William Arthur Ward proclaims, “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires”. I can tell, explain, and demonstrate, but inspire? How does that happen? Fifteen years from now will I have high school students come back to see me and tell me that I made a difference to them? I hope so, because that is the only reason I am teaching. As a teacher, I want to make all students feel that they can excel, make all students successful at something, make a book come alive to my students, give my students the time and space to discover who they are, and have them enjoy my class. I used to think that all of this could be done merely by optimism, hope, prayer, and love for my students. As Wilhelm points out, “Love your students. They won’t learn from you if you don’t truly care about them – and faking it doesn’t work” (2001 p.xiii). Therefore, loving and caring for the students is a huge priority, but, whereas in my naiveté I believed that this was all that was needed to make my classroom successful and inspirational, I am now beginning to understand that is only the foundation. There is an endless amount of work, time, dedication, materials, and questions that goes into molding the classroom I am striving for. Through this semester’s readings, observations, lessons, and experiences, I have just started to understand how it is I can be an effective teacher.
This semester during observation, was the first time that I had a truly eye opening experience that I will never forget. It was the first time I had a student walk out of the room crying because of something that I was teaching. Ms. Hallberg and I had been asked to improvise a lesson for the day. Because the students were going to read the Declaration of Independence, we decided to ask the students what it meant to them to be an American. To us, this question seemed simple enough. Not that I am planning on avoiding controversial issues in my class, but I was not expecting this to be one of those questions, so I was unprepared. As expected, many of the students discussed how proud they were to be an American and the benefits that American gave them. This particular girl that left the room crying began to talk about how America had not given her any advantages, and she didn’t consider herself an American (even though technically she was). One of the students in the room told her if she did not like America, she could leave. This student took this literally and left. For about five seconds, I had no idea what to do. I had a student disobey both me and my cooperative teacher and left crying. Although I had thought a lot about teaching controversial issues, I realized that I do not know how to handle them in the proper manner. We did talk with the class about respect and how important that is as a class. We also discussed how important multiple viewpoints are on situations. However, I really learned how important it is to fully prepare the students for what they will be learning. Additionally, talk to the students ahead of time about the issue of respect instead of assuming that the class will be respectful. In this particular situation, we had mentioned respect for each other before this situation, but we should have emphasized it more. I also discovered the importance of being over prepared. Because we were improvising, after I was thrown off by the girl leaving, I never felt like I regained my control over the class. At times I was floundering because I had not explicitly prepared questions I could ask the students.
Christenbury also dealt with an issue that is extremely relevant to this particular situation, but also to many of my students in general. I am going to get students that are feeling alienated, for example, the girl that left my classroom. Because of the treatment this girl was receiving in the classroom, she didn’t feel safe, heard, or respected in the classroom. This directly correlates to Christenbury’s statement, “For many students, school and our classes are arenas where they do not feel safe or a part; they do not want to be there” (2000 p.101). Although I am singling this particular student out, the class that I am observing is a very unsafe class in general. People are constantly telling their peers that they are dumb, stupid, to shut-up, and hitting each other, thus leading to a very unsafe atmosphere.
Christenbury mentions, “When your students are different, there can be conflict and misunderstanding, issues that while not your sole responsibility, are nevertheless your predominant responsibility to attempt to bridge” (2000 p.105). In this situation, I could not sympathize with that student. However, it was my job to make her feel safe and help the other students and myself to empathize with her and to see where she is coming from. When my students walk into my classroom, I want them to know that what they are saying counts and they will not be made fun of. Without that, I do not believe that anything really substantial can be accomplished. So often kids feel threatened to talk even without factors such as being intimidated by other students. Along these lines, I am also going to have to be cognizant of what my own particular biases are with my students. As much as I try to deny having favorites, I will inevitably have students that I get along with better than others. I need to work on hiding my feelings more and being equally patient and encouraging of all my students.
Another issue that I found myself struggling with was the tracked school system. Because I went to a tracked high school, I did not ever think about the implications of the tracked system. It was only after I got to college that I began to question the validity of the tracked system. After we watched the movie in class about the advantages of an untracked school system, I began to notice more stereotypes that were associated with the lower tracks and also the intelligence that came from the students in the “basic” tracks. The more I was able to observe the classes, the more I saw how all of the students would benefit from untracked classes. First of all, the non-tracked classes were extremely boring. It was apparent that my cooperating teacher fell into the category of, “despite your effort to be open-minded, once you enter a classroom you know has been designated as a certain track, your expectations will be subtly and not so subtly affected” (Christenbury 2000, p. 29). My teacher did not trust the students so they were not allowed to do any group work, only individual work. Of the six times that I observed that class, all six times the students were silent reading. The students were rarely challenged. One of the students even asked one day if they had to read this particular book because it was an easier book and the other classes weren’t reading it. This goes along with Christenbury’s observation that “you will encounter students who, at fifteen, know that it is too late; the school has judged them “slower” or “less able” or, as Paul writes, not to be trusted with books. That’s a heavy burden for an adult – it’s insupportable when you’re a kid” (Christenbury 2000, p. 29). I observed this going on in my class. The students continually referred to each other as stupid and as failures, pointing out that they were in the classes for stupid people. What is going to motivate the students to push themselves and excel if they already feel labeled as dumb? After seeing this happening in the classroom that I am observing, I hope that I will be aware of it so that regardless of the structure of the school I teach in, I can challenge all students.
Part of the problem with the classes being tracked is that many of the students felt that what they were reading was at a level that was too young for them and they were not able to relate to it. They were reading a book entitled something like, The Undertaker Has Gone Bananas. This book had little or no relevance to the students. The students need to be reading texts that are meaningful to them in some way. As Gloria Ladson-Billings points out, “Culturally relevant reaching is a pedagogy that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to import knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These cultural referents are not merely vehicles for being or explaining the dominant culture, they are aspects of the curriculum in their own right” (1994 p.18). If the students are taught texts that are culturally relevant, they are more likely to become involved with them and participate in discussion. If the texts are more culturally relevant, the students will also be more likely to receive a deeper meaning of the novel because they are personally invested in the novel.
One of the parts of the curriculum that I noticed missing was multicultural works. There were a lot of European American authors, but I did not see very many multicultural works in their text books and was not able to observe any multicultural novels. From this perspective, the students are missing a large part of their education. Jim Burke points out that “the guiding principle should be balance: between poetry and narrative prose, drama and fiction; between canonical authors and contemporary authors; between male and female authors; and, of course, between white writers and those of other cultural and racial perspectives” (Burke 1999 p. 253). He emphases that it is not just because the works are multicultural, but because these other works deserve merit and bring additional issues to the classroom. That is why these other works are important to the students. The more genres, authors, and issues that are brought to the classroom, the more enriched the classroom will be.
One of my concerns about teaching multicultural books stems from the fact that I am a middle class, white, female teacher. There are many issues that I can not relate to. I could relate to Eileen Shakespear’s article because I am going to be a white female teacher. I am nervous that because I am a White, Christian, heterosexual, middle class, female teacher, I have never felt the power of discrimination. How can I relate to my students if I have never felt that? I related to Shakespear when she said “White teachers don’t have to feel guilty about being influenced by thousands of years of history and conditioning, but we do have to accept the importance of that influence to both ourselves and to our students and we have an obligation to be as honest and as self-reflective as possible around issues of race” (Warshauer 1999 p.166). Throughout this class I have been struggling with my feelings of guilt and questioning my ability to teach literature of people of color or other issues that I have not experienced, because I can not relate to some of the aspects of the novels that some of my students will be able to. Will I make assumptions, will I say the wrong thing, will I offend people, will I teach it correctly, will I be teaching multicultural literature correctly? I previously had the idealistic attitude that if I go in caring for and respecting all of the students equally and really wanting to see them succeed, then my classroom will be successful, but now I am realizing that is not all there is to it. However, the longer I teach, I will become better at teaching the text and feel more comfortable teaching what I have not experienced. Despite the fact that I have not been oppressed, like my students, I am able to read and to learn from the texts and my students.
Another thing that I observed during this semester was that our classes almost never discussed the texts they were reading. They would read the material, but they would not get to the point of thinking critically. Therefore, when Ms. Hallberg and I began to create our lesson plan, we wanted to focus on class discussion. Another aspect that we really wanted to focus on was making the text relevant to their lives. Once we came up with these general lesson ideas, we began to discuss what to ask the students and how to arrange the students. We decided to let the students work in groups because they were never allowed to do that with their teacher. First, as a frontloading exercise, we began discussing in groups the main characters and their place in the story. By doing this, we were following Wilhelm’s idea of frontloading to “engage in authorial reading, such as…identifying hidden structures and features of texts they would need to notice” (2001 p. 100). This frontloading technique helped the students to focus their ideas for the next prompt.
After we had discussed these characters as a large group, we moved onto a more critical question, “Who is the most innocent victim in The Crucible?” We also did this activity as a group so the students would not only have the experience of working as a group, but also to enhance their critical thinking. As Burke points out, “When a doctoral candidate surveyed my students about different strategies that helped them learn and allowed for “meaningful” moments,” he found students overwhelmingly favored discussions (85%), particularly full-class discussion about issues of substantial importance (e.g, race, identity, morality). (1999 p. 137). Thus, by having our students start our discussing in small groups them move to a larger class discussion, we were encouraging our students to think more critically and to absorb more information. Although I feel the students learned a lot from this and were forced to think about their decision, because the students were not used to working in groups, we found that at times, the groups got a little out of control. We kept the groups of students in the small groups during large group discussion and that was not a good decision. We should have moved them into a large circle because in the small groups they were talking to each other and across small groups. It was a big struggle to keep the groups on task.
After another large group debate, we had the students do a free write
response relating one of the themes’s of The Crucible to their lives.
Although Ms. Hallberg and I would not have chosen The Crucible to be particularly
relevant to the students, by having them reflect upon how they would react
if they were in a similar situation as Abby gave them more perspective
on the novel and allowed them to relate more to the text. Overall,
with this lesson was successful. The students were able to discuss
and think about the novel on a more critical level, talk as a group instead
of working individually, and make the text relevant to their lives.
We also learned the importance of following some of Christenbury’s advice
such as “follow the students’ lead and be flexible with your questions”
(2000 p. 253). The students went to places we hadn’t anticipated.
Although I believe we succeeded in this lesson, I realized that I do need
more practice leading a group and following my students’ lead. I
need to be able to come up with better follow up questions that continue
to make them think instead of sticking to my prearranged questions.
This semester I have learned that teaching is not an easy task.
There are so many challenging facets of learning, personalities, understanding,
questioning, incorporating, and emotions that there will never be a set
plan to follow. Teaching is a profession in which I can never stop
learning. More so than almost any other job, improvements can always
be made and what I am teaching is continually changing. Despite my
sudden realization that just caring for and believing in the students will
not bring about success, throughout this semester, I have still believe
that will make all the difference. Cornel West said, “Each and every one
of us as everyday people is unique and distinctive, singular and irreducible,
and therefore of equal value” (1994 p.161 course packet). As an educator,
each day, I have the gift of going into class and approaching each student
as unique, equal, and talented.
Works Cited
Burke, J. (1999). The English teacher’s companion: A complete guide
to classroom, curriculum, and the profession. Urbana, IL: National
Council of Teachers of English.
Christenbury, L. (2000). Making the journey: Being and becoming a teacher
of English Language Arts. Second Edition. Portsmouth, NH: Hienemann.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers
of African American children. San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass Publishers,
Warshauer, Freedman, S. et.21 (1999). Inside city schools: Investigating
Literacy in multicultural classrooms. Urbana, IL: National Council
of Teachers of English.
West, Cornel (1994). A Grand Tradition of Struggle. English
Journal 29. 2000.
Wilhelm, J. (2001). Strategic reading: Guiding students to lifelong
literacy 6-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
