AUSSIE

Blog entry posted October 15th, 2009 by Dale Worsley

In the ramblin’ spirit of Paragraph Six, I’m giving myself permission to postpone the post on pi yet again, and go further along the tangent of pedagogical belief. Call it a “dynamic digression” (a handy euphemism I picked up from the world of lit crit.)

Sometimes stories demand to be told, and this is one of them, on the theme of belief:

A few years ago I was planning a demonstration lesson with English teacher Maria Carrua, in her 7th grade inclusion classroom at the Edmund W. Miles Middle School in Amityville, New York. I would teach it later that day, as a literacy consultant. Maria and her colleagues could then give me feedback on what I had done, and tell me what they might use for themselves. Maria and I had figured out the lesson: the students would follow up on the “mind maps” – mentioned in the last blog as well – that they had created my first time with them. They had charted their personal interests. Typical ones ran to music, fast food restaurants and family. In my demo lesson, they would narrow their topics then fill out a graphic organizer derived from Walt Whitman’s poem “There Was a Child Went Forth,” which invites children to explore how they sense their worlds. These are the first lines of this remarkable poem:

There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon, that object he became.

(Interesting concept, wouldn’t you say, that children become what they see? I’ve seen brain research that bears this out. It’s worth thinking about next time you’re trying to decide whether to take your kids on a field trip or stay in the classroom and do worksheets to get ready for that state test. Maybe the state park, or the museum, is better prep?)

Having settled on a plan, I asked Maria if she had any concerns. She said the particular class I worked with was easy to teach, but she had another class that threw her off balance. She admitted that she had actualy yelled at them the other day.

I couldn’t see Maria, a soft spoken, gentle person as one of the “yellers” who make adults wince, children plug their ears, and 9th graders drop out of the system at rates exceeding 50% in some schools. So I asked her what had happened. It seems there was a boy who acted up a lot, so she gave him chores to do, which calmed him down. But there was also a girl who resented this and let Maria know in less than appropriate language, as was her habit. Maria got exasperated. “Tell me what you would like me to do, then,” she said.

“Stop rewarding him when he acts up,” the girl said. “You don’t reward me when I act up.”

This was the point when Maria, in full-blown frustration, “yelled” at the whole class: “I want to teach you. I work as hard as I can. Tell me what to do. I really want to know.”

It’s true Maria might have tried a more diplomatic approach – and we discussed some possibilities later – but her plea to the students didn’t fit my personal definition of yelling, so I said as much, then asked how the students reacted. Some assured her that she was doing a good job. But her nemesis saw another chance to needle her and said, “Quit trying to get us to think. Just tell us what we have to do and leave us alone to do it, then give us bad grades if we don’t.”

Maria retorted, “I’m sorry, but that’s not who I am, and it’s not what I believe I should do as a teacher. I want you to express yourselves, be kind to each other. The world’s a great place to live. I want you to try not to be sad.”

The political powers that be, with good intentions but bad manners, love to put almost unbearable pressure on some teachers to olympically catapult struggling students toward higher scores on high stakes tests. It’s my job as a coach to provide strategies that help relieve that pressure. As discussed in previous posts, having teachers return to the core beliefs that nudged them into the classroom in the first place sometimes helps. What Maria had said to her students looked mighty close to a statement of belief to me, so I scratched her words on the blackboard:

Express yourself.

Be kind.

The world is a great place to live.

Try not to be sad.

They would make excellent guiding principles for my demonstration lesson.

Our planning period was almost over. As I stood up to leave, I noticed on my paperwork that Maria had an odd teaching schedule: no classes before lunch. I asked about this. She explained that she kept her mornings free for medical treatments. “I don’t want to put anything on you,” she said as she walked me to the door, “but I have cancer.”

This brought me to a pretty abrupt halt. I asked her what kind. “Breast cancer,” she said. Gesturing toward her youthful body, which was showing the slight bulge of a three-and-a-half month pregnancy, she said, “Look at me. I have the perfect life. I have a perfect husband. I have a job I really love. I have my first child on the way….”

I was working on the knotty permutations of her conflict – which I still haven’t completely unraveled – when she took pity on me and said…

To be continued next week. (I was able to talk Gina the Blog Editor into an extension of my word count once, but I don’t want to push my luck.) In the meantime, post your comments and let me know what you think.