Three time a year at Edison the school invites the parents of the students to come in and conference with the teachers. They set up tables around the walls in the cavernous cafeteria, and each teacher sits at a table under a sign with his or her name printed in big handmade letters. Parents, sometimes with their children in tow, arrive, pick up progress reports (grades, grades, grades) and then go seek out their teachers, sometimes waiting in line for that teacher to finish up with whoever they are chatting with.
As a student teacher, I didn’t get a handmade sign with my name on it (not that I expected to). So I sat to Marie’s right and waited, sitting idly through the conferences she had with parents whose children I didn’t know, and chatting briefly with the parents of some of the children I will be teaching starting next Wednesday. A few observations and reactions:
Allen’s grandmother--who quickly identified herself as his “sole, legal guardian”--brought with her a great cloud of cigarette smoke which hovered over the conference. During the conference she talked about Allen’s parole officer and how much trouble he was going to be in when they had to meet about his grades (he’s failing the class right now because, as Marie puts it, he “refuses to do any work at all”).
Charlie has two impish and adorable little brothers who embarass him. And he is absolutely terrified of his parents. As he sat there listening to what Marie said about him I could tell he was just praying she didn’t say anything negative. His father--a tall, imposing looking man--loomed next to him, stern as Mount Rushmore. His brothers flopped and flailed on the bench between him and his mother, oblivious to what was going on around them.
One of the mothers has miraculous hands, the dirtiest hands I’ve ever seen, with grime ground under the fingernails and into the swirls of her fingerprints. They were working hands, with little white calluses like ground-down rhinoceros horns on each knuckle.
Melanie was home-schooled; her mother thinks that her daughter shouldn’t have to sit in the same room with children who don’t want to learn. I was overhwhelmed by her mother, who talked and talked about what Melanie thought and believed and felt without ever once allowing Melanie to speak for herself. I kept watching Melanie begin to say something and stop because her mother kept cutting her off.
Isaac, cheerful and playful and responsive in class, is silent, even squirelly, with a nervous facial tic throughout the conference. His mother says nothing at all, and in fact has her back turned to both her son and Marie and I during the entire conference. Later we learn that she had gone to his SPED teacher to complain about the grade he earned on a paper he wrote for Marie. I can still see his little face, twitching.
Esperanza has straight As, but when I ask her what she’s been doing right to earn all those As she can’t say and seems a little embarassed by the question. This is the first time this evening I notice that when the conversation shifts away from grades to something more substantive the conversation stalls. Neither teachers, students nor parents seem to know much about having human conversations with each other.
One mother says: “So I should just be proud of her?”
Brandi says she’s a weak writer, then goes on to tell us about how she usually runs out of gas at the 20 page mark in a story. I tell her that if that’s the truth than she might just be a writer. An awkward silence followed until Marie started talking about her latest quiz grade.
One of our students waited almost ten minutes in line, and then just before it was her turn she took her mother and adorable little sister and left.
Our last conference is with Julia and her parents, and is, perhaps, the best conference we have all night. I say that because Julia’s mother leads by saying that Language Arts if the hardest subject for her daughter, and so I ask Julia what she finds so hard about it. And then she starts talking about the things that are hard for her, and some of the strategies she’s used in the past; and she even references conversations she and I have had in class about her writing; and I learn a little about her history as a student; and her parents learn about what we’re working on in the class and that their daughter is being supported in really specific ways.
Walking out to my car I remember why I like conferences so much--because it’s one of those moments when the student’s life outside of school shows up. Most of the parents who came were engaged--and so were their children. I wish, for example, that I could have met Hadley’s parents. But it’s nice to see the faces that meet my students faces when they come home, the people from whom some of my student’s learned to speak and walk. So much about them is mysterious--and will remain so, even after meeting their parents. But the glimpses we get are worth cherishing.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
The Girl With The Eyebrow Stud
Hadley sits near the front of the room because that's where Marie placed her on the seating chart. Recently she was suspended because she got up and left class without telling anyone where she was going. She and Marie regularly go to war--about bringing her book to class, about leaving to go to the bathroom, about why she isn't paying attention. Of all the students in the class, Marie hassles Hadley more than any other student. Marie refers to her as a "negative Nelly" and said that her hope was to "browbeat her into being nice" by the end of the year.
Hadley has an eyebrow stud and a lip ring and pale white skin and acne scars and wears a lot of foundation and over-sized hoodies and distressed jeans and has dyed her hair blonde, then pink; you can see the layers. She wrote on an introductory note-card that she hates school and doesn't ever want to talk about her family. She rarely smiles, but when she does her whole hardass image kind of melts away, partially because she has these absolutely adorable and exceedingly crooked teeth.
I have approached her somewhat cautiously, since my role in the room is still a little strange and since he is, as a rule, hostile towards adults. I have tried to smile and be kind and let her know that I notice her and want her in the class. I say things like: "Good afternoon, Hadley," or "nice to see you today, Hadley," to which she usually grunts or says nothing in response.
Today she and Marie got into about a worksheet that she owed. The class was working in groups on another worksheet (find some similes in the book we're reading!); I was circulating and checking in with them. I noticed that she was cruising through another worksheet, the homework questions from the reading, the work she and Marie had been fighting over earlier.
"Hey, you're cruising through that," I said.
She was immediately defensive: "Leave me alone. Ms. Mowrey was just yelling at me."
"Hadley, honestly, was I just yelling at you?"
She paused, like she didn't know how to answer the question. "As I remember it, I was actually just pointing out that you were getting a lot of work done."
"Yeah. Yeah, I was." She cast this ironic smile into the room.
I walked away. I heard her say to one of her peers: "why can't Ms. Mowry be like Mr. G? He doesn't care what we do as long as we're doing something."
I pulled a u-turn around the end of the row and circled back towards her desk. "Actually, Hadly, I do care what you're doing. I care quite a bit. But I know you're behind, so I'm just glad to see you catching up."
I think she was a little surprised that I'd overheard her. (Marie usually ignores her under-the-breath comments; and I probably would too.)
"Why can't you be our teacher?"
I snapped at her, gently but firmly: "You need to work with Ms. Mowrey as best you can; she cares about you and wants to help you learn." Hadley eyes dropped back to her worksheet. Then she looked up at me, kind of pleading, so I said: "And just so you know, I'm going to be taking over this class in a week."
Her smile was bent and crooked and warmed the entire room.
Hadley has an eyebrow stud and a lip ring and pale white skin and acne scars and wears a lot of foundation and over-sized hoodies and distressed jeans and has dyed her hair blonde, then pink; you can see the layers. She wrote on an introductory note-card that she hates school and doesn't ever want to talk about her family. She rarely smiles, but when she does her whole hardass image kind of melts away, partially because she has these absolutely adorable and exceedingly crooked teeth.
I have approached her somewhat cautiously, since my role in the room is still a little strange and since he is, as a rule, hostile towards adults. I have tried to smile and be kind and let her know that I notice her and want her in the class. I say things like: "Good afternoon, Hadley," or "nice to see you today, Hadley," to which she usually grunts or says nothing in response.
Today she and Marie got into about a worksheet that she owed. The class was working in groups on another worksheet (find some similes in the book we're reading!); I was circulating and checking in with them. I noticed that she was cruising through another worksheet, the homework questions from the reading, the work she and Marie had been fighting over earlier.
"Hey, you're cruising through that," I said.
She was immediately defensive: "Leave me alone. Ms. Mowrey was just yelling at me."
"Hadley, honestly, was I just yelling at you?"
She paused, like she didn't know how to answer the question. "As I remember it, I was actually just pointing out that you were getting a lot of work done."
"Yeah. Yeah, I was." She cast this ironic smile into the room.
I walked away. I heard her say to one of her peers: "why can't Ms. Mowry be like Mr. G? He doesn't care what we do as long as we're doing something."
I pulled a u-turn around the end of the row and circled back towards her desk. "Actually, Hadly, I do care what you're doing. I care quite a bit. But I know you're behind, so I'm just glad to see you catching up."
I think she was a little surprised that I'd overheard her. (Marie usually ignores her under-the-breath comments; and I probably would too.)
"Why can't you be our teacher?"
I snapped at her, gently but firmly: "You need to work with Ms. Mowrey as best you can; she cares about you and wants to help you learn." Hadley eyes dropped back to her worksheet. Then she looked up at me, kind of pleading, so I said: "And just so you know, I'm going to be taking over this class in a week."
Her smile was bent and crooked and warmed the entire room.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
I Was A Good Teacher
I was a pretty good teacher today. It was one of those weird weather days, the school on a two hour delay because of ice and slush; in our third period class, all but 5 students had left or stayed home. In fifth period we had 12 of 24. The kids were working in the computer lab on a writing assignment, a character sketch, an assignment similar to one I used to give to my 12th graders in creative writing. Their task was to find a photograph and then construct a persona based on their sense of that character from what they see in the image. The kids were supposed to to focus on showing that character in brief moment.
Since this was the first time I got to see these kids writing, I hung back and watched their screens from the back of the room. You can tell a lot about a child by what does and does not appear on their screen in the early moments of writing. Amelia started writing immediately and in five minutes had filled up most of the screen. Becky didn’t start writing for a minute or so, but pretty quickly filled up the screen with dialogue. Tony wrote and rewrote the same sentence for almost 10 minutes. About five minutes in, Lupita said (as she had said to me before): “I think you should help me with this.”
So I did. She was having trouble getting started--as were Genevieve and Kai. “I can’t figure out the right way to start it.” I told her to try a little trick--I trick I wold later use with Kelly as well: do not press backspace or erase for the next 10 minutes. Write whatever comes to mind in the next 10 minutes without pressing erase or backspace. She got out her iphone, set a 10 minute timer, and started on her way.
When I proposed that method to Tony, who had been religiously deleting and then rewriting the same subordinate clause, he looked at me like I was insane. I asked him: “Are you trying to make that one sentence perfect before you move on?” He sort of smiled. “How did you know?”
“I had a hunch. I’ve been watching you delete that one sentence over and over again. Poor little sentence,” I joked. “Maybe you should let it be and move on.”
He chuckled a little, the first time I had seen this child show any emotion whatsoever.
He was resistant to the trick, but I asked him to try it out and see how it went.
Ten minutes later he had almost filled the screen. I asked him how the strategy worked, and he said: “It’s weird. There are a lot of misspellings.”
“How long will it take you to fix those?”
“A minute or so.”
“And look at all that writing you made.”
He smiled. “Can I fix my mispellings now?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
I suppose all this begs the question: why did I feel like a good teacher today? I felt like a good teacher because I had interacted in a genuine, human way with every child in my care. I asked them questions about what they were doing and why they were doing it that way. I was able to respond to their questions-- “what does the green squiggly line mean?” “How do you spell ‘terrifying?’” “what are some italian names?”--even though I didn’t always answer them. I was a good teacher because at the end of the day I know the children better, and they now know me as someone who is there to help them figure out where they are going--at least the 16 kids who showed up today know that.
I had forgotten how enjoyable it is to talk with young people about their writing. It’s been a while. I think I’m probably a little rusty. But the habits of mind--asking questions, withholding judgment, giving concrete prompts, and, most importantly, showing the kids how they have succeeded at what they were doing--come back like that balance we managed to achieve as children on our bicycles.
Since this was the first time I got to see these kids writing, I hung back and watched their screens from the back of the room. You can tell a lot about a child by what does and does not appear on their screen in the early moments of writing. Amelia started writing immediately and in five minutes had filled up most of the screen. Becky didn’t start writing for a minute or so, but pretty quickly filled up the screen with dialogue. Tony wrote and rewrote the same sentence for almost 10 minutes. About five minutes in, Lupita said (as she had said to me before): “I think you should help me with this.”
So I did. She was having trouble getting started--as were Genevieve and Kai. “I can’t figure out the right way to start it.” I told her to try a little trick--I trick I wold later use with Kelly as well: do not press backspace or erase for the next 10 minutes. Write whatever comes to mind in the next 10 minutes without pressing erase or backspace. She got out her iphone, set a 10 minute timer, and started on her way.
When I proposed that method to Tony, who had been religiously deleting and then rewriting the same subordinate clause, he looked at me like I was insane. I asked him: “Are you trying to make that one sentence perfect before you move on?” He sort of smiled. “How did you know?”
“I had a hunch. I’ve been watching you delete that one sentence over and over again. Poor little sentence,” I joked. “Maybe you should let it be and move on.”
He chuckled a little, the first time I had seen this child show any emotion whatsoever.
He was resistant to the trick, but I asked him to try it out and see how it went.
Ten minutes later he had almost filled the screen. I asked him how the strategy worked, and he said: “It’s weird. There are a lot of misspellings.”
“How long will it take you to fix those?”
“A minute or so.”
“And look at all that writing you made.”
He smiled. “Can I fix my mispellings now?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
I suppose all this begs the question: why did I feel like a good teacher today? I felt like a good teacher because I had interacted in a genuine, human way with every child in my care. I asked them questions about what they were doing and why they were doing it that way. I was able to respond to their questions-- “what does the green squiggly line mean?” “How do you spell ‘terrifying?’” “what are some italian names?”--even though I didn’t always answer them. I was a good teacher because at the end of the day I know the children better, and they now know me as someone who is there to help them figure out where they are going--at least the 16 kids who showed up today know that.
I had forgotten how enjoyable it is to talk with young people about their writing. It’s been a while. I think I’m probably a little rusty. But the habits of mind--asking questions, withholding judgment, giving concrete prompts, and, most importantly, showing the kids how they have succeeded at what they were doing--come back like that balance we managed to achieve as children on our bicycles.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Words Overheard...
To give a feel for the vibe in the classroom, I took note of interesting or entertaining things that were said. I offer them up to my patient reader without comments.
“Let’s do boys versus girls!” --Kaley
“In your church, what is a rector?” --Marie (Cooperating Teacher)
“That’s the only one I knew, and she took it from me.” --Toph
“F is for fantastic.” --Barrett
“Everybody works for the bell game in 10th grade.” --Marie (Cooperating Teacher)
“Claudine, you’re so cute; I love your hiccups.” --Kaley
“It smells like urine in here.” --Jess
“It smells like old people in here.” --Brian
“So, you’re not teaching us today?” --Claudine to me
"Not today." --Me to Claudine
“Do I have to do this?” --Bobby 1:24pm
“I like this game. It’s kind of fun. I just need to get better at it.” --Bobby 1:28pm
“Can I go get my list?” --Brynn
“Sweet, no book for 3 weeks.” --Tye
“Why don’t you get your vocal chords taken out?” --Brynn
“What is actually going to be on the test?” --Patty
“God, you always smell so girly.” -Kaley to Tye
“Let’s do boys versus girls!” --Kaley
“In your church, what is a rector?” --Marie (Cooperating Teacher)
“That’s the only one I knew, and she took it from me.” --Toph
“F is for fantastic.” --Barrett
“Everybody works for the bell game in 10th grade.” --Marie (Cooperating Teacher)
“Claudine, you’re so cute; I love your hiccups.” --Kaley
“It smells like urine in here.” --Jess
“It smells like old people in here.” --Brian
“So, you’re not teaching us today?” --Claudine to me
"Not today." --Me to Claudine
“Do I have to do this?” --Bobby 1:24pm
“I like this game. It’s kind of fun. I just need to get better at it.” --Bobby 1:28pm
“Can I go get my list?” --Brynn
“Sweet, no book for 3 weeks.” --Tye
“Why don’t you get your vocal chords taken out?” --Brynn
“What is actually going to be on the test?” --Patty
“God, you always smell so girly.” -Kaley to Tye
Monday, January 9, 2012
The Plight of the Student Teacher
Marie has been out sick for the last few days, so I've been thrown into teaching her kids. It's weird being a student teacher in a small town; essential strangeness gets broadcast. They vibe on my newness, and have all the kinds of questions that they would have for a substitute, except I’m a more permanent fixture. The students know I'm around for some duration, that I'm not going to disappear tomorrow--like the collection of subs that have had to sit in the room with me, since I'm not licensed to teach and must therefor be supervised by characters like RJ (in his seventies, a kind of bumbling, absent-minded professor) and Karlyn (in her sixties, a 20-year substitute who described to me today a whole category of children: "The worthless, those who don't know how to learn and therefore don't care to learn"). I’m here for a while, but not long enough to really matter. Now I am pretty skilled as a teacher, but no amount of skill as a teacher can cut through the very notion that I am, in the long term, irrelevant to their lives down the road.
This is maybe the fundamental flaw to doing student teaching this way: a few months in one place, a few in another. You can form bonds with some individual students; I'm sure that many do. I already have with a few of the kids. But if once they know--and they know by now--that I’m ultimately a short timer, how can they believe that I am really invested in their lives? And if they can’t believe that, how can I really cut through the veneer of schoolism that we must all genuinely cut through if we are to be educators and not mere baby sitters?
Then there's this creepy sensation that I am, ultimately, a cook in another's kitchen. I've been teaching lessons written by another, and I have very little sense for where the ship is sailing in the long term. There is no overarching idea holding the course together--not that I can see and not that the kids can see. Today, teaching a lesson on voice, I was probably lucky that no one asked me why are we doing this? since I would have had to resort to one of those old teacherisms--it will help you to express yourself or get into college or because I said so. So I didn't have a sense for the overarching purpose, which made it hard for me to really buy into it.
And then there's this: during the course of this lesson on voice, we read a poem by Langston Hughes. The poem was a kind of dialogue between a black couple, and the poem contained both of their voices. The overwhelming majority of the students in the room are white, and they were being asked to draw conclusions about the "personas" of the two speakers in the poem based on the way they talked. The conclusions they drew were things like: "they are poor" or "they are uneducated" or "they don't speak good English." Even the lone black student in the room took a swipe at Hughes' characters lack of "American English."
I have no history with these children, not yet. I've been in their midst four days. I have only a limited future with these children--eight and a half weeks and counting. How could I engage them in a challenging conversation about language, power and race when we have just met? That conversation was raised by their naive--and sometimes innappropriate--reactions to Hughes' poem, but I felt powerless in that moment to do anything but prevent them from saying horribly racist things. And that made a few of them feel weird about me, since I'm white. They've also noticed that I saw "y'all" a lot, but since most of them still think I'm from Washington state, they are patently confused.
Part of me hopes that Marie gets well very soon and is back in the room with us tomorrow; another part of me wants more time just to get to know the kids, so that when I am sailing this ship on my own for the last six weeks of the term, I will have a better sense for which way the winds tend to blow.
This is maybe the fundamental flaw to doing student teaching this way: a few months in one place, a few in another. You can form bonds with some individual students; I'm sure that many do. I already have with a few of the kids. But if once they know--and they know by now--that I’m ultimately a short timer, how can they believe that I am really invested in their lives? And if they can’t believe that, how can I really cut through the veneer of schoolism that we must all genuinely cut through if we are to be educators and not mere baby sitters?
Then there's this creepy sensation that I am, ultimately, a cook in another's kitchen. I've been teaching lessons written by another, and I have very little sense for where the ship is sailing in the long term. There is no overarching idea holding the course together--not that I can see and not that the kids can see. Today, teaching a lesson on voice, I was probably lucky that no one asked me why are we doing this? since I would have had to resort to one of those old teacherisms--it will help you to express yourself or get into college or because I said so. So I didn't have a sense for the overarching purpose, which made it hard for me to really buy into it.
And then there's this: during the course of this lesson on voice, we read a poem by Langston Hughes. The poem was a kind of dialogue between a black couple, and the poem contained both of their voices. The overwhelming majority of the students in the room are white, and they were being asked to draw conclusions about the "personas" of the two speakers in the poem based on the way they talked. The conclusions they drew were things like: "they are poor" or "they are uneducated" or "they don't speak good English." Even the lone black student in the room took a swipe at Hughes' characters lack of "American English."
I have no history with these children, not yet. I've been in their midst four days. I have only a limited future with these children--eight and a half weeks and counting. How could I engage them in a challenging conversation about language, power and race when we have just met? That conversation was raised by their naive--and sometimes innappropriate--reactions to Hughes' poem, but I felt powerless in that moment to do anything but prevent them from saying horribly racist things. And that made a few of them feel weird about me, since I'm white. They've also noticed that I saw "y'all" a lot, but since most of them still think I'm from Washington state, they are patently confused.
Part of me hopes that Marie gets well very soon and is back in the room with us tomorrow; another part of me wants more time just to get to know the kids, so that when I am sailing this ship on my own for the last six weeks of the term, I will have a better sense for which way the winds tend to blow.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
First Day At Edison High School
“If you graduate here and then don’t go on to college, you’re looking at working for minimum wage.” These were the first words I overheard at my first day at Edison High School. They were spoken by the principal to a male student. I overheard them because I was sitting in the front office, waiting to go to my CT’s third period class, and the principal’s door was open. As I continued to listen, I realized that the principal was in the process of writing a letter of recommendation with the student’s input. At one point the student expressed an interest in going into auto repair, and the principal asked if he had taken any art classes, since the skills one learns in art--particularly ceramics--could be useful in terms of learning how to shape and mold metal. The principal read the recommendation back to the student, said he would mail it; the student went on his merry way.
The building is old and the hallways aren’t heated. The carpet was put down sometime when people were still listening to Def Leopard. The textbooks are old and tattered. The desks are a mish-mash of new and ancient. The physical plant is, in some ways, held together by duct tape. But what amazes me is that, on the whole, the kids feel connected to the place--and to their teachers. They know their teachers, and, on the whole, it seems like they are known well.
Marie talks a lot. But the kids respond to her. She went off on this whole tangent with her fifth period class about tattoos and piercings, told a story about her son who got his lip and tongue pierced and ultimately removed both because he was tired of people judging him because of the way he looked. At one point two students were wondering what this had to do with the characterization exercise they were doing, and then she said that the descriptions they were doing were ultimately about selecting details--external details--that allowed readers to see their characters. They seemed to understand. But what impressed me was that she was talking about the kids interests--many of them have piercing and were thinking about getting tattoos, and she was talking about those things without judgment. There was a moral to the story--be careful with those choices, since they do have lasting consequences, but she didn’t drive that point home with any explicit moralizing.
Perhaps my expectations are too low. I had concerns about who got to talk in Marie’s class--mostly the girls. And who she directed her attention too--again, mostly the girls. But there’s a certain warmth to her that is frankly refreshing after the coldness and hostility I saw daily emerge at Edison Middle School. We will see how things turn out as the winter progresses.
The building is old and the hallways aren’t heated. The carpet was put down sometime when people were still listening to Def Leopard. The textbooks are old and tattered. The desks are a mish-mash of new and ancient. The physical plant is, in some ways, held together by duct tape. But what amazes me is that, on the whole, the kids feel connected to the place--and to their teachers. They know their teachers, and, on the whole, it seems like they are known well.
Marie talks a lot. But the kids respond to her. She went off on this whole tangent with her fifth period class about tattoos and piercings, told a story about her son who got his lip and tongue pierced and ultimately removed both because he was tired of people judging him because of the way he looked. At one point two students were wondering what this had to do with the characterization exercise they were doing, and then she said that the descriptions they were doing were ultimately about selecting details--external details--that allowed readers to see their characters. They seemed to understand. But what impressed me was that she was talking about the kids interests--many of them have piercing and were thinking about getting tattoos, and she was talking about those things without judgment. There was a moral to the story--be careful with those choices, since they do have lasting consequences, but she didn’t drive that point home with any explicit moralizing.
Perhaps my expectations are too low. I had concerns about who got to talk in Marie’s class--mostly the girls. And who she directed her attention too--again, mostly the girls. But there’s a certain warmth to her that is frankly refreshing after the coldness and hostility I saw daily emerge at Edison Middle School. We will see how things turn out as the winter progresses.
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