It took me a while to think through different life scenarios in which Tyrese had acquired this sense of justice. Does it come from angry comments from home? Does it come from personal experience in the classroom? Does it come from being the younger sibling of a family that has been through severe economic and personal hardship (I am not blindly assuming here--I know the family)? I am not sure, and I suppose what matters most is that the comment was made, and done so without malice or surprise or attempt to shock. By a six-year-old.
Late last semester, I read Huston Diehl's Dream Not of Other Worlds, a memoir about her one year of teaching third grade to African Americans in a segregated school in Louisa County, Virginia. The year after she taught these students (and voluntarily resigned as a result of her heartbreaking experiences), they entered a desegregated school, so it seems she is writing about official segregation's last stand, although she acknowledges that schools are just as segregated now, just not by government mandate. She narrates her experience of dealing with children who had known nothing more than insitutional discrimination and low expectations. Her story is heartbreaking, and it amazed me that she could recall many of the specific experiences of teaching that class to such a degree, but there is something really powerful in her anecdotes that really helped me rethink my pedagogy and assumptions. I don't just say this because Huston is my dissertation advisor (besides this recent memoir, she wrote what I consider one of the most fascinating books about Renaissance Drama published in the last twenty years), and I don't just praise her book because she is probably the best teacher I have ever had (although that class was all about Milton, so she got a boost by the subject matter). Of course, I would not have read the book if she were not my advisor. But she never told me to read it, and she definitely didn't tell me to like it.
The book has had a lasting impact on me, especially as I witness Maria attending a public school that has failed the "No Child Left Behind" status (I don't remember the term they use). Many of our friends drive their kids to one of the other Iowa City schools because the academics are supposedly much better at those schools, which I don't doubt, but the schools are also considerably less diverse. If we weren't leaving here in a few years, we might do something similar, although for Kindergarten I would much rather have a diverse class than an academically rigorous one. It is a strange time and place for public schools, and if I think about the situations too much, I just get depressed. Huston's book at least allowed me to rethink the way education is handled from the top down, and it is not always up to a good teacher to make sure kids get educated. It is also up to policy. And people keep screwing up the policy, it seems to me.
I have no answers, and I am not sure Huston has answers either. But my experience with Tyrese showed that the problems of Dream Not of Other Worlds persist, both in our social world and in education, and their result has more effect on families, quality of life, happiness, crime, and success than all of those "moral" issues that have gained so much currency. I speak vaguely to not ruffle any feathers in unerasable print. I don't bother with politics on the blog, anyway. But I'll bother with them in conversation, if any of you want to take me up on it.
The other thing about Huston's book is that it reminded me about the beauties of education. I often notice myself encouraging the cynic, the zealot, the Atheist, the believer, the polemicist, the irenist, the elitist, the vulgarian, to spend more time working with Maria on her reading and talking to her about school. It just seems to always offer something for which those labels can't answer. What comes out of the social experiment of public education is amazing--I don't know how you could be a public school teacher and not be a memoirist.
I recently loaned out my copy of Dream Not of Other Worlds to a friend in the education department who had just spent a couple years teaching school in rural Alabama. Her response to the book was one of recognition and horror that her experience in 2007 and 2008 mirrored so closely Huston's experience in 1970. But she also shared the almost reverential feeling towards the moments in class that can only come in a classroom. I won't repeat anybody else's anecdotes, but my own seemed interesting enough.
After Tyrese and I finished our reading session, I asked him to get the next student. "No," he said, "we need to keep reading." I told him that unfortunately our time was up so he had to get the next person. "Well, I'll just read with someone else then," he replied. Then he added, "Tell Maria's brother to come play with me soon."
I suppose the rest of that story doesn't seem that interesting, but I can't help but feel pretty moved by it. Who knows all the connections Tyrese was making about our previous conversation, but I have the feeling it had to do with connecting reading to empathy, a connection that highlights the best of public education.
James--
ReplyDeleteAs a new teacher in New York City's de facto segregated public schools--although I knew better--I undoubtedly envisioned myself as some kind of moral crusader. One thing I feel like I've learned is that the kids I teach here are just normal kids. They differ from kids in schools where I grew up only in the amount of stuff they have to deal with outside the classroom--which obviously affects the way they are in the classroom. This might seem like an obvious point, but I don't think it is.
There are two other realizations I've made that are relevant to your post, probably I've talked to you about them before. I think you're alluding to my first point when you say that education needs change from the top down, and good teachers can be disabled. The idea of teacher as hero is very bad for education reform. Good teachers are absolutely important, but superhero teachers are not good teachers. We need to find excellent teachers that will raise standards and awareness and identify students' needs that can't be addressed by education and find the appropriate professionals to handle those problems. I don't feel like I'm shirking my responsibility as a teacher when I say that--superhero teachers who try to solve all of a student's problems themselves are rare, often burn out, and are a counterproductive model to hold up for education reform.
The next point is that although education reform is important, I think family reform is more important (not to be confused for what passes as "family values" politics). Kids basically come to school to learn, and a remarkable amount really do come to learn. What happens outside the school walls (whether it be death in the family, poor health habits, abusive parenting--both physical and emotional, involvement in crime, general poor role models, lack of access to enriching materials and experiences, etc.) is what makes their experiences as learners challenging. If we could refashion the way we think of families and expect families to operate (we have had more than one person over for dinner who remarked--because we were sitting at a table together to eat dinner--that we looked like a TV family), education would be 500% more successful.
I just responded to you, Marc, and stupid technology got rid of it somehow. Technology suuuuuuucks. And you can tell that to Crato.
ReplyDeleteBut I was saying "yeah" to the last paragraph, but I am not sure what "family reform" might entail. To me, that means decreasing joblessness, at least according to the horrifying article in this month's Atlantic, and increasing benefits. It also means shutting everything down on Sundays so families can be together at least one day of the week. Crato's little brother's wife is proposing a thing about two-parent families in DC, and I just voted for it on Change.org. It looked promising. I don't know, though. What does family reform look like? Incentives for parents to stay together? I am all for that.
As for being a good teacher, I also second your superhero idea. It seems ludicrous that people get that idea, but maybe you need to think of yourself as a savior to stay motivated in a very difficult job. Speaking of the Atlantic, last month's issue had an interesting article about being a good teacher, and most of their data came from some Teach for America studies, for better or worse. The conclusions were good, though: to be a good teacher, you have work hard, prepare well, and be willing to adapt and change. That sounds about right. Has nothing to do with visiting students in their homes or having them stand on their desks and recite "Invictus." It also said, though, that teaching English is its own beast and there is not good quantifiable measure to understand how well it is being taught. Amen brother.
I don't like Teach for America for a number of reasons, the biggest being that I feel like it turns what I consider my profession into a service project. The second biggest reason is that they rejected me. (Bluth and all those Ivy Leaguers still make me blush with jealousy.) Back to my biggest reason, though: that's the wrong mindset for education reform.
ReplyDeleteThe article is interesting but acknowledges one of the problems that I have for it--the individuals held up as models are not likely to remain teaching for long. They are the heroes. I agree that their conclusions for finding good teachers were good in that they didn't find any concrete conclusions. What they did find out was that successful people make successful teachers. Duh.
Also interesting that the point of the article was that teachers are the biggest difference makers regardless of what other factors at play, but the teacher they used as their model is headed to administration because he believes that as a teacher he's not doing enough good. Working at a very successful school, I can say that a successful school culture can make a tremendous difference.
Math is also quite different from English, and, although I don't know of any studies to back this up, math classrooms experience significant boosts far more often than English classrooms do. Also I can tell you that the state English tests my students take are crap with a rolled R.
As for family reform, I don't know what it should look like, but family values conversations have not focused on things that keep families together. 2-parent homes is great, Sunday as a family day or another night as a national family night would be good, Mormonads (I'm serious) for the country couldn't hurt, some kind of fatherhood initiative. Certainly issues dealing with poverty affect families, but I'm convinced that those are not the fundamental problems. Better understanding of successful family counseling and access to it would be good--if the role of social workers could be switched from reactive to proactive, that would be helpful. My older sister was taken aback when I mentioned things like this to her, talking about big brother running our lives. But, at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon or a nostalgic, I don't believe there is a good general understanding of what a happy, productive family looks like. This should be taught. It costs governments money, so why shouldn't they take responsibility? This is one thought about how to address the problems presented by poverty. Blah blah blah.