"Why?"
That's a question that students ask about a lot of things at school.
Two friends enjoying their time together: "Why can't we sit next to each other?"
A kid who is sitting off from the group but doing her work: "Why can't I just stay here?"
Students in a class meeting: "Why do we need to take this class?"
A a representative of the state, these questions feel challenging. When I respond as a representative of the state, my answers are hollow
and fumbling. Neither the student nor my conscience is satisfied.
But as a person who loves critical thought, I really enjoy them. When I respond as a fellow critical thinker, I usually end up saying "I don't know," and stop fighting.
The past few weeks (the first few weeks of my teaching career) I feel like I was way more focused on controlling student behavior than looking for moments of student learning and insight. I can't tell you Why.
Today I was sick and didn't have the energy to fight students on things. So I just let go. I posed questions and looked for awesome responses. They were there. I was witness to passion and thinking. That's why I'm doing this job that at times feels absurd and impossible.
Certainly there were some kids who talked over me a lot, some who barely did any work. This isn't necessarily acceptable, but at the same time I understand that we really learn when we are ready to. So perhaps that kind of behavior is inevitable.
Indeed, I really believe that power struggles and student disengagement is inevitable in the model of schooling we have. That's not even a very radical outlook on education. Almost every educator I talk to feels the same way, at least to some degree. I'm about to pull this number out of nowhere, but let's say 80% of educators understand that the system or model of public education we use creates a lot of power struggles and disengagement. It's not as much the fault of teachers, students, or families but the structure we find ourselves in. We demand abnormal levels of disciplined performance by educators, students, and families just to keep the model going.
My question is, "Why are we still using it?" The students I teach would like to know too.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Saturday, September 26, 2015
"Why are you always red?"
Passing a student I teach in between classes, he asked, "Mr. Andrews, why are you always red?"
"You mean my face?!" I asked back.
"Yeah."
"I dunno. I'm a white guy who gets warm." That seemed to satisfy him.
The vast majority of students at my school are people of color. The majority of adults at my school are white. This both matters and it doesn't (though it matters more than it doesn't, and as a white man I may still not really grasp how much it matters).
It matters because of all the research (that I don't need to repeat here, go find it for yourself if this is new) that shows students tend to learn better from people who look like them (which in the United States often means people who share similar lived experiences). There is also a lot of
messed up discipline stuff that goes on between white teachers with a weak foundation of culturally responsive pedagogy and their students of color. (I actually think it functions similarly to interactions between majority white police forces and citizens of color, but that's something much longer I'm working on).
It also doesn't matter because a school that cares about community and relationships takes people as they come - this means students and teachers. During my year of graduate school I decided that to be a good teacher, I wanted to be able to teach anyone. I think good teachers respond to the skill levels, cultures, and lived experiences of people in their classroom. No matter where that is or who it is. Right now I'm really excited to be working with students who come from all over the world and speak many languages. I'm learning to be an excellent teacher for these students. But I'd want to be an excellent teacher if I suddenly found myself in a majority white Midwest private school too.
Could the white teachers at my school (me included) grow a lot as culturally responsive educators? Yes. Yes! Would the school be stronger if we had more excellent teachers of color? Certainly. AND, I know that the teachers at my school care about our students a lot. A lot. Good intentions are worthless if students are having bad, even damaging, educational experiences. But good intentions also allow for growth. Right now, I think many students at my school are having good experiences and many are not.
Monday through Thursday, my last period of the day is (as of now) really frustrating. There's a group of freshman in there who can't shut up. I need to figure out how to leverage that high social energy, but right now it takes us 15 minutes just to get class started. I've been sharing my emotions about this with them openly. The other day, while I was trying to get their attention (it felt impossible), I noticed my face was burning up.
I said loudly, "My face is probably really red right now." Suprisingly, lots of voices went off.
"There are two reasons for this. First, I'm a white dude." This got some laughs and smiles. "Second, I'm feeling really angry right now." I then proceeded to let them know why I was feeling angry and how I was ready to get class started (so we could start the damn game I spent hours preparing...I didn't say this to them).
I've found that some white teachers who have done some decent reflection on their racial or ethnic identities rush into conversations about race with students of color (with good intentions). I certainly want to have deep conversations about race and racism with the students I teach. But I also don't want to force these conversations on them through required reading and graded work. That may come, but not yet.
For now, I'll make slightly self-effacing comments about my rosy cheeks. I hope students will pick up that I'm comfortable talking about my own race casually, and perhaps they'll be the ones to initiate the more difficult conversations.
"You mean my face?!" I asked back.
"Yeah."
"I dunno. I'm a white guy who gets warm." That seemed to satisfy him.
The vast majority of students at my school are people of color. The majority of adults at my school are white. This both matters and it doesn't (though it matters more than it doesn't, and as a white man I may still not really grasp how much it matters).
It matters because of all the research (that I don't need to repeat here, go find it for yourself if this is new) that shows students tend to learn better from people who look like them (which in the United States often means people who share similar lived experiences). There is also a lot of
messed up discipline stuff that goes on between white teachers with a weak foundation of culturally responsive pedagogy and their students of color. (I actually think it functions similarly to interactions between majority white police forces and citizens of color, but that's something much longer I'm working on).
It also doesn't matter because a school that cares about community and relationships takes people as they come - this means students and teachers. During my year of graduate school I decided that to be a good teacher, I wanted to be able to teach anyone. I think good teachers respond to the skill levels, cultures, and lived experiences of people in their classroom. No matter where that is or who it is. Right now I'm really excited to be working with students who come from all over the world and speak many languages. I'm learning to be an excellent teacher for these students. But I'd want to be an excellent teacher if I suddenly found myself in a majority white Midwest private school too.
Could the white teachers at my school (me included) grow a lot as culturally responsive educators? Yes. Yes! Would the school be stronger if we had more excellent teachers of color? Certainly. AND, I know that the teachers at my school care about our students a lot. A lot. Good intentions are worthless if students are having bad, even damaging, educational experiences. But good intentions also allow for growth. Right now, I think many students at my school are having good experiences and many are not.
Monday through Thursday, my last period of the day is (as of now) really frustrating. There's a group of freshman in there who can't shut up. I need to figure out how to leverage that high social energy, but right now it takes us 15 minutes just to get class started. I've been sharing my emotions about this with them openly. The other day, while I was trying to get their attention (it felt impossible), I noticed my face was burning up.
I said loudly, "My face is probably really red right now." Suprisingly, lots of voices went off.
"There are two reasons for this. First, I'm a white dude." This got some laughs and smiles. "Second, I'm feeling really angry right now." I then proceeded to let them know why I was feeling angry and how I was ready to get class started (so we could start the damn game I spent hours preparing...I didn't say this to them).
I've found that some white teachers who have done some decent reflection on their racial or ethnic identities rush into conversations about race with students of color (with good intentions). I certainly want to have deep conversations about race and racism with the students I teach. But I also don't want to force these conversations on them through required reading and graded work. That may come, but not yet.
For now, I'll make slightly self-effacing comments about my rosy cheeks. I hope students will pick up that I'm comfortable talking about my own race casually, and perhaps they'll be the ones to initiate the more difficult conversations.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
"The teacher should be more mean."
"The teacher should be more mean."
That was an anonymous response I got when I posed this prompt to my students: "This class would be better if..." In another period I saw a similar response, though more specific: "The teacher should be stricter with certain students."
My reactions to this - intellectual and emotional - are complicated. It hits me emotionally because it shows that there are students in the class who are very sensitive to how the classroom community is developing and they're looking to me to shift it in certain directions. These responses demonstrate that some students think I could be doing better, but also trust me enough to say it (albeit anonymously). Intellectually, it makes me think a lot about power dynamics in the classroom and the system we are in that requires teachers to be mean to establish some sort of order.
What are they trying to say by this? Certainly they don't want a teacher that yells, that bullies, that is unfair. It's pretty obvious that what they want is structure, and that is something that I'm trying to figure out as a first year teacher. What is a structured classroom that allows room for creativity, differentiation, individuality?
We have a this behavior corrective response system at our school that we call the "levels of global warming." Imagine a student is doing something pretty minor and common, such as having their cell phone out or talking over you while you're trying to give directions or teach a lesson. According to the levels of global warming I take the following steps, with each step indicating the students has not discontinued their off task or disruptive behavior: Physical proximity > Verbal Reminder > Verbal Warning > Discussion with Teacher > Send to Reset/Buddy Room > Referral > Send to Office > Call Home > Meeting with Parent and Teacher. Or something like that.
The thing about this system is that it kind of traps you, as a teacher. And it makes students choose to either assert their autonomy or bend to the wishes of this person that might very well be a complete stranger to them. As a teacher, if you make one bad judgment somewhere along that line, it's hard to jump off it. Obviously, as a teacher you can bail on this system at any point, but if you do so you risk appearing indecisive and inconsistent. That's not respected by anyone really.
It make me think a lot about the meta-structure of how we educate youth. Why are we all going into a system that requires "meanness" and explicit expressions of power to establish a community that gets people learning? And why are we so focused on coercive power rather than spiritual or collective power? When students see a "nice" adult and decide they can disregard that person, what does it say about how they view adults in general? These are questions that make me feel pretty low, but I also keep pushing to explore.
That was an anonymous response I got when I posed this prompt to my students: "This class would be better if..." In another period I saw a similar response, though more specific: "The teacher should be stricter with certain students."
My reactions to this - intellectual and emotional - are complicated. It hits me emotionally because it shows that there are students in the class who are very sensitive to how the classroom community is developing and they're looking to me to shift it in certain directions. These responses demonstrate that some students think I could be doing better, but also trust me enough to say it (albeit anonymously). Intellectually, it makes me think a lot about power dynamics in the classroom and the system we are in that requires teachers to be mean to establish some sort of order.
What are they trying to say by this? Certainly they don't want a teacher that yells, that bullies, that is unfair. It's pretty obvious that what they want is structure, and that is something that I'm trying to figure out as a first year teacher. What is a structured classroom that allows room for creativity, differentiation, individuality?
We have a this behavior corrective response system at our school that we call the "levels of global warming." Imagine a student is doing something pretty minor and common, such as having their cell phone out or talking over you while you're trying to give directions or teach a lesson. According to the levels of global warming I take the following steps, with each step indicating the students has not discontinued their off task or disruptive behavior: Physical proximity > Verbal Reminder > Verbal Warning > Discussion with Teacher > Send to Reset/Buddy Room > Referral > Send to Office > Call Home > Meeting with Parent and Teacher. Or something like that.
The thing about this system is that it kind of traps you, as a teacher. And it makes students choose to either assert their autonomy or bend to the wishes of this person that might very well be a complete stranger to them. As a teacher, if you make one bad judgment somewhere along that line, it's hard to jump off it. Obviously, as a teacher you can bail on this system at any point, but if you do so you risk appearing indecisive and inconsistent. That's not respected by anyone really.
It make me think a lot about the meta-structure of how we educate youth. Why are we all going into a system that requires "meanness" and explicit expressions of power to establish a community that gets people learning? And why are we so focused on coercive power rather than spiritual or collective power? When students see a "nice" adult and decide they can disregard that person, what does it say about how they view adults in general? These are questions that make me feel pretty low, but I also keep pushing to explore.
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