Why does the work of educators matter? I feel like the question gets lost in the haze of conversations about education reform and the contentious debates in political arenas such as in Pittsburgh and Buffalo recently about the expansion of Teach For America throughout America’s Rust Belt. By the same token, this teacher blog has become a release point for the profound social and emotional toll the inequality in our education system takes on communities and children. At times my posts have verged on the cynical.
With the holiday season around the corner, and with President Obama renewing a national focus on socioeconomic justice in 2014 with a cadre of new national voices such as Bill deBlasio in New York City and Cory Booker in New Jersey, I can put the brakes on the deep-diving into the issues. The festive spirit of recent weeks at school gave me glimmers of hope from my students, reminding me that no matter how unequal and unjust their lot may be, joy shines through in what education they do receive. As Americans congregate across the country for the holidays, making plans and reminiscing, I should also affirm and celebrate the joys of working with students on a daily basis.
Before sharing stories about moments of joy, rules of teacher behavior unlock the joy and passion of students. Teacher actions are the most directly influential factor in increasing current levels student performance. Teach For America Corps Members in the Teacher Leadership Development Program (TLDP) alternative certification pathway have laid out a framework for working in the classroom with the following mindsets based on Doug Lemov’s Teach Like A Champion model:
- The Least-Invasive Discipline Approach: Giving students the maximum possible validation and minimum possible humiliation and negative controlling in the classroom to make them conscious followers and enforcers of classroom rules
- Demanding Rigor and Completeness: Planning lessons, questions and off-script conversations with students in a way which puts the ball in their court, asking them to self-disclose, to reason through problems and to take ownership of their learning
- Building A Love for Content: A love for reading is just one way students can become excited about what they do, while others include the teacher showing a reflection of the interests students ought to have in the material — encouraging students to compete and contend for the highest academic performance
- A Classroom Built On Purpose, Not Power: Perhaps the greatest lesson I took away from the first semester in the classroom is that the educational outcomes for students are built not when students fall in lockstep with expectations through clumsy incentives (though these incentives certainly help), but when students internalize and anticipate each moment of their learning themselves without confusion about what the teacher will do or say. While American society writ large may spread a myth of meritocracy, the classroom should protect merit and fairness at all costs.
As the mural of the Sunflower County Freedom Project in the impoverished Mississippi Delta town of Sunflower, MS reads:
Education is the seed of freedom. You reap what you sow.
In order to have an impact during my short span in the classroom, I need to model the kind of society in which I hope my students will participate. Robert D. Putnam in the 2000 book Bowling Alone, discusses the decline in American voter participation and civic community from the 1970s to the 1990s. While the issues explored in that book are entrenched in the fabric of our society, a civic community based on trust, participation and locally-focused relationships can come from the bottom up in an individual classroom.
Here are stories of real joy from the world of a fifth grade teacher!
(1) The Nutcracker Performance: I have always been a fan of the arts and symphonic music, and what better way to combine that with my current work through watching a student performance of Tchaikovsky’s great ballet? A handful of fifth graders were all part of the Russian Dancers number, and to watch them attempt the really dramatic choreography of the dance was both funny and warming. They begged me in the hallway afterward not to share the pictures I took with the rest of the grade level, but of course they had to make an encore performance later in the week for the whole school!
Meanwhile, I led a small group of students in preparing the food for the dinner theatre which accompanied the performance. Two siblings of a fifth grader, the daughter of a teacher and a paraprofessional helped me run a little assembly line in the school kitchen. In just an hour I was taken back to days of community service projects in college, filling drinks and keeping everybody happy during an event with patience and enthusiasm. Of course, there were the older siblings hanging around outside the food service, hoping I would let them have some of the leavings. I have never seen faces light up as much as when I “generously” let them have the last three slices of pizza meant for cast members.
I can’t leave the story without the most important part about the lead performers who played Marie and the Nutcracker! Both fifth graders, the greatest joy I received from them was the chance to see the interest I knew they had in drama bubble up and spill over. With shy smiles, gestures maybe a little too exaggerated and the faulty sound system which inevitably crops up during these kinds of performances, my students touched on a deep truth in education: involvement and investment.
My school’s principal made the influential decision to permit after school clubs again this year after a two-year drought. Clubs have blossomed, with the Fitness Club I help co-chair having a strong membership and an adorable Christmas card we sent home with all the members. The Drama Club, however, was the key in the production of the Nutcracker. Students, especially my leads in the performance, are discovering the joy of being part. School now represents more than academics to them; school signifies a place where their passions can be on display and be nurtured by caring adults and peers. Those smiles from Drama Club or Fitness Club are ones I could never hope to get as the classroom teacher.
(2) The Spelling Bee: An unexpected twist in my first semester adventure was being asked to chair and organize the school Spelling Bee. After waffling around for a while on it, I finally learned the wise lesson of asking your colleagues for help and then acting on the best suggestions you receive while accepting assistance from “expert knowledge.” In other words, I went from lost to implementing a decent Bee! The picture for the entry comes from the Bee, but I have to conceal the faces of students for legal and privacy reasons.
Competition really gets into the head of fifth graders. One of the hallmarks of fifth graders developmentally is their desire to compete with their peers. Not more than five minutes pass on the lucky few moments the students spend on the playground before a race or test of ability has started somewhere on the fields. The “track” I keep in my classroom compares class behavior across the groups of students I see during the day, with little underlying reward beyond feeling better — but does it ever work! In other words, the spirit of competition really took hold on Wednesday 12/18 at the Spelling Bee.
One of my most capable students, who I thought unflappable, visibly shook from her seat during the Bee. Her eyes wandered vacantly as I could tell her heart raced and she tried to distract herself from the anxiety. Another student, eliminated much more quickly than he wanted to be, broke down into tears and huddled by the bathroom with his mom for a good fifteen minutes. A girl got out on the word “arrow” because she raced through the word so quickly holding a bizarre physical posture while she spelled.
All aglow over students performing at their highest level, and with the rest of the 5th graders (except for the usual suspects) watching eagerly, I struggled to not break the rules of the Bee for teachers. I understand now how conflicts of interest are so easy in competitive settings, for teachers and especially parents, because my temptation to start mouthing the spelling of the word to students was almost irrepressible. I ended up taking a role not unlike Mitch Mahoney in the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee musical, giving juice and cookies to the early finishers.
Thankfully, the Bee was not nearly as postmodern as the musical. Or, at least, I’d like to think the same criticism of social and moral values wasn’t a huge undercurrent in our school’s Bee. We can save the discussion of the conflicting meanings of education and childhood for later.
(3) The Christmas Party: The last two days of the semester were a tumult of buying food for class parties, scrambling to grade and finish certification requirements to be in compliance with Georgia’s expectations for “highly qualified teachers.” Yet, from the perspective of the students, it was a joyride. For one of the first times all year, I really got to listen in on my students’ conversations as they reached sugar highs of epic proportions and then crashed soon after.
On one side of the room, I had a knot of boys assembling a Lego set meticulously for almost an hour. They finished a precise product and proudly showed it to me — with one student even told me how he made “modifications” to the vehicle, which looked like something out of Michael Bay’s imagination. I told a student at the table to help finish a bottle of Fanta, which he took to mean chugging straight from the bottle. Before long, the room had erupted into chants of “CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!” Needless to say, he asked to be excused not long afterward.
Meanwhile, a group of girls on the other side of the room were dancing and singing together while seated in their desks. I set the rule no more than two students could be out of their desks at the same time to get seconds, etc., but that didn’t stop the dance party. Mostly it stayed innocent, but I had to be bad cop a couple of times with material students really should not have known or be repeating in school. This group decided to interrogate me on my music-listening habits, and were disappointed to learn I didn’t listen to Drake or Jay-Z. I already understand how just how much of a sheltered white kid I am, so it wasn’t embarrassing.
Along with the Christmas party came the presents! My students gave me a whole assortment of gifts which I started to become sick on heading into Friday. The highlight, of course, was a huge board game-sized box of chocolates, impromptu Christmas cards for “TCU Man” and plenty of hugs and good cheer. Everyone was in a better mood — especially when at the end of the last day I role-played Santa Claus and made naughty/nice lists for the students to be able to play at the end of the day!
The last couple of days of the semester, and ultimately that last bell on Friday announced not just the end of an intensive and rewarding first semester of teaching — but the reaping of the joy and deep fulfillment of being an educator. Working on behalf of children every day is a blessing, and with it comes the painful awareness of the injustices in our country and in the daily lives of our youth.
My interest in education is not merely abstract or political, but raw, emotional and tied to how students talk, feel and grow. In other words, from June 2013 to December 2013 I have turned from a green idealist into an educator, and from a student of teachers into a student of teaching. THAT is the greatest gift from my students I could ask for on Christmas.
