: Less is more

We've already heard this one so many times, but it has never been more true. This entire situation demands that we focus on quality over quantity with a renewed commitment. We have to change not only what we're doing, but how we're doing it, and what we expect done. Right now, that's the job. Failure or refusal to adapt is simply a failure or refusal to do the job.

Lesson 2: Teacher-student ratio matters more than ever. Because less is more.

I spent the first three years of my career at a school where four sections of sixteen students each was a full teaching load. While I've spent much longer at a place with more typical teaching loads (e.g., 100-125 students across five sections), I have never forgotten the amazing experience afforded by those small classes. Small classes are an expensive proposition. They cost time, money, space, and human resources. But ensuring small classes is a philosophical investment as much as a fiduciary one, and the qualitative pedagogical dividends are unmatched. The bountiful convenient research concluding the opposite is itself flawed, in my opinion. Because by and large, the studies that have smugly determined that class size doesn't really matter are themselves based on flawed quantitative measures of what makes for educational quality.  

Now that we're online, meeting virtually in small groups is more than an ideal or a luxury. It may well be an outright necessity for truly effective teaching. Trying to run a class in a meaningful way with more than a dozen people on a screen is, in most cases, going to be a recipe for disengagement and frustration. If we're in this distance learning boat for a while, teachers have got to find ways to divide our time among smaller groups. Part of that will require letting go of some preconceptions about how much time students need to be in our company. And if we find ourselves back in classrooms with only ten or twelve students for half the time because of distancing mandates, I genuinely believe we will come to appreciate this valuable silver lining. 

Lesson 3: Classes don't need to meet daily, and they don't need to be long. Because less is more.

Our school has--correctly, I think--taken the approach that every class does not need to meet every day. Many schools are simply trying to replicate their normal schedule. Such attempts to replicate a non-existent mode of operating are probably unsustainable for most schools. Perhaps they'll work for the smallest of schools, where teachers already enjoy a relatively light section load, but for most, I doubt it will be able to hold for long. Burnout is a very real concern here. Have you had the torturous experience of spending three or four hours of a day--let alone seven or eight--on video calls? It's brutal. Why should we expect kids to do even half of that? Meeting for brief periods of time, with meaningful independent work assigned in the interim, is more sustainable. Less is more.

Having the humility to acknowledge that our course is not the be-all and end-all of a student's education is important, and that's a prerequisite for openness to a reduced class schedule. This also demands that we be open to thinking about how students can engage the course in independent contexts, without our direct presence. A few years back, our administration allowed a couple of us to experiment with elective courses where half the class met every other day. It was a win-win, in many ways. This kind of out-of-the-box thinking is going to be required for us to remain agile when it comes to doing school for a while, I think. 

Personally, this is one of the lessons that I think will have the most lasting relevance long after this is over, and we will realize a new array of schedule and course opportunities as a result. High school classes, by default, have almost always met every day. And yet it is the norm in higher education to have classes meet twice or three times per week. Maybe there's a happy medium for this age group. Again--if we end up meeting with fewer students for less time, less often, I predict we will come to appreciate the qualitative enhancement to that time together. Less will indeed become more. 

Lesson 4: Good preparation is even more important, and much harder. Because less is more, as long as it's well-prepared.

Running a course this way demands more forethought and preparation than our typical regimen did. Truth is, regardless of their planning approach, experienced teachers do a surprising amount of improvising and agile maneuvering from day to day. There's less room for that in this scenario. Because of the obstacles that the technological barriers imply, it's even more important than ever that we have a good plan for each day. Ironically, at the same time, we have to be more flexible than ever, and expect the unexpected as a matter of course. 

In the context of this challenge, one of the greatest assets we have at our school is a good learning management software platform--and a solid team of colleagues who guide our understanding of it. This means that everything is in one place. I think this is a definite best practice. Students and parents should not have to keep up with multiple apps or interfaces to facilitate their coursework. Schools should hold their teachers to downs on this, like ours has. Ad hoc approaches to delivering course material, as well-intentioned as they may be, make things tricky and have the potential to generate resentment. (As the parent of three little kids, I can attest to this.)

Lesson 5: With discussion at the core, depth is possible (if we remember that less is more).

I've heard a lot of pessimistic talk about how hard it is to have meaningful classes in this manner. Of course there are things that can't be replicated fully at a distance. But the notion that it's impossible to have deep learning experiences remotely? I don't buy that, either. It's all about our approach. I have been very affirmed by the positive remarks from my students regarding our discussion-based course. It has been that way from the get-go, well before we were relegated to audio or video conferencing. The daily Socratic seminar discussion format has, ironically enough, transitioned quite well to the video conference model. It's not that complicated:

Assign brief preparatory work that invites them to think. 
Hold them accountable for it (e.g., make them submit that work in advance of class).
Then, just get together and talk together about why the content matters. 

That's pretty much it. It brings the content to life for everyone. It always has, and I think it it always will, regardless of the medium. Depth is more important than breadth now in so, so many ways. 

And, by the way, while it's fair to lament the "disconnect" intrinsic to this mode of teaching and learning, I've found the "we-are-all-in-this-together" factor actually has a powerful humanizing effect. When we meet with our students in a videoconference, we are meeting each other in our homes. And even when we use (as we should) every professional discretion such as plain backgrounds and minimal distractions, there is still the conscious awareness that we are all doing this in the sometimes-chaotic thick of our home lives, and that it isn't going to be a flawless experience. That calls for a default commitment to cura personalis (care for the human person).

Lesson 6: Anything other than "formative assessment" is probably pointless. And when it comes to assessment, less is more.

This one is probably presenting some of the toughest challenges for both teachers and students. I'm not a big fan of edu-speak (and there's a lot of it), but the term "formative assessment" makes plenty of sense. Basically, it's the idea that any type of "testing" mechanism should itself be a learning experience, not merely a mechanism to quantify acquired knowledge. In most cases, that means it should involve generative pursuit--creating something--not just reporting knowledge. 

Now, any sophisticated discussion of formative assessment has to include the acknowledgement that quantitative, objective assessment does have value. It's not a simple binary, e.g., "multiple choice bad / Socratic discussion good." But the truth is, under these circumstances, there is an even more pronounced set of arguments for de-prioritizing objective testing. First off, from a purely cynical standpoint, we have to acknowledge that there is practically no way to ensure the integrity of almost any objective quizzing or testing. 

But that cynical (practical?) thinking isn't the primary reason why we should prioritize formative assessment right now. The more important one is that with the limited interaction we will be afforded with students, we should be doing everything in our power to discuss, talk about, and use the course material. We should invite and challenge them to make something, not report on something. 

And lest teachers fear that this will simply result in zero accountability or meaningless grades (and thus eroding incentives for learning), I have found the opposite to be true. So long as meaningful assessment exists, and so long as students are held to accountability through reasonable measures, grades still matter enough to matter. The beautiful thing is, though, I've seen the anxiety over grades fall to record-low levels. All while the kind of class discussions we're having leave me with no doubt that they're doing meaningful thinking about the course content. 

What does all this mean for the coming school year?

More than likely, when school does return to physical buildings, we'll need to deal with some lingering form of the restrictions imposed by distance learning. Even if it's not as extreme as what we're facing now, there's a good chance that we'll need to embrace these kinds of lessons to create a meaningful and effective educational experience.

I predict we'll be looking at smaller groups, less-frequent course gatherings, the need for even more meaningful formative assessment, and a strong desire for discussion and interaction to counterbalance what will have been a long interlude of disconnection.

#education #distancelearning #digital #teaching #learning #pedagogy #vocation

Need a Creative Outlet Right Now? Write a Book. No, Seriously.

Maybe you should write a book. This might* be a good time to tackle it. If your circumstances are making for more down time than usual, this might be the time. You have a story in your head. Try telling it. 

Got low expectations? Good. Nice, humble way to start. So what if hardly anyone will ever read it? So what if it never gets published? Who the hell cares? Write it for the sake of writing it. You might be surprised what you come up with. Not a good writer? Whatever. Guess how you get better at writing? Oh and guess what: the great democratization of online publishing means there are already thousands of absolutely wretched, horrifically-written, poorly-conceived, terribly-executed books out there. So even if yours is pretty bad, it'll still be a lot better than those :)

Or maybe you've got high expectations? Okay. Just be ready for the wretched, mercenary, arbitrary nature of the publishing business. You probably won't get an agent, and you probably won't get a lucrative book deal. Don't make your high expectations about numbers and money. Make your high expectations about the quality of your story. Then none of the rest of that will matter so much. Oh...and by the way...if your too-high-expectations are the very thing keeping you from starting, then...well, just consider the irony of that for about two minutes and then go start the damn thing.

Look, if you've lived for a while, you've got a story. Write it. If it's lousy, no one has to know but you. But you never know. You might end up with something golden. In which case, your low expectations will have served you all the better. If nothing else, it might do something good for someone. It might be a gift to someone. That someone might be you.

* Of course, depending on your circumstances and/or line of work, this might be a terrible time to tackle it. I get that. 

Averse to eBooks? Time to Reconsider. The Print Book Supply Chain is Struggling.

Like so many other industries, the physical book supply chain is under a lot of strain right now. If you have ordered a print book--any book--lately, you may have experienced a shipping delay. You might have noticed that that hardcovers, especially, are taking longer to arrive. It depends on the book, of course, and current stock levels of any given title. 

Ingram, one of the major printers and distributors that accounts for a good percentage of books purchased globally, recently sent a notification to all publishers that turnaround time for orders has been stretched to nearly three weeks in many cases. This applies both to individual orders, as well as to bookstores large and small. Yes, even your favorite cozy local bookshop by and large orders its books from large corporate distributors.

I guess this is a good problem on some level--people are ordering a lot more books. But you might have to wait a little longer depending on what you're ordering, when, and from whom. Of course, eBooks, which account for about 20% of book sales these days, remain instantly available and will likely only increase their market share. 

One thing this brings sharply into focus is just how resource-intense the production and distribution of paper books truly is. Don't get me wrong. I'm an English teacher, a writer, and a book lover. But don't be under any illusions that the book industry fits some earth-loving eco-ethical vision of the world. Like so many other things, it isn't that simple. Your love of paper books (and mine) is an expensive love, indeed. 

If you think about it for a minute, you'll realize just how massive the difference is between digital and print media in terms of what it takes to produce and distribute. Physical books take a lot of materials to make. That uses an incredible amount of trees and water. They take more materials to package, box, and ship. They require a large amount of space on shipping vehicles. Those vehicles, with their heavy cargo, require substantial fuel. 

I love physical books on the shelf as much as anyone else. And I'm not blind to the economics at work, particularly as they relate to local businesses. But pandemic paralysis aside, if bookstores are in danger of closing, it isn't specifically because of eBooks. Now, it's true that many physical bookstores have closed over the past twenty years, of course, and there are many reasons for that, including online distribution of print books. But it isn't because of eBooks. Like I said, the eBook market share is only 20%, and that's despite eBooks having been around for long enough to have totally digitized the book world if they were destined to do so. Most people prefer physical books.

I will always encourage supporting well-run local bookstores. But I've come to appreciate the efficiency of digital media, too. It also provides some tools (such as annotation, and the ability to search word meanings, etc.) that can offer wonderful enhancements to understanding a text. If you consider yourself averse to digital books, it might be time to think again and give them a try...if only because of our current situation. (Also, it's worth remembering that huge platforms like Amazon are the sales vehicle for hundreds of thousands of small businesses.)

In The Zone of Proximal Development

The "zone of proximal development" is just beyond a learner's comfort level in terms of abilities or comprehension. It's the place were we grows intellectual and imaginative muscles. 

This can be scary for parents and teachers. It's nerve-wracking when my kids climb a tree. Just now, as I was doing some last minute prep for my freshman English class, I had a moment where I wondered if I'd taken them a little too far beyond the zone of proximal development by reading Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. 

But it passed quickly. Because I realized the fear was all about me and had nothing to do with them. It's true that we have to be realistic with our expectations, and we sometimes make the mistake of expecting too much, too soon, from kids. But the alternative is worse. Let 'em climb. 

Coffee, Tears, and Letting Go

Couple years ago, I was sitting in a coffee shop writing a pretty wrenching chapter of Wilderness Therapy. No spoilers here, but I'll just tell you it was a part of the story that takes a hard look at the interior life of a broken kid.

Anyway, there I was, on a sunny Saturday morning, typing away. Had my earbuds in, half-listening to some ambient music I tend to let play to drown out the noise. Well, just like that, I was in tears. There was this one sentence that just hit me in the gut. 

This nice old lady came up, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked me if I was okay. We had a pleasant, if slightly awkward conversation, even if just for about thirty seconds. I have no idea who she was. 

Well, having released the book into the wild this past week, I thought back to that moment. Sooner or later, you have to let go. It's a tough thing, finishing a story. When it's a novel you've been working on for years, it's even harder. 

See, while writing Wilderness Therapy, I really came to admire Mike Whittaker and the other kids he finds himself with in Montana. We got pretty tight. Man, has that kid been through some stuff. I'm proud of him.

I can't change his story anymore. No more edits allowed. I'm glad he's out in the world. I hope you'll get to know him.

Entering Holy Ground...Across the Wires

"Take off your shoes The ground you stand on is holy The ground of your being is holy." Those lines are from a poem called "Holy Ground" by Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, a Benedictine nun. I thought of this poem recently because my students are reading Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, a classic novella about a young man in India striving to achieve balance and enlightenment. Back when I was twenty, I spent some time in India and Nepal, and I learned a bit about the blend of Hindu and Buddhist traditions that blend and overlap in the Himalayan country. It is there that I learned of the custom of removing one's shoes upon entering holy sites...including someone's home. Something occurred to me. Amidst all the technical challenges and paradigm shifts that have come with distance learning, perhaps the most important thing for teachers to remember is that we are entering our students' homes, albeit digitally, across the wires. We might not think of it this way, but it is both an honor and a responsibility. Obviously, this means we must be at the top of our game in terms of professionalism. It is prudent to assume that as we convey our lessons and hold our discussions, we are within earshot of parents and siblings. This could make us very anxious if we let it. But really, what's different? Be professional, but be ourselves. And yet it is different. We are guests in a home, well beyond the familiar confines of our classroom. And in keeping with the ancient traditions of xenia, those conventions of guest-host relations, we might think of the gift we can bring upon arrival. Of course we can bring our lessons. But beyond that, we have the opportunity to bring joy and focus where perhaps there is loneliness and boredom. We can be a voice of calm resolve in what might be a space of fear and uncertainty. No matter what, when we (virtually) enter our students' homes across this digital thread, we would do well to remember to (virtually) remove our shoes, for this is holy ground.

Stuff I Learned from WILDERNESS THERAPY

You learn a lot over the years spent writing a novel. Wilderness Therapy was roughly a five-year project. Obviously, you learn a lot about writing itself. That'll be a separate post. But for this one, I'm focusing on plot-related knowledge. Here's some of the stuff I learned about while researching and writing it: - the difference in the burden of proof for civil vs. criminal cases - some of the finer points of New York State law regarding the difficult types of assault, depending on the age of the perpetrator and the type of weapon used, if any - where detained prisoners sit on planes when they're being escorted by marshals or police officers - which wilderness areas in the continental USA have the least cell-phone reception - the practice of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) - some background on wilderness therapy programs and theory in the USA - the average small-town volunteer ambulance response team - statistics around drownings - the psychopathology of, well, psychopaths--and the difference between them and sociopaths - more than I wanted to know about depression, suicide, and self-harm among adolescent male population - the braking distance of common brands of full-size pickup trucks, based on speed and road slope Well, that's a partial list. Maybe it gives you a sense of why a few industry reviews have classified it as a psychological thriller. Hope you'll check it out, or, if you've read it, post a review on Amazon!

"How do you deal with writer's block?"

There's this thing on Goodreads where, as an author, you can answer questions about writing. This was one of them. And here's my answer. Writer's block is an ostentatious term. It's a ridiculous way of describing the fact that somebody doesn't feel like doing something that's at least nominally difficult. Writer's don't need to have their own special brand of "I don't feel like doing hard things today." Which makes it no different from, say, builder's block when carpenter doesn't feel like getting out of bed and doing his job on a rainy Tuesday morning. So, the question is really asking how I deal with not feeling like doing something hard. Well, the same way anyone else does. If I have the option of not doing it right then, I don't do it right then. If I don't have that option, I do it anyway, because life is hard, and that's the way it is.

Education & Crisis-Driven Step-Changes

When it comes to education, a lot has changed quickly, by necessity. The results are mixed, and many of them have rough implications for the quality of teaching and learning, not to mention the community life so intrinsic to school. At the same time, though, it's undeniable that we are re-thinking things in ways that we've not had to before. Ultimately, because of what we've had to do, we're going to come out of this far more aware of what we can do when it's over. And that will yield growth amidst the pain of all this. I explore this in an article I wrote, recently published by the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS). Check it out here.