A Passion for Vacuums

My youngest son collects vacuum cleaners. He's seven. These are not toy vacuums - they are the real deal. His collection currently contains about 33 different vacuums, from a 1960s Hoover Constellation canister vacuum that actually hovers above the ground on a cushion of air to a brand new, from-the-box Shop Vac he received for his birthday.

Now, many of you are thinking, "This is a great hobby! His room is probably clean all the time." It’s a nice thought, really, but wholly untrue. His room is generally a mess and often looks more like a thrift store warehouse than a bedroom. No, Sam is good at cleaning other things (when asked), but does not see that his own room should also receive the benefit of his mass of floor cleaning implements.

A couple of weeks ago I was driving with Sam on our way home from running some errands we he asked me when trash night would be for our neighborhood. As a father my suspicions were naturally raised and I resisted the urge to rush home and search the trash cans to see what Sam and his brother Ben may have hidden there. I told him the two days most people have their trash collected in our neighborhood and then asked why he wanted to know. He told me we had just passed a vacuum cleaner outside someone's garage. He wanted to come back on trash night because he thought it looked like one they would be throwing away.

At the time, I figured there would be no harm in collecting the "trash" vacuum because it probably had a burned-out motor or was otherwise broken beyond repair. This would be a good lesson: it's at the curb for a reason.  The following evening - trash night - we drove past the same home and there at the curb was a vacuum cleaner, set to make a journey to the landfill. And by landfill I mean the workshop in our basement. Ben and Sam loaded the "trash" into the car, and the "trash" made its way to the Baker workshop.

At this point you may be wondering about the point of this story. That's a good sign because it means you are still reading. Within minutes Sam had his vacuum tools out and a bucket of soapy water ready to go. For the next hour he worked dismantling and cleaning the new vacuum. He had to be told multiple times that it was past his bedtime until I finally had to turn off the lights and follow him upstairs to his room and bed.

He snuck back downstairs overnight for a time (unbeknownst to me or my wife until the following morning) to work on his new project and was up before everyone in the house to continue. He found videos on YouTube showing him how to fix issues and reassemble parts of the machine. He was completely engrossed in the project, occasionally asking for some assistance from me and watching intently as I removed a screw in an difficult location or reassembled some piece of the housing. He thought critically about how to disassemble certain parts and analyzed how the machine was likely held together when he wanted to reach a certain component.

Sam is passionate about his vacuums and about taking things apart to see how they work. But he rarely displays that same passion and drive when it comes to school. He does well in school, but he rarely seems so engaged in his school learning as he is with his vacuum refurbishing and repair. So when I read What School Could Be (Dintersmith 2018) a few weeks ago, I thought again and again about the passion for learning that is often missing from students in school. Students, when asked, often come to school because they have to - an obligation rather than a desire. Wouldn’t it be nice if the students we teach arrived at school each day passionate about their learning and wanting to be in school?

In Chapter 8 of the book, the author discusses "doing better things" instead of "doing things better." This is an interesting manner of thinking, especially at this point in the summer when our minds have turned to the coming school year. So much of new-year thinking involves reflecting upon the previous year and figuring out how to improve. But does this improvement necessarily mean doing what we've done before in a better way (doing things better), or should it mean doing school in a different, more meaningful way (doing better things)? I thought about my son Sam, as well as my other two children Katie and Ben, and how each of them is passionate about certain things. Then I thought about how many of those passions are or are not reflected in the learning they engage in at school. I know that Sam cannot spend his entire day working to restore and repair vacuums. But what if his learning in school could be tied to his passions? What if he woke up each morning excited to go to school and learn, the same way he reacts to finding a vacuum in a thrift store or salvaging one from the trash collectors?

What if we begin to rethink the way we teach students so that their passion for learning drives what we do in classrooms? What if we do better things instead of trying to do the old things better? I would love to share with everyone a tried and true plan for implementing these ideas, but I cannot offer that at the moment. Truthfully, I'm not even sure exactly what each school day would look like; however I think part of doing better things is understanding where our students are with their learning and what their passions are, and then tailoring the student learning experience to connect passion with content. Imagine students excited about coming to school and passionately engaged in their learning. It's a nice visual and it is possible, because each of us has witnessed a "Sam" truly engaged in learning. Now we just have to figure out how to make that happen in schools. 

(Author's note: The vacuum rescued from the trash is fully operational. It has a new belt, filter, and bag. Currently Sam is not interested in selling this one back to the original owners, as suggested by his father.)