Lucky Peach and Points of View

If you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning you know I have a thing for chefs and for David Chang in particular. Besides being a bad-ass chef, Chang created the best new magazine in years when he started Lucky Peach this summer. It’s been an unexpected hit because as David Carr of the Times explains, it breaks all the rules of what we expect from magazines these days,

“It breaks many of the conventions not only of food journalism, but of magazine journalism in general as well. The glamorous star on the cover? It’s a chicken being lowered into a pot with its wrinkly backside depicted squirting out graphic eggs. The so-called front of the book — which in most magazines is filled with infographics and breezy snippets — is filled with a trippy, 9,000-word, rambling eat-a-logue through Japan by Mr. Meehan and Mr. Chang.”

But what makes it work is what Anthony Bourdain, of the TV show No Reservations and a writer for Lucky Peach says, “The guiding ethic was that the important movers in the project cared less about the business success than making something that is good and interesting.” And making something good and interesting means infusing every page with passion, curiosity, and personality. Lucky Peach could only have come from the David Chang, in the same way that No Reservations – one of the best shows on TV in any category and the best “travel show” – could only be created by Bourdain. Chang spends all of this time and energy starting a magazine from scratch and then makes the whole first issue about ramen – not the supermarket instant kind that everyone eats when they’re 19, but the Japanese specialty that few Americans ever experience. Nothing in the magazine is at all “practical”, even to someone who is a minor foodie like myself. For goodness sakes, there is a whole section comparing the ramen specialties of different regions of Japan and another with comic book illustrations featuring top ramen chefs, but I read every single page.

Why? For the same reason I love No Reservations, The Tony Kornheiser Radio Show, the band TV on the Radio, and David Fincher movies – there is a point of view. Not everyone is going to like Fincher’s Zodiac – a procedural where they never catch the bad guy and not everyone is interested in hearing Kornheiser rant about not being able to set up his new TV, but that’s sort of the point. When something, be it a magazine, band, or a movie, is designed to be popular with everyone, it’s going to be hard to be more than mediocre. See Time magazine, Rick Steves, and Nickleback for examples.

And I think this applies to schools too, especially in regards to hiring. When we’re recruiting teachers, I’m very open about the fact that working at KPEA is not for everyone. We have a style, a way of doing things, a point of view for how we teach and how we work together as adults. This style borrows from other KIPP schools, is informed by my travels as a Fisher Fellow, and has now been augmented by the personalities and experiences of our 16 amazing staff members. The end result is a culture that works for our school, but that is not going to be a good fit for everyone. And that’s ok!

The easiest (and one of the most important) example is how we do common planning at KPEA. To allow teachers to focus their energies and make each lesson plan really strong, we common plan with one teachers being in charge of writing plans for one section of the day, like reading, math, or writing. We divide this work and then put it together again so that each classroom in a grade teaches off the same lesson plans. This has lots of benefits (less work, experts can focus on what they know best, etc.) but it means that teachers have to teach off other people’s plans and don’t have total control over what happens in their classroom. Some prospective teachers will love this idea and some will hate it. And that’s ok!

We try really hard to make sure our prospective teachers know what they’re getting themselves into, including going as far as giving applicants a document called “What should I expect if I work at KPEA?” that lists two pages of bullets like:

• There will be a strong focus on data to ensure that our students are learning. We will have regular, common assessments, formally analyze the results, talk openly about our students’ progress and be accountable for their learning.

• Expect to share a common instructional belief at the school about the necessity of small group, differentiated instruction. If you don’t believe that this is the best way for students to learn, this is not the school for you. 

• You will work hours that will be long and sometimes hard. It will not be unusual, especially at the start of the year to work more than 12 hours a day. Most teachers will also be doing at least 4-5 hours a weekend of planning, grading, and prep for the following week. You will feel exhausted at times.

My goal when I talk to prospective teachers is not to convince every single one that working at KPEA is the most awesome thing ever, it’s to be as honest, transparent, informative about what working at our school is like. To get really meta here, part of the reason I write this blog is so prospective teachers can get a really good idea of what I think about and what I’m like so they’ll know if they want to work with me. We don’t want to try to be the school that is the right place for everyone to work because then we won’t be a good place for anyone. We have a point of view. And that's ok.