In Sutherland’s Scrum, the explanation of happiness’s essence doesn’t follow the typical Merriam-Webster’s definition. Refreshingly enough, there’s no obsessive correlational to contentment; there’s no image painted of perpetual yellow-faced smiling. Missing is the consumeristic satisfaction in sitting back and swimming through pools of pleasure. Sutherland isn’t writing this chapter as a toast to all the warm and fuzzy feelings that derive from finding a “good job” or landing in the “right spot”. This isn’t a celebration in the guise of “happy, happy, joy, joy” (my apologies to Mr. Ren and Dr. Stimpy).
Professional happiness for Sutherland connects most strongly with three other abstract states of being: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. These three musketeers of marvelousness all correspond directly with the journey and not the destination. As an educator, this was vital for me to hear. Too often in our schools are we consumed by high-stakes testing, standards-based curriculum where end-of-year goals and proficient scores trump everything. The unfortunate sacrifice of this “standardized result” infatuation is, you guessed it, happiness. The ill-founded pursuit would most likely be described by Mr. Sutherland as “soul killing,” or something synonymous to strict adherence to timecards, daily journaling of tasks, or filling out paperwork piled higher than Pisa’s leaning tower.
My intention, per se, is not to decry standards or testing or even today’s common curriculum (although, if you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time, I do maintain beefs with all the above). No, there is something to be said for many of the tools within these constructs. People often qualify happiness as being uncountable or immeasurable. Sutherland disagrees with this notion. He believes that happiness should be quantified. So what helps most in this regard? Something that testing, assessing, and results-based activities do a great job of accumulating: DATA. If we as educators wish for our students to get better each day, they need constant and timely feedback. They need to see if and how they’re improving in their understanding of a particular subject. This data should not be, however, taken solely from the typical and tired sources like the endless variations of multiple-choice tests. Instead, engaging projects with specific rubrics and graded checkpoints in addition to focused short answers with clear objectives and scaffolded steps should instead be the norm. Students deserve individual constructive feedback which means workshopping or one-on-one meetings are two great ways to give a personalized experience to each pupil. The yield for this change in assessment and evaluation often is student happiness.
Let’s quickly jump back, though, to teacher happiness. Autonomy is the first ingredient to cooking up the right kind of educator happiness because it is equal parts empowerment and liberation. Although I nearly soiled myself at the beginning of my String Theory Schools experience when they told my fellow teachers and me that we would be building our own online courses, I came to realize that the autonomy granted in this enterprise made me feel respected and trusted as an adept purveyor of all things ELA.
Mastery, the second element of Sutherland’s hybrid of happiness, went hand-in-hand (for me) with autonomy. Having received my bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Northwestern, I was quite proud of the content knowledge I had worked tirelessly to build over years of dedicated study. Creating projects, activities, assessments as well as handpicking novels and poems contributed to this same sense of pride. I considered myself a master in understanding my subject area and the chance to master the education of others in this subject made me feel quite good as I embarked on the journey to transition from dedicated literary scholar to well versed literary educator.
Purpose, the third factor in Sutherland’s “productive happiness,” seems like a no-brainer for teachers. Our purpose is inherently vocational because, let’s be real here, no one gets into education for the Benjamins. We are dedicated to making the world a better place, one student at a time, one day at a time. We follow Mahatma Gandhi’s mantra, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world”. But our purpose, in what we teach and what we put in front of our students, must be evident and relevant every single time. Without this application, our purpose may be lost on our students, and that can be detrimental to our own happiness.
The last sentiment I’ll end with today comes from two of Sutherland’s last points, “Secrecy is poison; make work visible”. If your door is closed and if your mind isn’t open to change and if you’ve sworn off learning the next “new fangled technology” for whatever reason… your days of being happy as an educator are numbered if not already at zero. Keep your door open, don’t ever close your mind, and try everything (even the weird stuff) at least once. You can count on being much happier as a result.
Scrum for Schools: An Educator's Scrum Experience 