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What if the first couple of weeks of teaching was like The Voice? Call me crazy, but after watching some episodes idly with my roommates while grading papers in the past week, I’m convinced we could use a formal audition as educators. I’m happy to report that with the passing of the first nine weeks comes the passing of my biggest jitters about being in the classroom and the passing of the first audition for teaching: could I hold my own?
My blog, Teachtree Street, went dark for this past month for the same reason. The weeks slipped and slogged by like the days leading up to the final performance in front of the judges (or coaches) and a cast of friends and loved ones watched anxiously as I struggled to impress or at least make an impression. Yet where I felt success come and failure dog me were not where I needed to focus: I focused too much on an abstract, wooden teacher in front of the class following the pedagogical textbook.
Only recently do I think I began to survive the audition with a different tactic, one which relates to my reflections earlier on this blog about the “head” or “heart” effective teaching. I found the mixture, the subjective splash which put my own heart into the job and turned each day– days where my classroom management was far from perfect and days where my lessons were not tuned quite in the right direction to accommodate all learning styles — from arm wrestling into crafting my practice as a teacher. More than anything, I survived the audition by taking a mindset shift.
Sorry, Teach For America, but while my mindset shift has left me appreciative of the support provided by the nonprofit, I am more enthused about being an educator in a public school than part of a larger national movement to transform teacher effectiveness. The data is inconclusive, as a Mathematica study released last month failed to generate much consensus about TFA’s relative worth compared to track 1-certification teachers.
Additionally, the debate in the Atlanta education blogosphere about Olivia Blanchard’s “Why I Quit Teach For America” essay suggests — as we well know — that nonprofits such as Teach For America with vested policy interests based on their chips in the alternative certification hiring and merit pay system are going to have as much of an agenda as a public school system, a charter school, policymakers or private education providers. I have dutifully and gratefully completed my data submissions for Teach For America, preparing to track my student growth in reading and writing over the course of year. I have responded with shock at the deficits in my students’ reading levels. But I have not given to the logic that low student achievement requires throwing the educational baby out with the bath water and taking apart the human capital of teachers which makes the system work.
The reality remains complicated, and in that spirit I will share three brief lessons from the classroom I have learned which keep me in a decidedly middle ground between reformers and traditionalists in education:
(1) ALL children deserve the right to a free and equal education: It’s temptingly easy in school to write off certain children as lazy, behaviorally inept or destined to be held back in their grade level without equal investment on the part of the teacher. I have struggled with several students over the year, students who will be defiant to me, refuse to complete their work and seem unperturbed by repeated F’s on their assignments. However, psychological research in self-determination theory tells us that growth is possible with anyone when we can meet the needs of these students.
My very HARDEST students have shown me days of hard work and a desire to succeed. I see it on their faces, and I have worked through their tears, their anger and their despondency to learn about what they really need from school and how it can change them. If students feel a sense of ownership, independence and validation in the classroom, we can begin on a psychological level to address the accumulated weight of economic disadvantage, racism, sexism and oppression which keeps students in low-income, working-class communities at times generations behind the economic progress of the United States.
(2) Teaching is a constant struggle between the status quo and improvement: Setting high expectations and big goals is not a unique feature to Teach For America’s educational approach. In fact, I have found most veteran teachers and administrators to share that goal. The issue remains, of course, the organizational capacity to meet those expectations in lower-income school systems facing constant budget shortfall and drain from the teacher pool. Another issue remains my own struggles maintaining expectations for the students: it is easy as a first year teacher to be satisfied with just getting by and feeling good about yourself for having had something resembling a classroom.
Students deserve improvement, however. The status quo in the classroom is unacceptable, because it produces outcomes like the 30-million word gap and differences in economic opportunity in the future. I do not mean the status quo in terms of teacher quality, but the status quo of the inequality to which students face outside the walls of the classroom every day. Too frequently I drive past the boarded up windows of stores in Forest Park and imagine what impression that leaves on students who too rarely leave its boundaries.
(3) Authority in the classroom is central: I have a responsibility as a teacher to hold my students to the highest standard behaviorally as well as academically. Establishing authority is difficult for a recent college graduate and someone who does not share the identity of my students. The consequences of abused or neglected authority can be great, such as when a Clayton County 4th grader did not come home one night because he was so ashamed to face his parents after what his teacher told him at school.
I must keep a balance of nurture and discipline in the classroom which keeps students focused and excited about what they are learning, knowing that I understand their uniqueness — requiring me to say it explicitly frequently and make the time I spend in school matching those priorities.
I may have survived the first audition, but now I am on a team where the competition only gets tougher. Unit 2 is ahead after a blessedly needed fall break, and with it come higher stakes!
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
