Teaching

As a student teacher, my mentor Paula told me that the best teachers were lifelong learners. Following her own wisdom, she took fiddle lessons every week. She practiced daily. Be a student—of anything—she said. That way you'll always empathize with those you are trying to teach.

For the last three days, I've been learning complex choreographed dances right along with my students. I am being schooled in my mentor's lesson and in dance.

“All these kids … you must be brave,” said the man in hiking gear.

After a sunny but cold day on the beach punctuated by a trudge through sandpaper wind, I was plodding downhill with the stragglers from my hiking group. The more energetic among them galloped to the end, past the curious hiker.

Elementary school-aged children get no time to just be, experience their own selfhood, to rest. It’s important for the development of creativity, for mental growth and even for discovering something new. However, from the time most children get up in the morning until they go to sleep at night, someone is hurling demands at them. 

While working on a project for class, a student of mine casually mentioned the names of some of my relatives. When I looked up in horror, he rattled off all of the towns in which I had ever lived. I was shaken. How did he get all this information about me? Simple. He had an app for that.

B loves bugs. I met him during the first week of school as I conducted the standard assessment of how many words he could read per minute from a second-grade story. After the assessment, I gave him the customary caterpillar sticker to put on his shirt to show everyone that he was going to emerge as a great reader during his second-grade year.

Oakland Unified School District is trying to change its image. And well it should since it has a reputation for mismanaging funds. In 2002 administrators were forced to pursue a $100 million loan from the state to cover a shortfall. In addition, the district lost students to private schools and nearby suburbs, experienced an abysmal teacher turnover rate and posted poor test scores. That led to a state takeover in 2003 to clear up the fiscal disaster. When the state takeover ended in 2009, a re-empowered school board elected Tony Smith as superintendent. Smith’s administration has promised to listen to the people.

The O’Brien boys were a handful. Apathetic overstates how disinterested in school they were. They wandered in and out of my class, and when I wasn’t teaching, I’d see them aimlessly strolling the halls as if they had no place to be. They were mischievous yet charming, belligerent at some times and cooperative at others. They were also smart, funny and irreverent. But no matter what I or anyone else did, they wouldn’t engage in school. 

Consider the humble lunch as one of your most powerful teaching tools.

From the first day of school, Ricky was one of my most difficult students. Defensive, angry, and sensitive, this 7-year-old was constantly putting up walls and “testing” the adults in charge to see if we would respond to his needs. With the lack of a guidance counselor or a full-time school psychologist in the school, I knew that I had to find a way to connect with him, or we were going to have a disastrous school year.

The opening scene of the 2004 film Yesterday shows a mother (named Yesterday) and her daughter Beauty, walking down a deserted South African road. The daughter, maybe 5 years old, is describing her desire to transform into a bird. Why? She wants to float over to their destination, relieving her little legs of the agony of this miles-long trek.

The finish line is a health clinic in a ramshackle hut. You see, Yesterday has developed this wretched, knock-you-over cough. But the line is lengthy, so they wait and wait until it’s announced that everyone else must return next Tuesday.

Next Tuesday? A once-a-week doctor? Yes.

One of the surest ways to motivate students to not only write, but to write with passion, purpose and power, is to make sure they have an authentic audience. This means they must write for somebody other than me, their teacher. Students must know that there is power in their words and that they can be heard. 

Shrinking there on the stool in the science classroom, I just want to gather my ungraded quizzes and my dignity and flee to freedom. But, I don’t. I sit there, paralyzed by the assault.

“We are not your enemies,” I finally counter. “We are not Blake’s enemies.”

Last week, I had a chance to preview documentary films that showed how a strong arts program—and that could range from mariachi to Shakespeare to poetry slams—could turn struggling schools into powerhouses of energy and promise. Last night, millions of viewers got a chance to see what students from a school that values the arts look like—on the Academy Awards, no less.

The fall semester begins. There are 17 undergraduate college students sitting in front of me in a room designed for about twice that many. Some students have the courage to sit a foot or two from the front table and computer podium where I face them. Others (those a colleague calls “the back row boys,” no matter the gender) choose the seats furthest away. Many sit near one or more of their friends and chat with each other before and after class.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor that the U.S. government awards to civilians. Presidents select a handful of people each year who have made significant contributions in national security, world peace, promoting culture or “other significant public or private endeavors.”

This year’s medals will be presented to 15 distinguished people on Tuesday, Feb. 15. Among the list of honorees are some names that are familiar here at Teaching Tolerance. 

Like the more than 22,000 students who visit the Civil Rights Memorial Center each year, Brittney Johnson loved the fountain.

The 10-year-old Montgomery, Ala., native had never been to the memorial center, even though it’s just a few miles from her house. And like most visitors she was instantly drawn to the circular black granite fountain out in front. This unique piece of architecture, designed by Maya Lin, is engraved with the names of 40 civil rights martyrs. Next to it stands a wall of water that cascades transparently over Martin Luther King Jr.’s well-known paraphrase of Amos 5:24 -- We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Today somebody vomited in fourth-period study hall. Before the period had ended, kids in my study hall already knew about it. On my way to fifth-period class, every kid I passed in the crowded hallway was talking about it.

Webster’s dictionary defines gossip as “a report about the behavior of other people.” In my school, gossip is the pipeline through which all sorts of misinformation, lies, and occasional truths get exchanged.

Florida representative Kelli Stargel has proposed a bill requiring the state’s teachers to grade parents of children aged kindergarten to third grade.

Stargel suggests parents be graded “satisfactory,” “unsatisfactory” or “needs improvement,” based on whether their children arrive at school well-rested, well-fed and on time with homework completed. Her bill also requires regular communication between parents and teachers. 

Last June, eight students at Susquenita High School near Harrisburg, Pa., got a nasty surprise. The students, who ranged in age from 13 to 17, got caught with nude photos of each other on their cell phones. School officials brought in the police, and each teen was slapped with a felony pornography charge.

By now, most people have heard about the new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn being released next month. In it, the n-word has been slashed 219 times and replaced by “slave.” Discussions over this edition have been loud, particularly in literary and education circles. Erasing the n-word would, theoretically, free teachers to teach Huck Finn again. After all, year after year, the novel appears on the American Library Association’s list of most frequently challenged or banned books.

But what have we heard from our young people about this issue?

Words can shed light or generate heat.

This week, in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, there’s been a lot of talk about talk and the nature of our civil discourse.