BEDUC427 Journal - Week 8

Balancing authenticity with emotional presence and empathy.

In our readings we have taken a journey that has humanized teaching for me, grinding up any romantic illusions I may have had. I have really been touched by the Greene article that speaks about subjugating ones ego to truly see the child. We bring all of our experience as adults and educators to the classroom, but it is the student's world that we are entering, cognitively and emotionally. This is very fragile stuff. There is a chapter in The Phantom Tollbooth where Milo and Tock go to a place called 'Point of View'. In this place all the children are born at their adult height and grow down to the ground. They literally and figuratively start life with an adult's point of view. Milo thinks this is nuts. As we enter the classroom, we bring all of our adulthood, with it's trappings of knowing better, bureaucratic nonsense and complexities of adult life, and we need to dial down that perspective and make room for the student's point of view. What is it that they see as important? What is the 'now' of the classroom psyche?

Ayers gives us multiple examples of elevating the students' points of view and the students' points of reference to make the classroom a place that they belong to. By setting our adult world aside when we go through that classroom door we are able to be present for those children. It is a little like being a time traveler where you leave your points of reference behind and decode the new society that you have just entered. Only with the classroom you are a co-creator and guardian of the society.

To create that classroom society, the teacher must see and hear the children and have a vision of how all members might knit together as a group. Not that it will happen as the teacher plans, only that he/she believes it will come together and it is his/her obligation to nurture and guide the community. The teacher needs to be authentically emotionally available to the children. Even thise kids that are hard to like. I observed a 7th grade LA/Social Studies class this winter on 2 different occasions, where prior to entering the class, the teacher told me of Jimmy (fake name) which she could not stand. Sure, he had some behavior issues, but you could not tell that this teacher did not like this boy. She treated him with the same respect and guidance that she gave the other children. She was authentically available to this child, and had subjugated her prejudice against him. That looked like emotional labor to me.

Teachers live in 2 worlds, and I can see how stressful this might be. There are limits to the classroom experience that separates it from the rest of your life. Due to the high personal involvement that teaching requires, it puts your private (highly personal) life at risk. I think it is important to keep that in perspective to keep you in the game. Twenty-eight children, 6 hours a day, the classroom needs to be a place you want to be, the students want to be and their parents want them to be. It is an opportunity to create a world that is better that life. That models the best of how we can be and in doing so, develops children with positive experiences that raise their expectations from life. At the end of the day, when you jump into your car, you still care about those students, but the difference is, you get to put the ego back into your dealings as you re-enter the world of adults and house payments and lawn mowers. If you believe that we all have a child within, we need to tend to the ego of that child as well sometime.

I continue to think about metaphors for teaching, and farming comes to mind. The cyclical nature of it. The high stakes associated with success or failure have a parallel with teaching. Under the right conditions, every seed will germinate, but, as in nature, no two plants are a like, yet they all have a purpose. And then you start again next year, looking at the fertile dirt, planning your rows, and nurturing the seeds.

BEDUC427 Journal - Week 7

It Seems So Real

First day at B.F.Day Elementary School. OK, it was only the meet and greet with the 4th grade teacher Janet, but it felt so real. I arrived at the appointed time, but the school was not expecting us (Kelly, Alex and I) for another forty-five minutes, so the principals sent us to our teacher's rooms to observe. What I saw was everything we have been talking about with respect to community, empathy and social justice. The school had just finished up their Village Day where every classroom shuts down and re-opens as a village business. This included a garden shop and stationery shop, art museum. Next year I will be running the pizza joint with the kids. I observed the reading buddy program where the fourth graders read with the second graders, Janet took this time to talk to me about her teaching and responsibilities at the school (which go way beyond teaching), this discuss enjoyed a constant stream of interruptions as Janet mediated interpersonal disputes through out the reading session. She walked two kids through an empathy resolution, negotiated a separate peace between 2 others and re-focused others at the task at hand. It was a mini-seminar in multi-tasking!

Back up in the 4th grade room I could see the layers from a years worth of learning activities. I felt like an anthropologist researching the culture of the 4th grade tribe. I saw a teacher who was in-charge yet very authentic with her kids, accepting suggestions and corrects in a collaborative way. The class takes about 12 field trips a year, another community tie and avenue for parental involvement, which the teacher coordinates. She takes an experiential position on the learning process. We talked about the switch in the math curriculum, and the challenges that poses for teachers with respect to preparation. As a veteran teacher Janet has an archive of lessons that she draws upon and a switch in curriculum can obsolete those plans.

I can't wait to be in the classroom under the guidance of Janet. In the meantime, she has invited me to attend some of the end of the year events at B.F.Day, this will be a great opportunity build bridges and observe the school community before I have responsibilities there.

I won't say that the reality of teaching doesn't scare me, and this was certainly a wake-up call. Like being in a dressing room and trying on a dress that looked so great on the hanger, but you don't know how it will fit you. What I am most afraid of is the isolation in the classroom that teachers face. It's you and 28 kids. In knowing this, I realize the intrinsic value of the teacher community in the school, which I saw in action at B.F.Day. It did not seem like Janet was alone at all. I wonder if the staff dynamics in an elementary school are different than at a middle school? Does size of school and number of students make teachers more autonomous? If middle schoolers are more autonomous from their parents, does that also get mirrored at school? Hopefully in my Dyad placement I will get some of these questions answered. I think I would rather be at the elementary level than the middle school level if isolation is intrinsic to that age for whatever reason.

I have been thinking about working conditions. Some of what I have seen in Seattle is appalling. No heat, kids who spit on the floor... I don't mean to suggest that having a new school is important to me, but a school that is well loved is. I want to work in environment that is in good working order. My Midwest background informs me of how to "make do". but i don;t wan tthe environment ot distract from the learning for the students or myself.

This would be a part of my classroom norms. I am starting a running list of values and behaviors that I would like to see in my classroom. Not all come under the heading of rules, but I want to develop a list of my expectations. Chaos can be good and disrespect of persons or property is not.

BEDUC427 Journal - Week 6

Teaching is courageous.

If teachers cannot influence the world, who can? I have been thinking about Three Cups of Tea and how dramatic that story is. How the task is daunting, building schools in Pakistan and now Afghanistan. What Greg Mortenson is doing is hard and heroic, but I would argue that in some sense what public school teachers need to do in this country is harder and no less heroic. It is like the difference between physical and emotional abuse; you can see physical abuse, people come to the aid of the victim. Something needs to be done about it! That is Three Cups of Tea. With emotional abuse the suffering is also great, but not so apparent. That is what US public school teachers are up against. A system that seems to work, our kids go there everyday, and they all learn something whether part of the curricula or not). To pour resources into a public education system in the wealthiest country on Earth should be a no-brainer, but our culture of selfishness and the low status of our children, de-prioritizes education.

I think we are in this situation partly because of the detachment of the community from the schools, and the detachment of families from schools. The belief that educating our kids is the school's job, and not every one's responsibility is a 'slackers' approach to the future.

In Jean's article this week, The Challenges and Joys of Multi-age Classrooms, she talks about how multi-age classrooms reflect society in general, both in the family and in adult society. When building community in the classroom, having an age spread would be an advantage, as it would mirror the child's world, and make more sense to the children. I had never understood the value before. I see now the more a classroom can model the rest of the world, the better. A teacher has the opportunity to make that world better on a small scale, modeling social justice, thirty kids at a time. The classroom has to be relevant, to inspire change.

There are 2 reasons I think that education in this country could be on the cusp of revolution. First, we are a land of immigrants now more than anytime in the last 100 years, our neighbors no longer all look like us. As much as we are still a country of haves and have-nots, economic success is no longer a whites only club. The middle class is multi-racial. Secondly, because of communication, economies and the ecology, national borders are irrelevant and a little archaic. The world needs global solutions. What if we learned to be such good neighbors that war was no longer? I am really interested in the idea of the scale of the goal, being both local and global. Developing better neighbors, members of society and global thinkers is the work of teachers.

We must re-orient our values to make individual accomplishment (a tenet of American values) have more meaning if it is working for the general good of all. Take the greed out of individual accomplishment. I wonder is we will ever recover from the greed of the last 3 decades? I do believe with our current economic downturn, that there is a glimmer of opportunity to reset our national values.

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On another note, I am excited to be going to B.F. Day Elementary School for my placement interview next week. It is a very small school, only 1 1/2 fourth grade classrooms yet a burgeoning population in the lower grades. It is interesting to discover while doing the research on the website, that only 15% of the student population picked B.F. Day as their first choice of schools. This is a school that has always tried to do the right thing, I don't know why (greedy upper middle class neighborhood?) more parents don't pick B.F.Day first. I can't wait to see how that works from the inside!

BEDUC427 Journal - Week 5

Imagination
I am so excited about the Greene and Perlstein readings this week. The ideas around the value and necessity of imagination identified for me why becoming a teacher is so important and gave me more clarity around what a teacher's role is. Subject matter needs to go beyond the page and it is the responsibility of the teacher to open the window to the beyond. I have been a little impatient with the discussion about NCLB and tracking. For me, engaging the imagination, is at the core of a teacher's role. Innovation comes from the "what-if" questions. If we are always teaching to the "how-to" solutions then we are not providing a complete education.

Perlstein describes how the methods used for closing the achievement gap are creating an imagination gap. I think this is true. I see it with my stepdaughter who is getting all A's, yet struggles with having ideas. She is perfectly happy to follow instructions or figure out how to over-achieve inside the framework. When I align that with Greene's points about empathy and imagination, I wonder what kind of future we are creating.

I worry about the lack of artistic exposure poor children get, that the television is their window to the world and most of that is over described, presenting someone else's imagination as a truth. The focus on closing the achievement gap only exposes these children to an education out of context. Isn't it our responsibility to ignite the imagination of all children so that they can use this thing we call education to create fulfilling lives? Instead we are creating self-fulfilling prophecies, giving poor children, at-risk children, even middle class children only the tools to subsist instead of reaching for the stars. I thought education was the great equalizer in our society, the path of upward mobility (economically or spiritually), but if we are not providing an education that supports that premise, then we are in trouble as a society. I am not sure I want to teach to a lesser purpose.

For the children with whom we are not trying to close an achievement gap, the opportunities in schooling and curriculum are altruistic. These kids get the kids of education all children should get. There is time for making conceptual suppositions and connections. There is time for self-directed study. It is not the nuance of tracking that we are getting caught up in, it is the large schism between the haves and the have-nots that is perpetuating the classism in America that will keep us as an under-achieving nation with the top 10% continuing to pat themselves on their backs (or their wallets). In a short time, continuing in this vein, a small class of well-educated people is not going to define what being an American is about, it will be the larger, poorly educated population that will reflect back in the nation's mirror.

What I have liked about the last 2 weeks of class materials has been the juxtaposition of community building and imagination. I see one enabling the other. If you create a community in your classroom, you are breaking down classism issues the kids come to school with. In doing that, you are celebrating all of their differences, engaging imaginations in exporing the elements of the differences, and creating a democratic common memory that is positive. Imagination allows kids to tell their own stories, to empathize with other kids, to find possibilities for themselves that reach beyond their daily reality.

A funny thing happened for me this week with my middle school learners class project. We are writing an interdisciplinary lesson plan in small groups. My group picked Opera and we decided to combine History, Language Arts and Science. In dividing up the lesson plans, I took on the science part because I have limited background in science and the others were more interested in History and LA. While researching and choosing experiments, I found that I could not build a unit without using Art. We would be making strings vibrate (music), making megaphones and ear trumpets, and then building model opera houses applying the acoustical principles we discovered. So my question is, could I possibly present the Science without the Art? Is it because of my background in Art that I see everything through that filter?

I have started to have dreams of being the teacher in a classroom. The dreams have a warm glow. I am imagining how it could be.