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.