Aaron Johnson’s Neighborhood

though i think arne duncan's speech on "teacher colleges" was pretty well-crafted, i don't know if i truly still understand the concept of a teacher's college.  before i get into explaining why perhaps the most important thing could be to fund these institutions, i think i need to see if i actually believe in what they are aimed at doing.

This was my second time watching this speech, I originally watched it before I came in this summer. I thought that I understood what Pete was saying in his speech the first time that I watched it, but I now know that I had absolutely no idea what he was saying. Now that I have been in the classroom and have experienced the topics that he is discussing, I now more clearly understand what Pete is saying.

I am glad I watched this a second time because he was able to put into his experience into a 13 minute speech. It is hard to really describe to anyone outside of teaching and outside of the program what we are really going through. One of my favorite things that Pete said during his speech was that this is one profession that working hard does not necessarily define success. The funny thing about that is one would think that you can get by with last minute planning or just making lessons up as they are happening, but the kids read into that so easily. Therefore, you have to take time to plan and to try and make good lessons, even if they are a failure.

Pete also talked about losing a student and how much that incident impacted him, both as a teacher and in his life. This, as morbid as it is, is one of my biggest fears. Almost once a week I think about what would happen if I lost a student. The students and I are becoming more comfortable in one another and they are beginning to confide in me more and more. I do want this, because I had high school teachers there for me to confide in and I want my students to feel free to talk to me without pushing them into opening up. As silly of a concern as it may sound, I am really afraid that I am going to get close with a student and they are going to end up in a drug deal mishap in Memphis on a weekend and become a casualty. I have too many kids that do and sell drugs for something like that not to happen.

I am glad that Pete shared that moment with his class, and thanks to Ben, with the world on youtube. Like Pete mentioned, sometimes I feel like I'd rather be punched in the gut five times than to go to school but I hope that after Thanksgiving I will be energized and ready to teach again. 

Secretary Arne Duncan's article was enlightening but it made me have even more mixed feelings about teaching, I am enthused and worried, proud and ashamed, love and hate my job. Sometimes, as Duncan stated, I do feel like an unsung hero but often I feel like I am not fulfilling expectations, mostly my own.

Duncan writes, “Teaching has never been more difficult, it has never been more important, and the desperate need for more student success has never been so urgent.” When I first began I would have been motivated by this sentence. I would have felt that I could be the one that would teach kids, they would understand everything, and my life would be great. I quickly realized that this was an idealistic way of thinking and it ended up bursting my bubble a bit. I don't really know why I assumed that my students would share my love for reading and they would enjoy every minute of my class. This was apparently a silly assumption because the majority of my students either can't read or those that can hate reading. I think that I am slowly becoming a better motivator in my classroom and the students are SLOWLY starting to change their tune about English. Although, I did have a student ask me, “Ms. Breaux, why do we have to read in here, it has nothing to do with English.”

This comment was discouraging, and I know that I am a first year teacher, but my students should understand why reading is important to English class. Comments like this make me worry that I am not a very good teacher. And again, this makes me have mixed emotions about teaching, especially after reading this article. The Senator points out that “Teaching is one of the few professions that is not just a job or even an adventure—it's a calling. Great teachers strive to help every student unlock their potential and develop the habits of mind that will serve them for a lifetime. They believe that every student has a gift—even when students doubt themselves.” Am I a great teacher? I can easily answer “no” because I am discouraged too easily by the stupidity of students. Is teaching my calling? Everyday I am beginning to believe that it most certainly is not. Do I think that every student has a gift? I can finally answer “yes” to this question. I believe that every person whether it be a bum on a street or a cardiovascular thoracic surgeon has some type of gift. Most of the kids do not have the gift of reading well, but I can see that each and every one of my students are talented in some area or another. I need to be able to harvest these talents and use them to my advantage.

I think that only the great teachers are really able to harvest every students talents and I hope with all of the new teacher positions coming available in the next few years that there will be new teachers who are able to understand and touch every student. Maybe I am not confident because I am still in the first few months of teaching and I have not seen the results that I wanted to see, and I hope over time I am able to become a better teacher with fewer worries. 

I agree on the whole with most everything Duncan has to say. I remember saying a lot of those things several years ago during my Rotary interview. Teaching has been too long like working in a fast food joint. It was a low-paying job that was easy to get, one that too often turned the preparation of wholesome sustenance into a slipshod assembly-line process...and more times than not ended up with too many of the people one would least want handling something important doing exactly that.

First of all, let me say that I just laughed by butt off… I’m glad I watched that (not so thrilled to blog about it when I could be sleeping…ha… no big deal—I spent all of college learning to procrastinate in time to do so with my blogs.  My fault for waiting till now.)  Anyway, Pete Nelson, you’re hilarious!

I know where Pete is coming from—I thought I’d accomplished a few things in college…then I met the rest of the MTC class.  “I got nothin’.” My MTC class is incredible—as are all the classes that have come before us, for what I can tell…

What really hit home with me was the idea that teaching has to be about more than just immediate results.  I am such a results-driven person…I like to see the fruit of my labors as soon as I’m done.  I mean, I love research papers.  Go ahead, laugh.  You search, you find, you write, you have something to show for it; and , if you work hard, have something to be proud of.  “Hard work equals success,” to quote Pete.

…But not so much with teaching.  You can never tell when what you do will “blow up in your face.”  I have worked my fingers to the bone for days that I have wanted to run away from screaming.  And then, I’ve come in and felt like that day was a wash before it began—I wasn’t ready, I was tired, etc—only to see kids working, learning and progressing.  I can honestly say this has to be the least boring job on earth.  There are no two days alike and no day goes by without a notable event—someone, someone will surprise you. 

Nevertheless, some days diarrhea does sound better than teaching…except that I don’t have any sick days left… sucks.  I have never been sick in my life until I started teaching…what gives??? (Well, I’ve rarely been stressed either and they are all stress-related diseases… ha. I’m dealing… and I have decided to learn to like the pressure.  Its going to be a long—but good (because I have decided!)—year.

Kids can be so incredibly cruel.  Yet for TK’s story, cruel hardly covers it.   I have not encountered anything like what he went through with my students.  But wow… TK takes this in stride!

I have a new motto: “Put on your skinny jeans.” I am amazed at this then thirteen year old boy who stood in his room and made a conscious decision to do something that would set him apart—that would state that he will be who he is, no matter what.  I think of my students—most are 13 to 15 years old—and wonder who of the ninety or so I teach would have the guts to do that.  Maybe the oblivious ones?  …I’m not even sure I have any students THAT unconscious. They are amazingly aware of what everyone is thinking or saying about them at any given time, and the ones that act un-phased are the most uncomfortable; I have learned how to spot a front from the threshold of my classroom door.  I simply don’t remember be that uncertain in my whole life; yet, I imagine that a good 60% of these kids don’t even know that they have slipped into the quicksand of peer pressure. 

I listen a lot when they are doing their group work and I am making my rounds from group to group…I am always blown away by the conversations.  Today group three (all girls for lack of the one boy who was absent) was talking incessantly about this young boy who works in the produce section at Wal-Mart.  It was interesting to gage who was comfortable with the conversation and who was working to slip in a comment in order to feel included.   They are all really boy crazy, but one girl in particular, and, this girl is super bright.  I have had a conversation with her before about her tendency to be very vocal about EVERYTHING, hoping that she will take her over self-exertion down a notch… we’ll see how that goes.

On a different note, (or maybe more back to the point) my students are straight-up mean and RUDE to one anther!   They tell each other that they are ugly, that their house is a shack, that their shoes are “wack,” or that their hair is nappy… and these are the students that are FRIENDS!! What gives?  …Perhaps I will work “tact” into the vocabulary list for next week…

Terrance Buckner is a teenager from Brooklyn and a graduate of the mothshop which seems to be some sort of creativity workshop where people get together and tell stories and read poems and the like. Anyway Terrance decided to share with an audience at the moth shop his experience of persecution when he first admitted he was gay to his family and classmates. Terrance tells a story where he admits to his mother that he is gay(because he feels she needs to know) and his brother finds out. His brother pronounces this the next day at school and people start questioning Terrance on his sexuality, to which Terrance admits he is homosexual. He then faces ridicule from friends and classmates and gets jumped after school. The next day Terrance decides to stand up to the bullies symbolically by wearing his "skinny" pants, sending the message that the bullying was not going to defeat him. In the end, Terrance feels he has won because he didn't let the bullying change who he was.
The story as a whole was a pretty stereotypical gay bullying story and its too bad that it happened. Unfortunately apart of being homosexual is being different(in terms of sexuality) from most of the population and kids pick on other kids who they deem as "different" or "wierd". Even though homosexuality is far more accepted now than it was in the past, the very nature that homosexuals make up a relatively small percentage of the population means that gay kids will always receive some ridicule or persecution from the peers, although this decreases with age.
As far as the story's relationship to teaching and education I suppose the moral of the story is to know who to trust, don't gossip, don't ruffle feathers, and always be yourself. Don't ever let others' negativity prevent you from being who you are and becoming the best person you can be.

The Rita Bender discussion was very interesting. First of all, I am absolubtely fascinated with American history. My grandfather was a civil war buff and collected old civil war antiques and would show me them from time to time. He also kept extensive historical data on my ancestors. He actually wrote a book documenting family trees and biographies on every ancestor of mine dating back seven generations. So needless to say, I was immediately hooked when given the opportunity to view actual excerpts from historically used textbooks. Its' so much better to recieve information from a primary source, and you really got to learn a lot about Mississippi culture at the time by viewing those documents. It's one thing to hear about past racial attitudes, but its quite another to actually be able to hold and view original documents of the time. Its' easy to see how so many people of the time grew up with racial bias as it was being blatanly taught in schools and without black and white school integration it was easy for the ideas expressed in the book to be accepted without question. Also the damage that the text may have had to the psyche of black schoolchildren is forseeable.
The questions in the essay contest also highlight significant racial bias and it was eye opening that that was being ingrained in Mississippi youth in the 1950's. Overall, the documents taught me more about Mississippi's racial history than anything I have heard since arriving. Again this goes back to being given actual education documents that were ditributed in the past to Mississippians.
The discussion itself was less educational than the historical documents and turned into more of a heated regional battle among MTC'ers with native northerners making broad unfair generalizations about the south and native southerners making unfair broad generalizations about New England.
The day concluded with an argument about whether a teacher who was teaching in a predominantly black school who had a stuffed monkey in her room was an ignorant racist(or something to that extent). Honestly I think we should be past the point where anyone associates black people with monkeys and I think the idea that someone would make that association was completely lost on the teacher. I don't think it was a big deal either way, but if it bothered one of the parents then it should be removed so the class can move on.

I, as per usual, went home this weekend.

No, it doesn’t have to. No matter how constrained a teacher is, I’ve determined that school does not have to be a creativity killer. To apply some ancient, wise words (2 Corinthians 4:8-9): “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; … struck down, but not destroyed.” In other words, NCLB and the obsessive, accountability-driven administrative directives it begets cannot single-handedly kill creativity in the classroom. Sure, state tests “stigmatize failure,” as Ken Robinson states. Teachers, though, do not have to stigmatize failure.

Take a measure as simple as rewarding students for non-academic feats, for instance. Awarding Student of the Month to the most spirit-lifting comedian in the classroom validates him as much as a good grade. Teacher-initiated rewards address and negate Robinson’s contention that school only the intellectual successes at school are the winners. He contends that “the whole purpose of public education …is to produce university professors. … We shouldn’t hold them up as the highest form of achievement…they live in their heads.” Nay! The purpose of school is to make something productive out of young peoples minds and hours. Sure, there are ugly class wars circling around how those minds and hours are spent. But ideally, school is for producing more productive (emotionally, spiritually, vocationally --- not merely intellectually) members of society. School is where students have training wheels for how to function as adults. It’s a mini-society. I think Robinson would be a huge fan to Rousseau’s anti-social, child-centered vision of education. Unfortunately, as pastoral and sweet as this vision is, it falls short of what humans were created for: to serve and better each other.

No, schools do not “squander” the innate creativity in children wholesale, as Robinson overconfidently asserts. Schools are the environment in which time is set aside for creativity to be required. Without the structure of school, creativity wilts. Robinson is right to point out the paradoxical nature of creativity, such as that we do not mature into creativity, but rather we outgrow it, but he misses this important paradox about it: creativity needs structure just like fire needs oxygen. Without the push and the constraint to fuel creativity, or the probing questions of the teacher, or the small encouraging remarks along the way to the final creative product, a child’s creativity will be stifled. Also, in a school functioning properly, in which reading aloud and extolling reading should be a daily activity, the imagination will find no lack.

As to Robinson’s allusion to Picasso’s quote that we grow out of creativity, neither do I fully agree with this. Older children (teens) can use colors, tweak words, arrange sounds, plan projects and papers and speak more eloquently and purposefully than their younger counterparts. Who has the authority to say that creativity with more direction and eruditeness is somehow weaker than the innocent creativity that streams from a little mind? Classifying creativity in an hierarchy (eerily akin to what NCLB test standards do—classify schools and student achievement) and judging creativity as “the production of something both original and useful” (paraphrase) is rather utilitarian itself. Robinson defines creativity to uptightly, I’m afraid.