Imagining a Better Future For "At Risk" Children

Imagine no injustice

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

It’s time to take a stand

Imagine all the children learning hand in hand

You may say I'm a dreamer,

but I'm not the only one . . .

[my apologies to John Lennon J]

Today I’m thinking about the awesome power of imagination and I love how our reading by Maxine Greene (Imagination, Community and the School) stretched my thinking about applying this to education in new and powerful ways.  We’ve been learning a lot about current issues of social injustice in education and our readings are helping me to imagine a better future for all children.  The trouble is that there is a huge number of families so weighed down in their daily struggles, and facing such high obstacles to success, that they cannot imagine a better future for their children.  Their children are at risk of falling between the cracks of our educational system, dooming them to a future as bleak as their current reality.  “The American Dream” has become “The Impossible Dream.”  As teachers, we can invite these “at risk” children to dream the impossible dream by exposing them to the fulfilled dreams of others.  We can teach them about major historical figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. but we must also be sure to include the stories of people just like them, like Dr. Donna Beegle whose article on poverty we will discuss in class next week.  We must do everything in our power to stir their “wide-awakeness” to the “possibilities of things being otherwise” – allowing them to imagine their own future potential.  We must prove to them that they are worthy of such a future by valuing them in their present circumstances, inviting them into the inclusive community of our classroom, listening to the stories of their lives, and loving and respecting them deeply as human beings.  We must let them share their stories and dreams in creative ways including art, singing and dance while also exposing them to the art of others which gives them a window into others’ imaginations -- and more possibilities.  I love how Greene describes Martin Luther King’s impact on a group of people he was addressing in a church, trying to empower them to fight for their civil rights:  “As they came awake to a dimension of lived life they could scarcely have predicted for themselves, they came to feel a transcendence that came from their being together in a particular way (40).”   I believe we can find a way to “be together” with at risk children in that same “particular way”.  We can provide healing, freedom and hope by helping them to imagine a better future for themselves, but we must do this from within the context of a supportive and interconnected community that believes they can break free of their current circumstances and that they are worthy of a better future.  Mostly we must be willing to help them do it – to actively join in imagining their possibility to be otherwise!

Hippocratic Oath for Teachers

I've posted this idea a few other places this week, but I wanted to really "own it" right here on my blog.  In our discussion of teaching as a profession and in comparing it to other professions such as the legal and medical professions, the question of the importance of a professional oath has come up a number of times. I was inspired by someone's reference to the medical profession's Hippocratic Oath to re-word it for the teaching profession. I have taken an initial stab at it below, incorporating some of the themes we have been discussing in class. I aim to revisit it later in the quarter to fine tune it further based on what we have learned.

A Teacher's Oath

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

• I will respect the hard-won gains of those educators in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
• However, I will fight to revoke or revise educational practices that are no longer relevant or unjust.
• I will apply, for the benefit of each child I teach, all measures that are required for their success, avoiding traps of stereotypes and rigid thinking.
• I will remember that there is art to teaching as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding must be incorporated into the daily lesson plan.
• I will not be ashamed to say "I don’t know", nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed to help a child succeed.
• I will respect the privacy of my students and their families, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of a child’s identity, self-worth and future potential.
• I will remember that I do not teach a test score, but a unique human being whose success in school may affect that person's family and economic stability for generations to come.
• I will prevent alienation and discouragement however I can, focusing on competencies rather than deficiencies.
• I will remember that I remain a member of society with special obligations to children of all backgrounds and abilities as well as to their families and the general public who entrust and employ us.
• If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, be respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of teaching those who enter my classroom, making a lasting and positive difference in each of their lives.

Teacher Isolation

The idea of isolation in teaching has been a new and unexpected concept for me to grasp.  How paradoxical is it that teachers who spend the whole day surrounded by people (albeit little people) and work in schools teeming with fellow educators could feel so isolated from one another?  Our schools are environments where teachers have barely a moment to themselves all day but during that time are, for the most part, isolated from their colleagues thus severely limiting the opportunity for professional interaction.  This lack of regular interaction with peers and supervisors can have serious consequences including stress, self-doubt, burnout or even autonomy to the point of being indifferent or acting on personal “whim” or “caprice” (to quote Margret Buchmann).  It is not inconceivable that a teacher could pretty much do whatever they wanted, for at least some period of time, without being found out.  But aside from this negative (and hopefully unlikely) extreme is the more likely scenario of a teacher who would welcome feedback on his or her teaching and desires to proactively collaborate with peers, but is prevented from doing so by the structure of a typical school schedule.   

Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that the public seems to place a very low value on providing collaboration time to teachers.  The public seems to view any time not spent directly in front of students as a waste of their taxpayer (or tuition) dollars.  How do they expect teachers to discover and implement best practices if they are denied the opportunity to brainstorm, problem-solve and coordinate their teaching efforts? 

I think the technology we are learning in our teacher education program will be very helpful in combating our feelings of isolation as teachers.  Although face-to-face collaboration is probably preferred by most teachers, the ability to communicate and share ideas via blogs and wikispaces must certainly be helping teachers feel less isolated.

Contemplating Being In Their Shoes

Reading Lisa Delpit’s article on Ebonics (Rethinking Our Classrooms, Volume 2) this week was a real eye-opener for me!  It forced me to step into the shoes of African-American children in a way that rocked my understanding of their educational reality.  I realized that I have completely taken for granted the “fact” that Standard English was the only true English and that regional and cultural “slang” were just relaxations of that standard.  I assumed that the slang users could slip back and forth between the standard and slang with ease.  It wasn’t until I read Delpit’s article that I realized that for some Americans, particular African-Americans who speak Ebonics in their homes and communities, Standard English is really akin to a foreign language.  I was particularly struck by her example of language researcher Robert Berdan who constructed an artificial alternative to English that he called the “language of Atlantis.”  He then proceeded to ask his graduate students to read aloud in that dialect, correcting them constantly as they made frequent mistakes.  This process basically shut them down.  They began to sound illiterate, to feel self-conscious and unconfident, to read in a monotone voice, and to lose sight of comprehending what they were reading as they concentrated on just trying to pronounce the words correctly.  In a short time they also began to fidget and show other outward signs of stress and anxiety.  Even though Delpit had described basically this same process happening in classrooms as African-American children were having their Ebonics corrected repeatedly by a well-meaning teacher, the devastating impact on the child’s learning and self-esteem did not fully sink in until I put myself in the shoes of Robert Berdan’s graduate students and felt anxious just reading the scenario knowing I would shut down in those circumstances as well.   Reading this article has significantly increased my sensitivity to this issue.  I appreciated Delpit’s suggestions on both incorporating other dialects into the classroom with stories, puppet shows, etc. and also using writing, rather than reading/speaking, as a more appropriate forum for correcting standard English mistakes as writing lends itself more easily to editing while also not putting the child on the spot.  I can see that it will be a very difficult thing to put in practice however.  I see that I will need to make a habit of continually putting myself in the shoes of my students in order to teach them effectively with respect to their individual backgrounds.

Contemplating Being White

This week’s readings have really challenged my thinking about my educational background and perspective as a white person particularly with regards to becoming a teacher of non-white students.  I volunteer in a very diverse elementary school and clearly recognize how different an environment that this is compared to my own elementary school experience.  However, our readings this week really convicted me that, because of my upbringing, I may possibly (probably?) have a deep-seated bias that I am unaware of and need to uncover and address through self-reflection and proactively educating myself regarding other races and cultures.  

It was painful to read in the Howard article about “recognizing one’s own privilege as a member of a group that has received unearned opportunity and advantage” and furthermore that “failure to begin dismantling these privileges once [one is] conscious of them is, in many ways, tantamount to acting in discriminatory ways.”  It made me realize that I cannot just say “it’s not my fault I was born into an affluent white family and that I will strive to value all races and cultures in my classroom,” but that I must further ask myself “What am I going to do about not only changing our biased system of thinking but actually dismantling my own privileges??”  This is a very big question to which I do not yet know the answer(s).  What I do know is that it is a path that I need to actively pursue.  I need to make myself vulnerable to self-examination as well as to criticism from others and to actively seek to give up false power that I have been given by virtue of the color of my skin.

On a different, but related, note -- there were two anecdotes in particular from this week’s readings that really struck me with regard to my need to be aware of the strong and valid feelings of the parents of minority children.  The first was from Lisa Delpit’s “Seeing Color” in which she is discussing Vivan Gussin Paley’s book White Teacher.  Paley is meeting with a black parent who relays that “in her children’s previous school the teacher had said, ‘There is no color difference in my classroom.  All my children look alike to me.’ ‘What rot,’ said Mrs. Hawkins [the parent]. ‘My children are black.  They know they are black, and we want it recognized.  It’s a comfortable natural difference.  At least it could be so, if you teachers learned to value differences more.”  The second anecdote is from William Ayers’ To Teach where in chapter 2 (Seeing the Student) he reprints a beautifully articulate yet scathingly telling letter from a Native American mother written to the white teacher of her son challenging her to be sensitive to his race/culture.  She concludes: “Will you help my child to learn to read, or will you teach him that he has a reading problem?  Will you help him develop problem-solving skills, or will you teach him that school is where you try to guess what answer the teacher wants?  Will he learn that his sense of his own value and dignity is valid, or will he learn that he must forever be apologetic and “trying harder” because he isn’t white?  Can you help him acquire the intellectual skills he needs without at the same time imposing your values on top of those he already has?  Respect my child.  He is a person.  He has a right to be himself.”  These anecdotes challenge me to remember to be always sensitive to each child’s individual background and to actively seek parents’ input.  As Delpit says, “When teachers are teaching children who are different from themselves, they must call upon parents in a collaborative fashion if they are to learn who their students really are.”

Contemplating the Metaphor of Schools as Factories

Firstly, to my fellow cohort-mates:  if you haven’t read the Introduction to William Ayers’ To Teach, I highly recommend that you do so!  You may recall during the first week of classes that one of our teachers talked about the assembly line structure of our school systems in terms of the physical structure of our schools as well as the fact that all children start school at basically the same age (the “wax test”), whether they are developmentally ready or not, and are “pushed” through the system at the same pace regardless of their abilities or maturity levels.  Well, Ayers also touches on this metaphor in his Introduction.  On page 7, Ayers describes “the controlling metaphor that posits education as a commodity rather than a right and a journey and that imagines schools as little factories cranking out products.”  This view of education that sees schools as factories, children as raw materials and education as a product is a very impersonal and inflexible perspective, in my opinion.  Given our limited tax dollars (especially in light of the recent economic downturn), it is understandable that the “powers that be” want to make educational institutions as cost-efficient as possible, however, we have to question whether it is really ethical to apply strict economic principles to the “business” of education which is, at its heart, so very human or to apply principles of mass production to children who are such a wide array of unique individuals rather than uniform parts and products.  As Ayers points out, if we commit to run schools as businesses, do we then justify sacrificing students that aren’t “performing” at acceptable levels, letting them fall to the wayside because they cannot keep up with the “production line”?  I really like how he contrasts this view to that of viewing schools as models of democracy where each child is valued as an individual – being “person-oriented” [democracy model] versus “thing-oriented” [factory model] (Ayers, p.3).  This stark contrast really caught me off guard and challenged my thinking because I have always thought of our American values of democracy and capitalism as being so intertwined.  But now I see that with respect to education, they are very much opposed to one another.  Democracy values individuality and equal rights whereas capitalism values efficiency and conformity.  If we apply democratic values to education we can envision a system where children start at different ages and move through at different speeds, classrooms that are diverse not only in terms of skin color but also age, a system where every child feels challenged but not discouraged.  Contemplating this issue raises a lot of big questions in my mind . . . Who are the decision makers that need to be persuaded to effect such change?  What role can we, as teachers, play in advocating such change?

Contemplating My Core Commitments

In only the first week of our teacher certification classes we have been asked numerous times to contemplate our “core commitments.”  I am still grappling with this notion, but I am going to set some ideas down as a starting point with the intent of revisiting this list repeatedly as I progress through the certification program.  Reading William Ayers’ Introduction to his book To Teach really helped me to start understanding the concept of core commitments.  He states that teachers can decide on some core values and practices that they intend to bring to their classrooms – how they want their students to feel and what kind of place they want their classrooms to be.  So this is where I will begin my journey, by stating the following:

•  First and foremost, I want each of my students to know that I love them and value them
• I want each of my students to know that I expect them to live up to their full potential and that I am there to help them do it, cheering them on all the way
• I want my classroom to be a safe place for my students to challenge themselves without fear of failure – to ask questions and make mistakes (and, in fact, to see failures as a critical part of learning)
• I want my classroom to be a place of open discussion, critical thinking, collaborative problem solving and engaging activities
• I want my classroom to be a place where we respect and listen carefully to one another
• I want my classroom to be a place where our words are used only to build each other up, never to tear each other down
• I want my classroom to be a place that stimulates curiosity and a life-long love of learning
• I want my students to feel empowered to be successful