Outside the Box Part 2: My Colleagues

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In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer, wrote, “If we want to grow in our practice, we have two primary places to go: to the inner ground from which good teaching comes and to the community of fellow teachers from whom we can learn more about ourselves and our craft”  (Palmer 141).  Every teacher remembers his or her own time as a student, and we hope gives credit to those folks, the first people outside the box of our own classrooms to inspire our best work.  Those honored teachers are Part 1 of the experiences we bring to that effort.  Part 2 comes later, for if we are lucky, we also have the opportunity to observe our colleagues, and recently before our winter break, I had just that chance. 

On this particular day, our kindergarten class was studying the short o vowel sound, the sound we hear in box, fox, outside, or socks.  After an exciting lesson together on the rug, (imagine a teacher who can make vowels exciting!) some students completed a practice exercise compiling a small book, and in this book, they read about and drew many strange animals and objects, each inside a box.  As I watched those students hard at work, one drawing a big gorilla to put into a box, I realized that I was doing exactly the opposite, stepping outside my classroom box. 

Palmer says that, “[w]hen we walk into our workplace, the classroom, we close the door on our colleagues.  When we emerge, we rarely talk about what happened or what needs to happen next, for we have no shared experience to talk about.  Then, instead of calling this the isolationism it is and trying to overcome it, we claim it as a virtue called “academic freedom”: my classroom is my castle, and the sovereigns of other fiefdoms are not welcome here” (142).  Whether or not I agree with the latter part of his reflection is a subject for another day, but it is true that the nature of our profession is such that we usually have few opportunities to see our fellow teachers at work. 

My pre-holiday observations were a part of our faculty development/evaluation at Sage.  While the process is still quite new for us, the classroom visit portion basically goes like this: each teacher is assigned an intense observation team every three years, and team members are to observe that teacher at least twice during the year.  My work life has been a little crazy lately, so I didn’t schedule my recent observation times until the last minute.  Yet instead of resistance about visiting their “castles,” both of my colleagues, a kindergarten teacher and a 4^th/5^th grade math teacher, were most gracious, warmly welcoming me to watch them at work.  In doing so, they not only moved toward melting their own isolation, they also gave me an opportunity to share my experience and dissolve my own seclusion.

If I had to choose one word to describe both of my colleagues that day it would be joyful.  Of course, teachers are always a little nervous having someone observe, but it was clear that after a few minutes, the kids fully absorbed all their attention, and I was forgotten.  The enthusiasm of these teachers and the conversations and writing that followed my visits energized my return to my own students.  The same has been true for every observation I have completed over the last two and a half years.  While ostensibly the process is intended to help the teacher being observed, I benefitted as much or maybe even more. 

So thanks to Julie, Rick, Gina, Shauna, Manisha, and Gary, the teachers I have been privileged to observe since we started this process at Sage.   Along with those folks who inspired me as a young girl, they have reminded me of what is best in the classroom, even though they teach completely different age levels and subjects from my own.  The content doesn’t really matter; rather, it is the teaching.  In sharing their experiences, they have made me a better teacher.

Mixing Up Emotions

In his classic summary regarding evaluation of curriculum for gifted students at the secondary level, Harry Passow wrote that the goal of curriculum development and selection should be to enable students to “acquire the knowledge, skills, insights, attitudes, and motivations which will enable them to . . . deal competently with themselves, their fellow men, and the world about them as human beings, citizens, parents, and participants in the ‘good life,’” and “[t]o provide the self-understanding, inner consistency, and ethical standards to see their own uniqueness in terms of responsibility to society.”  In keeping with this philosophy, Sage middle school students study one of the most troubling chapters in United States history, the American eugenics movement, the false science of Social Darwinism.  Unfortunately, many people feel squeamish even talking about gifted education because they associate it with ideas about Social Darwinism, and as noted below, there is a connection.  Yet that is also why it is important for our kids to learn about this difficult and painful history; it is one more way to help them understand their responsibilities to society.  

Using some of the cast of characters in the early gifted education movement as a hook, middle school students at Sage learn that Julian Stanley, founder of the Center for Talented Youth, characterized Francis Galton as the grandfather of the gifted education movement (Davis and Rimm 2004, 6).  However, it was Galton who applied the word “eugenics” to the effort to “improve the race” (Facing History and Ourselves 2002).  Naturally, students feel conflicting emotions when discussing Francis Galton.  They are, thankfully, repulsed by the very concept of eugenics.  However, our students have also been labeled gifted and have certainly benefited from their targeted education.  The dissonance students may encounter when they think about Galton presents the educator with opportunity to move toward Passow’s goals in processing these feelings with students.  Students become invested in their study of the American eugenics movement because they have a connection to the history.  It also presents the occasion to remind students that human beings are complicated; we have positive and negative personality traits, behaviors, and for some, legacies. 

At Sage we make many of our curriculum decisions so as to focus on what it means to be humane, decent, wise people, a philosophy in keeping with our mission and core values and a best practice in gifted education.  In addressing the need for affective education and character development as components of sound programming for the gifted, James Delisle wrote, “[i]f educators and parents are to benefit the children in their care most fully, an emphasis on this emotional aspect of learning and on the interdependence we all share is a prerequisite to self-appreciation, personal growth, and the development of empathy and character” (Delisle, 2001)*. 

Delisle also posits that, “world and national history are vehicles to traveling the route to self-discovery” (Delisle, 2001). Study of the American eugenics movement can help meet Passow’s goal to guide students toward self-understanding and to challenge them to develop the ethical standards needed to become responsible members of society, our primary goal at Sage.

*Delisle, J. (2002). “Affective education and character development: Understanding self and serving others through instructional adaptations.” In F. Karnes & S. Bean (Eds.), Methods and Materials for Teaching the Gifted (pp.471-494). Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.

The Heart of Success

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“We think we are teaching what we know. 

We hope that we are teaching what we believe.

But really, all we can ever teach is who we are.”

Rabbi Benay Lappe

My own children are grown and recently out of the house, so my geeky husband and I frequently listen to a TED Talk after dinner.   Recently we listened to Simon Sinek on "How Great Leaders Inspire Action."  Sinek asks why people like Dr. King, the Wright Brothers, or organizations like Apple, are successful and answers his question by explaining human motivation using three concentric circles: the inner circle titled, “why” the center circle, “how,” and the outer circle, “what.”  Sinek observes that inspiring leaders think and communicate from the inside or interior belief systems, versus from the rational mind, the area that explains what is or should be done.  Dr. King didn’t tell people what to do; rather, he told them what he believed.  As Sinek says, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”  If people understand this, they too will be motivated and follow.  The graphic makes perfect sense for if a person works from the heart, the core, or the center, labor feels more like a vocation than a chore, and others can sense this difference.

Of course, teachers are leaders of children.  The same rationale explains what makes great teaching.  Many years ago I attended a summer institute on teaching ethics sponsored by The Curriculum Initiative.  Rabbi Benay Lappe was one of the primary instructors, and at the start of her week with us, she said what all good teachers know, that the best teaching comes from simply maintaining authenticity in the classroom.  Students can usually sniff out a fake in minutes, and they won’t respond with sincere effort.  If you are teaching because you believe in the kids and want to be with them, they will know, and it is this that will inspire achievement.  If you are focused on the outcomes only, those outcomes are likely to be lackluster.

What makes a great teacher is not the lesson itself or gimmicky techniques.  Students are like anyone else, they won’t buy the what, but they will buy in if the teacher wants to be in the classroom and is motivated from the heart. 

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A Pep Talk

 

I guess I didn’t hear the call to duty.  Too busy in the off season profession of many teachers, scraping and painting my house, and I wasn’t able to help solve the debt-ceiling crisis with 40 of my fellow educators.  In case you missed it, on July 27, The Onion reported that an emergency team of 8^th grade civics teachers had to be airdropped into the District of Columbia to help our leaders understand basic principles of governance. 

Eventually, Washington made its last minute deal but not without damaging our credit rating and leaving many citizens disgusted by the partisanism displayed by representatives sworn to serve the whole country.

It was a gloomy summer for national current events, but what does this mean to me as I get ready to go back to school?  Will the events of these past couple of months influence my disposition in the classroom?  My students sometimes think I am corny, but as a teacher of history, English, and civics, I have always felt a responsibility to convey a sense of pride in our system of government, culture, and country, and it's not just an act; I do feel proud.  In spite of imperfections, our foundational documents, like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, or even the more modern Atlantic Charter, are eloquent expressions of what is good about our core beliefs in equality and the potential for all citizens to participate in governance and enjoy economic opportunity.

Yet our government has messed up a lot in the past, and I am worried about the finances of the United States, the inability of our leaders to reach compromise and consensus, and the burden we will leave to the people I care for most: my students and my children.  As teachers, we can’t just be cheerleaders; we have a responsibility to tell the truth about our sometimes-painful history and current state of affairs. 

We can’t sanitize the world for our students, nor should we, but we can present content in a way that creates a sense of hope and optimism.  We can start with Maya Angelou’s premise that,“[h]istory, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”  We can create lessons that demonstrate the tremendous progress toward recognition of universal human rights the world has made since 1776.  We can draw student attention to the many times in history where leaders did innovate and achieve consensus in the face of great crises.  We can empower kids with the understanding that they have the abilities to be problem solvers and the types of leaders who will see beyond self-interest.

So, as an educator, I will be energized, not gloomy, as I enter a classroom full of middle schoolers this September, in spite of the dismal summer.  I get to be surrounded by hope.

To Teach or Not to Teach?

One month after the 1885 publication of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the Concord Public Library, home of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts, voted to remove Twain’s book from the library for fear that Huck, “rough, coarse, and inelegant,” would be an immoral influence on young readers.  Louisa May Alcott, sharp in her criticism, noted that, “If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure minded lads and lasses, he had best stop writing for them.”  As one literary historian remarked, “Jo March would not be allowed to play with Huck.” Jehlen, Mary, "Banned in Concord"

While for different reasons, Huckleberry Finn remains as controversial today as it did in the 1800s.  The Concord Library thought Huck was a poor character model; today’s criticism relates primarily to the issue of race and use of one of the most derogatory words in the English language.  While the folks in Concord thought Huck was of poor character, times have changed, and Louisa Alcott seems to have missed the entire point about Huck’s worthiness as an example for others, yet our concerns today make it still questionable as to whether middle school kids should read Huck Finn.

And that is why I keep reevaluating.  Over the past couple of weeks, my students have been reading Huckleberry Finn.  I have been teaching this novel every three years or so for the past fifteen years, and I struggle every time as to whether or not to keep it in our curriculum for gifted seventh and eighth graders.  Each time I read Huck Finn, I am more astonished by the complexity of the novel and its message.  However, each time I read it with my students, I worry that they may not understand Twain’s satire and commentary regarding slavery, white supremacy, and the heartbreak and lingering lack of self-esteem experienced by children of abusive alcoholics.  The comedy in the novel mixes up our emotions as readers, and on the surface, sometimes seems like the real story.  Yet as Ralph Ellison said, “one of the functions of comedy is to allow us to deal with the unspeakable.  And this Twain did consistently.” The book allows students to see that life in the antebellum south could be complicated and ugly, accomplishing this feat while entertaining the reader.  In order to teach Huck Finn, I have to work hard to challenge my students to look beyond the humor and to note that we are only hearing one side of the story, the presentation of a poor white kid brought up in a racist culture, a boy who struggles with his conscience yet ends up doing what he thinks is the “wrong” thing, but that the reader knows is right, helping Jim to freedom. 

How do I try to do this?  Lots of preparation ahead of time, frank discussion of the n-word, use of Gloria Naylor's essay about her childhood, student essays on reactions to the word, sharing tidbits of the many defenses of the novel, reflections by African American scholars such as Stephen Carter and Toni Morrison, and by reading excerpts to the students of Jocelyn Chadwick-Joshua’s, The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn.  Much has been written about whether or not to teach Huck Finn.  A responsible teacher will present the conflict to her students in order to allow them to know how awkward and unsettling it is to teach.  With constant reminders of Huck’s particular lens, I encourage students not only to put themselves in his shoes, but also to step outside the character’s narrative in order to see the presentation objectively.

Is it okay to teach the novel to younger students who may not understand these complexities, to teach the novel just for its humor?  Since I constantly ask myself about whether or not to use Huck Finn at all in our curriculum, I asked my 8^th graders this question.  While almost every single student indicated that she or he enjoyed the novel, they collectively thought no, honestly indicating that the use of the n-word upset them, and noting that only study of the novel in depth with reminders of its satire made it possible for them to understand when they would not have otherwise done so.  Some were even so honest as to say they want to read it again when they are older, indicating they will have better comprehension the next time through.  Maybe they said this because they are quite perceptive of my own feelings.

For now, I will keep teaching Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but I am sure I will struggle again next time with whether or not to do so, even with daily discussion regarding the complexities and controversies surrounding the novel.  I guess feeling unsettled is best.  

Dancing

I recently had the opportunity to spend a few minutes in our third-fourth grade class, where one of our division leaders teaches humanities at The Sage School.  This man is brilliant and could have been as successful at a major university as he is in a room full of 8 and 9 year olds, kids that look at him with obvious love because he so patiently, respectfully, and thoroughly explains the world to them.  Why does he make this life choice in a world that values materialism and titles, a world that often does not respect teachers? 

Our school is full of people like this, a woman teaching math with two PhDs, an Ivy League epidemiologist teaching sixth graders to write, an internationally recognized artist coaxing kids who pretend they only want to do math into amazing expressions of creativity and more; our faculty is just loaded. 

There are many reasons for our choices, but each reason can be traced to a single motivator, the kids and our relationships with them; there are not many professions where the emotional compensation is as abundant or where the immersion with the people you serve is so complete.  Teaching presents constant opportunities for personal growth.  For example, I learn something new from the kids every day.  Maybe it is some interesting fact, or maybe it is just the ability to see a problem or interpretation of literature in a new way.  Teaching is like dancing with a partner where each person has a chance to lead once in awhile; this reciprocity is the heart of a meaningful relationship.  As in any dynamic partnership, sometimes the students can be challenging, and the adults in the community either absorb energy from the kids or are drained by them.  Teachers must be confident even when a third grader may know more than the teacher on a particular subject, conveying to that child a sense of safety in the world, allowing children to be children with the knowledge that adults will responsibly be the adults.  For really smart kids, this is not always the case.  Sometimes the adults in their lives are either so enamored of the child’s abilities that they interact with the child as if he or she were an adult, or the adult is intimidated and hostile to the child because of that child’s intelligence.  At other times, students are not always wiz kids and struggle, requiring a teacher's patience and the willingness to look into a child’s eyes and to convey that no matter what, you love her or him and the sincerity to really do so.  That’s what makes it work, and that is why we are here. 

What do I say?

Does the language that we use in our classrooms influence the way our students think about history?  How can we not only influence their minds, but also their hearts?  In my middle school humanities classes at the Sage School, we are studying the 19^th Century in US history, including the antebellum period and the Civil War.  Of course, much of our study is focused on slavery.  While slavery certainly exists in the modern world, it is sometimes difficult for the average middle class, middle school aged student in the early 21^st century to comprehend the humanity of people who lived on plantations picking cotton or even those who were forced to serve in the homes of wealthy, urban Washington, DC politicians.  To some degree, it is a good thing that students are unable to fully understand this misery; thankfully, they live in a different world where there is a promise of equality.  I don’t want my students to be depressed, but I do want them to identify with the people they study, to recognize that these were real people who loved their parents, who wanted the best for their children, who wanted to go to school and to learn new things, and who were not very different from my students or their parents.  So how does this translate into language? I recently prepared a set of reading questions to accompany an excerpt from Stephen Yafa’s book, Big Cotton.  As I was writing the study questions, it occurred to me that the word “slave” or “slaves” doesn’t force people to connect with the people who were subject to bondage at the mercy of a government that enforced that condition and denied them full standing as citizens in a society and country they were helping to build.  The word “slave” seems like some sort of object, rather than a human being.  So when I wrote my questions, I used either “enslaved people” or “enslaved Americans” instead of the word “slave.”  I know it is just a small thing, but I want to change my own way of thinking.  I want to think of real people when I teach, people who were just as American as I am, natural born citizens of the United States.  If I model this way of thinking, perhaps I will also reach the hearts of my students, enabling them to more fully understand our history. 

A Sage Teacher?

I am a middle school teacher at The Sage School, a small, independent school in Foxboro, Massachusetts.  The school was founded in 1990 by Linda Beers, our first Head of School, with hope that we would help bright kids become wise people, hence the name Sage.  How did I end up here?  After a lot of personal reflection and discussion with family and friends, I decided to leave a private law practice and become a teacher.  One day as I stopped at school to pick up my children and happened to see Linda in the lobby.  I told her about my new plan, and I remember our conversation quite vividly for she immediately replied, “I'll hire you.”  What Linda Beers saw in me to give me this chance, I don't know, but I will always be grateful to her for allowing me to be a permanent part of this amazing community.  Since I first stepped into a Sage classroom in 1996, I have never experienced any regret about leaving my practice and have at least tried to rise to the same standards we set for our students.  However, to be a wise teacher requires constant reevaluation and self-reflection, and so my hope is that this blog will help me work toward becoming a real sage teacher.