Working Together to Succeed in Teaching

Bill Ayers’ chapter “Working in the Gap” really sums up our work this quarter quite well.  We have learned about the many challenges facing our educational system, our students and ourselves as teachers, but we have also spent a lot of time (in Maxine Greene’s words) imagining how it might be otherwise.  Ayers tells us that we must learn to “work the gap . . . between what is and what could be . . . searching the cracks for spaces to enact something more” (137, 138).  We could get bogged down by the obstacles, but we must keep our eye on the vision to “transform, empower, enlighten, awaken and energize” our students.  There are so many contradictions in the world of education today, including the serious cross-purposes discussed in Stan Karp’s article “Why We Need to Go Beyond the Classroom,” but Ayers urges us to live within those contradictions with hope as our fuel to keep forging ahead, to “press now for an education worthy of a democracy” (141).  

Luckily, as Jane keeps reminding us, we don’t have to work it alone.  Both Ayers and Karp stress that we need to forge alliances and work together at getting involved wherever we can, imagining solutions and fighting for their implementation.  We have to be determined not to fall victim to isolation.

At first I was intimidated by the thought that teaching was not something that we could learn -- that is, something that had an end point of accomplishment.  But now I am inspired and excited by Ayers’ description of teaching as dynamic and never-ending.  Each year will bring new students and each day new opportunities for growth.  One of the most exciting parts of the journey I am finding is how much we will learn from each other as we stay connected through collaboration in-person or online via blogs or forums.  We’re going to have to depend on each other and I can’t think of a greater cohort to be a part of.  So here’s to us as we finish up our first quarter -- we’re off to a strong and united start!

Teaching as a "Calling"

Why does the term "calling" resonate with so many teachers -- including Bill Ayers and other authors we have read this quarter?  As Ryan astutely pointed out last night, this is one of those terms that has secular as well as religious meaning to people.  When I say I feel called to teach, what I mean (as a Christian) is that I am drawn to teach because of my faith orientation to love and humbly serve others (all others) non-judgmentally as well as my belief that God created me with an orientation toward compassion for children and passion for learning.  These reasons could just as well be given by a person who is not religious, without the attributions to faith and God of course.  Dictionaries define “calling” as a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action or career.  

It is with genuine non-judgmental love that I will approach each and every child that I teach.  This is a core value that we have discussed at length this quarter and I’m sure it’s one we all share.  It doesn’t matter that the reason I feel compelled by that core value is my faith and the reason someone else is compelled by that core value is something else within or outside of them.  I think the term “calling” resonates with most teachers, religious or not, because it connotes the very personal and emotional connection to our work which is so important to us all and vital to our success as teachers -- as we have also discussed this week.

On a related note, I would also like to add that just as we should take care in applying a broad label like “poverty” (and its attendant assumptions) to kids in an enormous spectrum of circumstances (from generational poor to temporary poor), we should also be careful in attaching assumptions to other broad labels such as “Christian,” “Muslim,” “progressive,” or “conservative,” (to name just a few examples) which also encompass an enormous array of beliefs and opinions.  In approaching our students, their families and each other, we should just try to get to know each individual person for the unique human being that they are and work on building a bridge from there.  

The Centrality of Emotion in Education

I found it interesting this week to juxtapose our earlier readings on how teachers are (and are not) viewed as “professionals” (and the reasons behind those views) to this weeks readings “The Emotional Practice of Teaching” (Hargreaves) and “A Teacher’s Awesome Power” (Raywid).  Just a few weeks back it would have seemed to me that discussing the emotional or relational side of teaching would be tantamount to falling into the trap of our detractors by giving them ammunition to attack us for being “soft” and therefore non-professional.  This week’s readings have really changed my thinking.  
I am learning more and more about the critical importance of building classroom community.  Central to the formation of a classroom community that can effectively engender optimal learning is the ability of the teacher to emotionally connect to students and to foster students’ emotional connections to each other.  The cornerstone of a classroom community is positive relationships and the building of positive relationships requires emotional sensitivity -- “emotional intelligence” (as coined by Daniel Goleman in his book of that title).  Therefore, as schools are becoming increasingly diverse and our children are facing increasingly complex and stressful circumstances in their lives it is more important than ever that we create space in our school day to share the different life experiences and emotions of everyone in the classroom and to teach tolerance, empathy and inclusion.  Unfortunately, we are swimming upstream against an increasingly strong current as educational reforms are concurrently de-personalizing teaching at every turn by allowing increased class sizes while at the same time binding teachers’ hands with cut-and-dried curriculum that force them to teach to one-sided standardized assessments.  All of these structural changes hinder a teacher’s ability to build emotional connections within the classroom community.


It is critical that we educate the public about the centrality of emotions to teaching -- not because the emotional aspect of teaching is largely what draws people to the profession but because emotional connections and emotional intelligence are essential in creating the relationships between teachers and students, and among the students in the classrooms, that create the foundation for optimal learning to occur.  Emotion may seem like a soft issue but it is really the hard and central core of the profession of teaching.


P.S. Just after posting this I was surfing my blog reader and came across this blog post on relationships in teaching. Coincidentally, at the end of his post the blogger references the article Rosie told us about regarding the principal in Walla Walla and his innovative approach to discipline!

Thoughts on Developing Creativity

I’ve gotta be honest -- I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the thought of the digital storytelling project.  Not by the technology involved, but by the storytelling itself.  I feel a little creatively challenged.  Now that we have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s video on changing the paradigms of education, I at least feel like I have an excuse.  After all, I went through school when it was even more factory-like than it is today, so it is likely that I too had about 96% of divergent thinking sucked out of me along the way!

Robinson defines creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value.  He goes on to say that divergent thinking isn’t a synonym for creativity, but is an essential capacity for creativity.  Divergent thinking is the ability to see lots of possible answers to a question, lots of possible ways of interpreting a question, to see multiple answers instead of just one (to think laterally instead of just in linear or convergent ways).

I have been impressed with the extraordinary creativity of many of the authors we have been reading -- most recently, Ayers’ descriptions of developing a complex and dynamic curriculum and Bigelow’s descriptions of his untracked classroom and role playing activities, etc.  I even saw a news story yesterday about a local 5th grade teacher named Mr. Keith who has transformed his 5th grade classroom into a pirate’s cave and devleoped all sorts of fun activities related to that theme in order to engage his students in math (and with great success -- standardized math test scores have doubled). http://www.king5.com/video/featured-videos/Life-of-a-pirate-improves-Kent-students-math-scores-150179455.html

Clearly other people either haven’t lost their ability to think divergently or else they have figured out how to re-learn the skill -- the latter is my aim!  So I did a little googling to come up with ideas and here are a few:

(1)  Prepare for divergent thinking by brainstorming, concept mapping and keeping a journal. Teach yourself to freely associate ideas rather than keeping all of your ideas focused in a single vein or method.

(2) When confronted with a brain teaser or real-world problem, look for the most common solution first. Then, instead of stopping with this solution, begin again from the beginning and approach the problem with a completely different perspective, looking for a solution from a different angle.

(3) Learn to view the world as consisting of a countless number of different perspectives. The more you can get used to seeing simple, everyday issues as a matter of perspective (by looking up news issues from a number of angles, or reading literature written from a perspective different from your own), the easier it is to think divergently in any situation.
[1-3 are from ehow.com/how to think divergently]

(4) A great exercise in fluent thinking is the “List of 100.” Take a problem or an everyday object and write down 100 things about it. You might struggle at first, but the idea is to look at it from all angles and to not censor yourself. In the end, some of your ideas might not be very useful or practical, but others will be, and you will start to notice elements or combinations you never noticed before. Once you have a great list of ideas, you can begin to elaborate and develop the ideas that have a seed of promise.
[from growingcreativekids.com]

Well beyond this course and this digital storytelling project, we will be called on to come up with creative solutions to the myriad of challenges and opportunites facing us as teachers and, more generally, facing public education today. This is a small step, but it’s a start -- I’ll keep you posted!

"Poverty" is too broad of a label

Last night, Jane correctly pointed out an egregious error in my thinking regarding the intersection of poverty and education as she commented on my weekly journal.  Her point was that a lot of the Beegle article really just applies to generational poverty -- the deepest form of poverty -- which is a small percentage of the total number of families in poverty today.  She pointed out that for me to apply Beegle’s conclusions to all students classified as being in poverty (now almost 25% of American schoolchildren) is to apply sweeping generalizations that lead to wrong conclusions.  For instance, although many families in generational poverty don’t see the value in education and therefore exert little effort to overcome the substantial obstacles to their children’s success in school; many other families in poverty see education as their lifeboat, their ticket out of poverty, and will make tremendous sacrifices to keep their children in school.  

As we saw in our role-plays on Monday night, there are definite differences between the situations of families in generational poverty vs. working poverty vs. temporary poverty which affect their attitudes toward education in important ways.  When I first read Beegle’s article, it felt like her distinctions between different types of poverty were in some cases “splitting hairs,” but now I see more clearly that those distinctions can cause vastly different perspectives on education -- primarily whether the family sees education as a source of hope or a source of frustration and futility.  One of our cohort members even mentioned on Monday about her experience as being part of “immigrant poverty” which was not characterized by hopelessness.  On the contrary, they pinned all of their hope on education because they saw the value of education in lifting them out of their circumstances.  As a result, they placed a very high priority on obtaining education for their children.

I am reminded that even when we apply labels in an attempt to help certain groups of marginalized people by drawing attention to their plight, we can do so too broadly and to the detriment of what we are trying to accomplish.  As Jane commented on my paper:  “poor kids come in many forms” and many now live not just in cities and rural areas but even in suburbs.  It comes back to the lessons we have been learning about getting to know each child and their families individually in order to build unique bridges to each of them.  We need to be wary of putting families in “boxes” that seem convenient and useful to our understanding of their situation, but are, in fact, barriers to our truly getting to know them and help them.

Following up on Imagining a Better Future

I was inspired to read Donna Beegle's background story this week and to learn how a counselor challenged her to dream beyond her wildest imaginings and a teacher mentored her in breaking free of her generational poverty!! This is an excerpt from an article in The Oregonian, a Portland newspaper, by author Bryan Smith (http://www.combarriers.com/WomansJourney) published on January 29, 1995:

The women at the program treated her differently. They didn't laugh at her "ain'ts'' or tell her she dressed wrong or call her the name she hated most: white trash.  One day, the program teachers asked the class to dream.  "If you could do anything you wanted, be anything, what would it be? Don't think about obstacles. Just dream.''  Donna let her mind drift, back to her enjoyment of writing and reading.  "I'd like to be on TV, like Mary Hart. I'd like to be a news anchor.''  To her amazement, no one laughed.  "Oh, you want to be a journalist,'' the instructor said.  "That's a terrific dream.''

That night, she recorded two modest goals in the "hopes and wishes'' column of her class journal. Before, her dream had been to find a man to take care of her. Now, she wanted to make her own way.  "One day I'd like to finish my GED,'' she wrote. "And take a college journalism class.''

A little further along on her educational journey, Donna Beegle was also mentored by a professor, Bob Fulford, who noticed that she was hard-working and exhibited a deep understanding in her papers but that she had horrible grammar. He gently offered to help her and she grabbed at the opportunity. Her speech began to improve dramatically. She'd make notes of words she didn't understand and look them up or seek out her professors to explain them further. With the encouragement of counselors and teachers, Donna was given the opportunity to imagine a better future for herself and to obtain it. It wasn't without incredibly hard work and many sacrifices as a single mom with two young children, but she was able to persevere with the support and encouragement of counselors and teachers. Originally a 9th grade drop-out, Donna went on to not only earn her associate's degree (at age 30), but also bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees!

As future teachers, we need to always have our antennas up and eyes wide open for children who are struggling with poverty or any other obstacle to their educational advancement. We can be the ones to fuel their dreams and awaken their imaginings of better future -- or in Maxine Greene's words -- to help them to be aware of "the possibility of things being otherwise"