Teaching

We made a circle for our guided reading time. I sat down in my trusty old Hinkle rocking chair, and my students sat down crisscross applesauce on their red carpet squares. My second-graders’ stomachs were full and their energy level was low. They were ready to hear a story.

They blaze into Room 309 at 8:16, sporting new t-shirts and vintage ones, silver watches and Silly Bandz, first-day-of-school garb.

I hand them a yellow index card. "Write for me," I say, "Begin with, 'I am...' or 'I am not..."'

Off they go, scribbling first words with their newly sharpened pencils.

They despise school. They adore school. They'd like school, if only, if only, if only...

Their summer? They've gone swimming with sea turtles in Hawaii. Their parents have divorced. They've been diagnosed. Or, trapped in summer school. Their beloved grandmother has died.

They are 13 years old.

Every school year, my incoming students receive a welcome letter. Included in their packet is something a little different: a snack-sized baggie of sand. One student may receive some black volcanic sand from Japan; another gets green sand from Hawaii; still another receives the silky sand from Florida’s west coast; while another may get the pink sand found on Bermuda’s pristine beaches.

I used to be a bad girl. I was self-destructive, angry and fearless. These traits, coupled with a decent amount of intelligence, took me to all the places bad girls go. For many years, I bounced from bad decisions to bad jobs to bad relationships. My life was a mess for a long time, and all I knew how to do was make it worse. I couldn’t talk to my mother, my father wasn’t around, and my friends were either victims of their own circumstances or they were busy creating better lives for themselves. I was alone for a long time, and it felt like I would drown forever.

My elementary school is a Title I school. About 95 percent of our students qualify for free and reduced lunch and Medicaid. Research shows us that many children raised in poverty struggle to learn to read. Common sense tells us that children who don't learn to read can't read to learn. They often reach a frustration level with school by the time they're in the third grade. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 70 percent of low-income fourth-grade students can't read at a basic level. I often wonder, "What can I do in my day-to-day work as a teacher to help?"

Last night, two children, Max and Sarah, vacationing at their grandparents’ home in Boca Raton, Florida, traveled far, far away from there. They landed in Piwniczna, a town small enough to be summed up in a single sentence on Wikipedia:

“Piwniczna-Zdrój [pivˈnit​͡ʂna ˈzdrui̯] (until 1999 Piwniczna) is a town in Nowy Sacz County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland, near the border with Slovakia, with 5,744 inhabitants (2004).”

Researchers have known for decades that stereotyping students can cause them to succeed or fail. But Claude Steele, a social psychologist and provost at Columbia University, has found that students' own worries about negative stereotypes can hinder their performance. 

How to make culturally relevant pedagogy a reality in your classroom.

Editor’s Note: Today is Teacher Appreciation Day, and Teaching Tolerance wishes all educators the recognition that this teacher received. 

I have always loved to work with children. So becoming a teacher was a natural choice for me.  I truly enjoy the daily interaction with my students, but putting a finger on why exactly I teach was not easy for me to articulate—until yesterday. I received a card from a parent. Her words are why I teach:

Editor’s Note: For National Poetry Month, we’ve departed from our typical prose-only style to present this special Why I Teach column.