Field Stories
I've been teaching for over 20 years. I've got a few stories to tell.
Year One: Ready For Lift Off
My first year teaching was the worst.
It wasn’t just your run-of-the mill bad; working all the time, making it up as you go, realizing that not all people can be trusted, not having enough time to learn from your mistakes, trial by fire. My first year teaching was god-awful, gut-wrenching, earth-shaking, vertigo-inducing, twenty-two-years-later-I-still-get-a-migraine-when-I-think- about-it horrible. Just a few weeks into my first year teaching, I had already become so anxious and depressed about work that every morning as I drove my rusty old Subaru to school, my neck so tight that I couldn’t even turn my head to see the side-view mirror, I would secretly hope I’d be in a wreck just bad enough that I wouldn’t have to go back to work. Two decades of teaching later, I’ve learned that hoping for a crash is a pretty good sign that it’s time to quit your job. But just starting into my dream career, there was too much at stake for me to quit and throw away all my hopes and dreams.
I’d always known I wanted to be a teacher. My parents were both teachers; so were most of my aunts and uncles. When I was in junior high, I’d come home from school and invent lesson plans or draw designs of how I would set up my classroom. After high school I went to Wake Forest University, graduated, returned to take a year of teacher training courses in the education department, did my student teaching and loved it. And my students loved it. I was a natural and teaching was a great fit. Everything was on track. I slept well at night.
The year of my teacher training, we read Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities in one of my ed classes. Mr. Kozol’s stories of curious kids in horrible schools, eager to learn, desperate for the same education as mine, slapped me in the face and forced me to recognize our nation’s educational apartheid. By the time I finished reading Savage Inequalities, I was on a new trajectory. I dedicated my teaching career to working in the inner city, changing the world one class at a time. Why shouldn’t those kids have a good teacher like me? I thought. Someone who cares, speaks some Spanish, and is not only educated, but also smart. And with a terrible teacher shortage in the nation’s inner city schools, my idealism also seemed like a pretty good career move: It would be easy to get one of the thousands of unwanted and vacant jobs in America’s inner city schools.
I read a story in the paper about the huge teacher shortage in Baltimore and sent in my application thinking I’d be offered my choice of jobs. After all, the Baltimore school district was in the news for offering significant property tax breaks for teachers in a desperate attempt to get enough teachers to fill their classrooms. Five years later, home for Christmas, I got a letter in the mail from the Baltimore Public Schools saying that they had just received my application, which would be kept on file if there were ever any openings.
The other place I really wanted to teach was Texas. My girlfriend had just gotten accepted into Rice University, and it seemed like the perfect fit for us to move to Houston where she could study and I could teach in the neglected inner city schools. Besides, Houston was growing like wildfire and had hundreds and hundreds of teacher openings each fall.
I sent in my application, replete with my beautifully-crafted philosophy of education statement (we are the world) and all my carefully vetted letters of recommendation (this guy is really excited) to the Houston Independent School District. And then I waited and waited and waited. When I finished my student teaching I checked the mailbox for my job offer. When I got back from the beach, checked the mailbox. Returned from a family reunion, I checked the mailbox. Nothing. By the middle of summer I was starting to get desperate enough to consider trying to find a job perpetuating the class system by teaching middle-class white kids (like me), when I got a call from the HISD personnel office. There aren’t any openings teaching high school social studies to Hispanic students, the personnel officer said (lie), but they could put me to work teaching science at middle school. Science? I asked sure he had misspoken. I practically failed science in high school! Science. Did they have any Hispanic students, I asked. No, he replied, and then I remember him actually saying, “there’s no Hispanic students, but we’ll find lots of Hispanic students for you to teach next year, they aren’t going anywhere.” He assured me I’d love the school. The students had lots of energy.
I thought about his offer. Looking back, I know that he was lying. There were vacancies galore. And probably this overworked classroom escapee desperately needed to fill a science job, which is almost impossible, since science teachers can get actual jobs doing science (whereas, history teachers can’t get jobs doing history since there’s no such thing). In fact, the school where I eventually ended teaching Hispanic students who weren’t going anywhere had lots and lots of openings. “Long-term subs” (a euphemism for someone who is a high school graduate without a felony and gets paid minimum wage to be a substitute teacher every day for an entire year) filled the ranks in every grade, and the school had an overall attrition rate of 1/3 of the teachers every single year. In other words, they were desperate for teachers like me. But I didn’t know that. And he needed a science teacher so that’s what he offered.
I wasn’t one to say no yet, but the idea of me teaching science was so laughable that I said I couldn’t do it. After I stopped laughing about being a science teacher, the personnel guy finally relented and gave me an interview for a social studies job at a high school. I drove to Houston, took the interview, got offered a job, and drove straight to Mexico for a month-long celebration.
As soon as we returned to Houston from Mexico, I called the school district to find out when I started at the high school where I had been offered the job. Oh, the man on the phone said, there’s been a slight change in plans. We’ve got a great job for you, but it’s not at the high school. It’s at Stonewall Jackson Middle School. You start in two days. Are there Hispanic kids? I asked. Lots of them, he assured me. And they have lots of energy. I was so excited. It wasn’t high school, but 8th grade was practically 9th grade, so what could go wrong?
Poor students: check. Hispanic students: check. Lots of energy: check. Fighting the Man: check. I was ready for take off. I was so happy to have my first job. And I was going to get paid a whopping 24,000 a year!
But by the end of the first day I knew that this wasn’t what I had bargained for. By the end of the first week I wished that they had never found a spot for me at Jackson Middle. By the end of the first month I wished I had never wished to be a teacher.
Investigations
I was rummaging through an old filing cabinet last week when I came upon a folder that had slipped down below the other files. I pulled it out from the bottom of the cabinet, opened the file folder, and looked down on a stack of yellowing papers that looked as if they had been stashed away during the Nixon administration. The papers reveled themselves to be original research my students had done back in the 90s on the impact of media on teenagers’ self-perception. My students had put together a questionnaire, for their schoolmates on media usage and self-perception.
One of the questions was especially poignant:
If there were one thing about your appearance that you could change, what would it be?
I held their dusty answers in my hands and wondered if reading these surveys was an invasion of privacy. Was it really any of my business what these students thought about themselves? I wavered, and returned the file to the cabinet. But sitting at my desk, looking longingly at my file cabinet, I thought: these students graduated ten years ago; their responses were anonymous. And besides, I was really curious. I got the files back out and read the students' answers one at a time:
If there were one thing about your appearance that you could change, what would it be?
· I like the way I look; it makes me who I am. If I had to change something I guess I would give myself less fragile nails so I wouldn’t have to keep them super short.
· Legs and face
· Flexibility
· I would probably like to be 10 pounds lighter and have lighter eye color.
· I wish I were thinner
· Less hair: I hate shaving
· I would change my chest proportion. I would change my feet size. I would change my veiny eyes
· This is an interesting/hard question. Coming from someone who has a low self-esteem, there are several things I’d like to change about me but I’ve come to accept most of my flaws and appreciate them. One thing I’d like to change the most would be my upper legs, haha. Ah well. We can’t be perfect right?
· I would have a different nose
· Probably height…would want to have long legs
· Hmm wouldn’t want to age
· I don’t know. I wish that I could change my face. Not too Attractive.
I put the file down and wiped my eyes. It was heartbreaking to think of all these lovely young people thinking about their flaws instead of their beauty. And all this was before the internet tsunami that's swamped our lives have become since these questions were asked. I read on, hoping for more people whose worst flaws were their nails.
If there were one thing about your appearance that you could change, what would it be?
· Hmm…prob the bone structure on my face because I don’t really have defined cheekbones.
· Smaller lower body
· 18 inch waist FOR SURE
· um, how about my entire bone structure!?!? I’m SO bulky; But if it had to be something humanly possible (as opposed to complete bone structure implants), my weight.
· Nose
· I would lose the butt
I held their fears in my hand, and shook my head, thinking: it’s only going to get worse. And I wondered how, a decade out of high school, those students’ answers might have changed. I’m not a physics teacher, but I’m over 27, so I can tell you that as we get older gravity begins to exert a stronger force, and physical beauty tends to slope downward.
I don’t think I want to ask my current students that same question that my students asked back in the 90s, but I probably should. I know that as a teacher one of my many jobs is to help my students learn to ask questions and find answers. So, over the next few weeks, I’m going to give my students more research assignments to take the pulse of their own generation with questions on ideology, civil liberties, race, perceptions of beauty, gun control, death penalty, media use, immigration, foreign policy, and all sorts of political and social questions. Students love to be asked questions (who doesn’t???), and when you listen to their answers, there’s lots to learn. Check back in over the next few weeks for new student research and surveys and please share your own.
Here's two wondrous videos my students made about beauty.
Answering questions that you can’t answer
Students will ask you the most amazing questions. Sometimes you won't be able to answer them.
When I first started teaching I remember being filled with dread that a student would ask a question I couldn’t answer. Of all my worries and fears about teaching, the unanswerable question was that thing that kept me up late at night.
The scenario went something like this.
Student (smartly dressed): What’s the importance of the Tenth Amendment?
Me (stammering): Uh, um, ah, uh. The Tenth? We still have Ten? Um. The importance of the Tenth Amendment? Uh, I don’t know.
Students: Loser, loser, ha, ha, ha. See he doesn’t know anything. Enchain him!
After twenty years of teaching, this nightmare hasn’t happened yet. I don’t mean that I’ve answered every question. I just mean that I’ve managed to navigate tons of wondrous student questions without serious incident. And as I look back on 20 years of teaching I realize that the thousands upon thousands of student questions is the yeast that has leavened our learning. And the important thing I've done isn't answering their questions, but encouraging my students to ask question after beautiful question.
A classroom without questions is like a concert hall without music
I still remember the fear I had when I thought about all those questions my students would lob at me like flaming hot oil, so here’s a handy dandy guide to answering questions you can’t answer.
What do I do if I can’t answer a question?
- Tell the class that you don’t know (try not to do this with every question)
- Lie and make up an answer (this will come back to haunt you)
- Ask the students if they know the answer
- Have students write down the question to answer for homework (for a grade, extra credit, props, or bragging rights)
- Use resources in class: textbooks, readings, the internet (we are not all so lucky) to find the answer
- Write it down on the board. Tell the students you’ll have their answer tomorrow. Explain how you will attempt find the answer (this can be a good lesson on the nature of learning, the value of being able to find answers, and the value of education)
- Pretend to be ill and run screaming from the room
All knowledge is a result of someone asking a question
Whatever approach you take, remember, the question is much more important than the answer. If your students are asking hard questions you’ve already taught them the most important lesson.
And you think your students are tough! Drug Dealing Preschoolers
Today in Arizona, a four year-old girl opened her backpack and passed out candy to her delighted preschool classmates. Only problem was, it wasn’t candy she passed out. It was heroin.
The girl’s teacher, horrified when she realized what was happening, quickly confiscated the drugs from her distraught students before they could get out their little pediatric needles and started shooting up.
The mother of the preschool drug-mule stated that the backpacks must have gotten switched at home, but had “no idea how the heroin got into her child’s backpack in the first place.”
As surprised as the teacher who discovered the heroin must have been, we can only imagine the shock of the drug dealer who’s backpack was full of nothing but Go-gurt and Lunchables.
I’ve had some tough students in my day, but none as tough out as that heroin dealing four year old.
The World At Your Fingers
A tiny inexpensive computer rests in my palm. Just fifty years ago this machine would have been bigger than a classroom and cost millions of dollars. With the swipe of my fingertip I can answer almost any question, access most of the knowledge of humankind, create content, and communicate across cultures, languages, and thousands of miles.
I am a student in your classroom.
Out in the world I’ll work in teams, collaborating to creatively solve problems. I’ll follow questions through a sea of information until I reach original conclusions that I’ll need to communicate clearly and persuasively. Mostly, I’ll have to learn these skills on my own.
Why are we training students for the past? Isn’t it time that our classrooms were as creative as our students? This unit will help students harness the power of information and practice the skills to make it work for them. Creative Classrooms empowers students to create, collaborate, and communicate in the modern world.