Learning Teaching - Teaching Learning

I found this poem and it struck me quite interestingly; I have not really thought of issues like race and gender appearing in writing prompts for an essay, and yet Langston Hughes can see it so clearly at 22.

THEME FOR ENGLISH B

By Langston Hughes

Go home and write 
a page tonight. 
And let that page come out of you—- 
Then, it will be true.

It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me 
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what 
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you: 
hear you, hear me—-we two—-you, me, talk on this page. 
(I hear New York too.) Me—-who? 
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. 
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life. 
I like a pipe for a Christmas present, 
or records—-Bessie, bop, or Bach. 
I guess being colored doesn’t make me NOT like 
the same things other folks like who are other races. 
So will my page be colored that I write? 
Being me, it will not be white. 
But it will be 
a part of you, instructor. 
You are white—- 
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you. 
That’s American. 
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me. 
Nor do I often want to be a part of you. 
But we are, that’s true! 
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—- 
although you’re older—-and white—- 
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

1951

As I reflect on the type of teacher I want to be, especially after my Maymester experience, I cannot help but think how true Parker Palmer’s words are in “The Heart of a Teacher”.

“My evidence for this claim comes, in part, from years of asking students to tell me about their good teachers. As I listen to those stories, it becomes impossible to claim that all good teachers use similar techniques: some lecture non-stop and others speak very little, some stay close to their material and others loose the imagination, some teach with the carrot and others with the stick.

But in every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work. “Dr. A is really there when she teaches,” a student tells me, or “Mr. B has such enthusiasm for his subject,” or “You can tell that this is really Prof. C’s life.”

One student I heard about said she could not describe her good teachers because they were so different from each other. But she could describe her bad teachers because they were all the same: “Their words float somewhere in front of their faces, like the balloon speech in cartoons.” With one remarkable image she said it all. Bad teachers distance themselves from the subject they are teaching—and, in the process, from their students.”

http://www.couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/heart-of-a-teacher

Good teaching means that you have to become a part of what you are teaching. You have to find the joy that there is within it. You have to be able to put yourself in your teaching, or else you’ll lose out on key teachable moments. Sometimes you have to do the unexpected, others you have to appeal to the students. But, no matter what you do, you have to put you in it. I am not a Biology teacher and never claimed to be, so when my students asked me why an English teacher would attempt to teach Biology, I told them I wanted a challenge and that I wanted to see what it would was like to teach a different subject. I made it clear that every assignment I gave them, I did myself. Just as they were learning the material, so was I. After telling my students this fact, some were more opposed to learning from me while others appreciated my honesty. The biggest ice breaker was when I told them that I did all of the activities and worksheets that I gave them. If it was confusing, I tried to put myself in their shoes and we would come up with a way that they could complete the assignment that allowed them to express their knowledge in a way that they felt comfortable (i.e. turning a writing assignment into a drawing or discussion). While I realize this might be difficult to do in every class, the attempt is what matters. If you show your students that you are flexible for their learning, and truly invested in them (not just their learning), you are able to better reach even the most discouraged of learners.

Now that Maymester is over, and I have time to reflect on it all, I can’t help but think of the conversations that I had about the types of students I was working with. I was told that I was naive in thinking that I could make an impact on my students. And the view of those students is that they don’t want to be there. No kid really wants to be in school, and these kids are the kind that if they really didn’t want to be there, they wouldn’t show up.

I hated getting the feeling that people view these kids as “lost causes”. The worst thing that you can do is give up, because when they see that you give up on them, that’s when they give up on themselves. I saw a change in these students in three weeks that I would never have thought possible. The student who was the most combative with me actually started responding and doing their work. And the ones who naturally excelled started asking more questions, which got their class mates to ask questions.

I would like to think that I helped to bring about this change, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter who or what brought about the change. What matters is that it happened at all. I had students from all four high school grade levels in my class, and they say that the average reading level was about a 4th grade reading level. They hated doing the reading, so I went over the main concepts in class and worked on vocabulary - they not only had to put the definition in their own words, but they would have to give multiple examples of each term. They didn’t like it, but when it came to them understanding the concepts, they were able to make better sense of it once they knew the key terms.

It seemed like an up hill battle most days, but it was worth it. I learned so much about a community of learners, the benefit of getting involved in the community, and the effect of really getting to know my students. I’ve learned that you need to be flexible, but you also have to stick to your guns. One of the biggest things that this population of students lack is consistency, and as long as I remained consistent with them, they were more likely to respond to me.

After learning so much from Maymester, I can’t wait to see what I gain from my next field placement, and, ultimately, student teaching. 

As I’m preparing for teaching MayMester, a portion of the education program that has prospective teachers teach a course that may or may not be within their major, while incorporating a theme (this year’s theme is sustainability), I am getting more and more excited about teaching Population. You would think that being an English major, I would be frightened to tackle a Biology class, but I’m starting to see the need for teaching English through other disciplines; it takes a different set of skills to read a textbook than it does a piece of literature.

I hear that these students are already “checked out”, but I see a hint of a desire to learn within them, hopefully I can create some sort of a spark so that the last weeks of May are fruitful, though I’ve no doubt that this is going to be one of the best learning experiences that I will have had thus far.

However, even though I’m preparing for MayMester, all I can think about is the book on Alternative Education that I ordered a few days ago… I hope it gets here soon! :)

Looks like I’m not the only one writing serious pieces about educational reform and school structure! Check out this article. Though I personally don’t believe in only using online learning tools, I believe that it is imperative to incorporate the internet and online based learning opportunities in the classroom. If we eliminate the classroom all together, those students who thrive on the relationships they form in the classroom will fall to the way side.

Perhaps we need to stop thinking about the students who were left behind and focus on how to provide a quality education that appeals to multiple learning styles and levels so that we don’t keep leaving children behind.