Failure

Winter in the Willamette valley is cold and dark and rainy.  Winter in the intensive Master's and certification program I am in is stressful and overwhelming.  The program asks that students teach one class, produce a work sample that demonstrates the capacity to, well, teach (mine was 130 pages), and then take three classes in the evenings.  This term I took two methods classes (teaching social studies and teaching writing) and a course on ESOL.  For each of those classes I had readings to complete each week and obligatory two page response papers or discussion preparations or what I came to see as written surveillance mechanisms to ensure that we were doing the readings (these writings actually caused me not to want to read, and I abandoned the practice at the end of the term).  In addition we had larger projects to do and ridiculously specific lesson plans to write, get feedback on and revise.  And the reflections...oh the reflections...a relentless onslaught of reflection.  I also had 24 9th graders to teach--and of course I was much more interested in them than I was in reading yet another book by Linda Christensen (whose work I adore).

I have not written in this space since February 7th.  The last thing I wrote about was parent-teacher conferences.  It's been a long time since then.  When I started out with this blog I had intended to keep a record of my experience in these schools and in this program.  But--as is often the case when working in schools--the practical realities of the job smashed loftier ambitions.  And while I know my five readers weren't up late wondering when I would be writing next, I'm bummed that I wasn't able to keep up during the winter.  It was an extremely interesting experience.

I want to fill up this space with stories about those 9th graders.  I want to tell you about how I slowly won over Isabel (the girl with eyebrow stud), about how I failed to win over Priscilla (who wrote on her course evaluation that I was a "sucky teacher" and that I should "go back to DC where I belong"), about how seriously they took our mock trial of Odysseus.  I want to describe for you how boisterous they were, how they could never get settled at the beginning of class.  I want to describe their humor and how, though they irritated each other often, they actually liked each other.

But I'm past all that, past all those children.  I had six weeks with them, six weeks only, and now those weeks are gone.  I connected with a few of them, but I suspect that most will not remember me.  Maybe, years later, one or two of them might look at each other and say: "What was that teacher's name, the one who moved the desks around all the time?"  And the other might reply: "Mr. G.  That was Mr. G."  I'm not being dramatic or sentimental.  I barely remember most of my teachers in high school; I don't know that I would have remembered me.

I did learn quite a lot from them--about their lives, about their school.  Some of my students lived in trailers and had parents serving in Iraq.  Some of my students were in foster care; others were being raised by their grandparents.  Some of my students loathed school with a passion that I have never experienced.  They were hungry, worried about what might happen over the weekend, wondering if they would ever escape this school, this town.  From these children I learned to listen, to ask questions and to remember that, despite my good intentions, I cannot really know what these children's lives outside of school are really like.

Some of my students hated reading.  Some of them loved it.  Most of them did not care at all about The Odyssey.  Some of them loved writing.  They wrote about their families, about ponies, about being lost in a desert, about being slaves and prisoners, about being teenagers.  Others hated writing, complained it wasn't relevant ("When I am ever gonna need to write when I work at BiMart?")  Some of them did exactly as I asked them to do, and some of them rebelled at every turn.  From these children I learned that all children are alike in some essential ways.  From these children I learned to listen, to ask questions and to remember that what adolescents crave, more than anything, are reality and empathy.

I also learned about failure.  In the private school where I learned to teach failure was extremely rare.  Certainly students failed quizzes or tests or individual assignments.  But a student actually failing a class was uncommon, I suspect because the adults were more tuned into warning signs and could adapt to the child earlier and in greater depth.  I also think that, culturally, failure isn't as acceptable in private schools as it is in public.  I'm somewhat uncomfortable with that generalization, but it rings true to me.  At "Edison" high, many, many students failed.  When I took over my class, 30% of the class was failing.  At the end of the term, 16% of my students failed (that's four human beings, and I can name them).  My CT said: "That's a pretty good percentage."  In my eight years teaching in private school, I remember only failing one student for a term, and that was after intervention after intervention.  I remember his name.

My spring schedule is much more civilized, so you, gentle reader, can expect regular commentary about my experiences at Edison Middle School, and most won't be as long as this one.