This Teacher's Prayer

A colleague shared this article with me yesterday. It's a longer article but well worth the time. Although my situation is different from most of the teachers in the story, many of my colleagues do feel this way. Maybe I'm just too new to teaching. Teachers do need respect. They need to be paid and treated as the professionals they are. They need all the tools and funding required to do the job. They need more paras and for districts to stop cutting positions for librarians, social workers, and other vital staff who enable them to better focus on the job of teaching and who help students arrive in class more ready to learn.

The main reason I'm sharing this article, though, is because I just want to be more like Edward Lawson. I know there are other teachers like him, and we need many more. It's unfair to ask more of teachers, but most teachers would and do expend whatever effort and resources they can to help their kids. Praying for my kids every day doesn't cost a dime and helps me to remain peaceful and make wise decisions in dealing with them. Loving unconditionally sometimes requires a little more work with certain students, but the reward far exceeds any frustration and effort, and it's also free. Putting my whole heart into what I do and looking for the needs my students have that fall outside of what I was hired to teach them means that my heart is on the line: bare and exposed to whatever my kids are suffering but also open to all the love, joy, pride, and laughter they bring me.

 Teachers need respect. They need to be paid enough to support their families, especially if we want to have quality teachers. (We could never afford to pay what they are truly worth, and that's likely far more than most people expect.) Teachers need support AND funding for the schools where they teach--for the STUDENTS they teach. Perhaps most of all, they need your prayers. Their students and their students' families need your prayers. But don't stop there.

Find ways to be actively involved in your communities, to support teachers, students, and families. We're all in this together. If we want our communities and nation to be better, taking care of our children is essential to that success. Schools are not only where children are taught to read and write and do arithmetic; they are where so many children's mental, physical, social, and emotional problems are identified and addressed.

Hopes and Fears

Scanning the radio dial on the drive home from work today, I paused on NPR’s All Things Considered just in time to hear one of the young men I got to know years ago when I was an adult volunteer in a youth organization. He had graduated high school, served in the Marine Corps, fought and was wounded in Afghanistan, and then went to college and did a stint in AmeriCorps. He now teaches at the school where I did my student teaching last year, and it was nice to run into him in the halls or talk with him during teacher inservice days. Although the view he expressed on arming teachers to defend students is different from (though not counter to) my own, I was proud of him for what he said. We would each fight for and protect our students in our own way—out of duty but mostly out of love.

A few weeks ago, one of my students asked, “How many kids did you say you have, Mrs. Bader?” I answered, “104: I count all of you as my kids, too.” They probably don’t realize how true that is. I brag about them, laugh with my husband over the funny things they say, and pray for them each day. And I worry about them even though I am not typically a worrier.

I worry because I know the things that many of them are going through and because I know there are many more things I don’t know about. I may worry more about them than my own kids because I know their lives less, have less say, less time with them. I worry about the choices they will make for their lives after they leave my classroom and our school: for the day, for the year, for good.

Some of the choices my students will make society condemns and recognizes as dangerous. Some of those choices, on the other hand, are encouraged, condoned, commended; yet these choices will lead them in the path of danger, too. I do not know what the best path is for each of my students any more than I knew what was best for my own children, nor are these my choices to make, so I do what I can.

I ask my students hard questions. I try to get them to ask their own questions, defend their answers, and think deeply about the choices they are making now and will make in the future. I pray that God will guide them and protect them. Even so, as with my own children before them, some of the things these kids—my kids—want scare the hell out of me.

So, it’s comforting to hear that familiar voice on the radio breaking through my thoughts, hopes, and fears--to see one of the kids I worked with, as I have seen my own: grown, happy, brought safely home again from dangerous and scary choices, doing good and making a difference in the world.

For Caleb and Joshua and for Joseph, Joe, and we'll just call him Joe, too

A Sonnet for St. Valentine's

As part of our poetry unit, all my classes read and compared Shakespeare's sonnets 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day") and 130 this week before writing their own sonnets. Sonnet 130 is my favorite, and I love how well students connect with Sonnet 130 once we begin talking about it.
        
        Sonnet 130
        My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; 
        Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
        If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
        If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
        I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
        But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
        And in some perfumes is there more delight
        Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
        I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
        That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
        I grant I never saw a goddess go;
        My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
        And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
        As any she belied with false compare.

At first they couldn't believe how the speaker trashes his mistress. (I had to explain that "mistress does not necessarily mean "side chick." Yes, I phrased it like that, which made them all laugh.) We talked about how she is described in each line and about beauty standards both in Elizabethan England and now. When we got to the ninth line, I underlined "I love to hear her speak," which seems to be the closest the speaker has come to a compliment by that point, although he then says music is more pleasing. Then we talked about how the speaker admits his love is no goddess; she does not fit any ideal standard of beauty and is not high above others but rather treads on the ground. In other words, this woman is fully human as the list of "flaws" has already shown. Finally, we looked at the couplet, which I had explained provides a conclusion or a surprising twist in the sonnet form, and it was like lightbulbs going on all over the room every time.

After looking more closely at Sonnet 130, I asked them, "Which sonnet would you rather have written for you?" Most of them said 130, but some clung to the more pleasant description of 18 until I pointed out the last two words of 130: "false compare." "Who can actually achieve that level of perfection? Who wants to live constantly trying to meet that standard?" I asked. That quickly put everyone on the 130 side, and then I took them back to "I love to hear her speak yet well I know/That music hath a far more pleasing sound."

It's noteworthy that the one compliment the speaker pays his mistress prior to the couplet is that he loves to hear her speak. Rather than praising her physical beauty and comparing it to some arbitrary and unattainable standard, he says he loves to hear her speak, even if he knows her voice does not have the same pleasing quality as music. "How many of you," I asked, "want the people you care about to be interested in what you have to say?" They all nodded in unison, their eyes on me, cell phones and Chromebooks forgotten (miracle of miracles!), if only for a brief moment. "How many of you want to be loved and remembered for what you say and think and for who you are on the inside instead of how you look on the outside?

If I could have captured the looks on their faces then to show it to you now, no one would ever ask again why we should study literature or whether Shakespeare is still relevant today. (At least no adult would.) It was the look of not only profound revelation and full understanding of a text but also the realization that the text understands them. If you don't know how it is possible that a book or poem--an inanimate object, whether brought into being yesterday or centuries ago--can understand a living, breathing human, let alone a classroom of teenagers, I pity you because it can only mean that you have not experienced this phenomenon for yourself. It is a moment of true connection between one human heart or mind and another and also between all humankind. To know that another person and, in fact, may people, have had and do have the same thoughts and feelings as you (especially as a teenager) makes the world a much less lonely place. It makes our burdens more bearable and the world at once smaller and ever-expanding.

P.S. Dear students, I do love to hear you speak, even if I frequently have to tell you to shut up so we can get to what we are supposed to be learning and speaking about. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas about what we are studying in class and for the times you trust me enough to talk about what is going on in your lives or what is important to you beyond school. I love the people you are on the inside and all the ways you are showing it more and more each day on the outside. You are just the sort of lovely that belies all false compare.

Reflections on a Gift of Community

Tonight I attended my last English Methods II class--the last class for my undergraduate degree. For two years now I have had the privilege of learning and growing alongside the lovely people in this photo. 

That's our fearless leader at front and center. From that first feather circle in Literature for Young Adults, Dr. Cramer has worked to make this group more than a class or cohort by instead encouraging community. She did this by modeling the strategies our textbooks tell us to use in build community in our own classrooms, proving these methods work, convincing us of the benefits, and forming a bond that will last long after graduation. This little community in turn will expand to encompass the larger community of educators we are joining and in turn link the communities in which we will serve. 

Community, service, love: these are the reasons I decided to become a teacher. I thought I thoroughly understood these things four years ago. I thought I was ready to teach the rest of the world, too. The people in this photo opened my eyes to the fact that I had (and still have) so much more to learn. Then--slowly, gently, patiently--they began to teach me. Other than Dr. Cramer, I don't know that any of them knew they were teaching me, but they were, they do still, and I hope they always will. 

Tomorrow is my last official day of student teaching at my placement school, although I may just finish out the week there. I am grateful for all that my mentor teacher has taught me and for how she and her colleagues have welcomed me into their school. I will miss their stories and their wisdom even though my next school community will have its own share of these things. 

Most of all, I will miss the students because I know it is less likely that I will see them again, and they, too, have taught me. I will miss the students that all teachers miss because they are pleasant and hard working and kind. I will miss E, who reminds me of myself as a sophomore, and I will miss V who is an absolute spitfire and awesome in every way I never will be. I will miss K who is just beginning to emerge and P who by turns shocked then worried, then amazed me with startling depth and newfound confidence. I will miss the lazy charmer who always made me laugh even while frustrating me. I will miss J who has worked so hard to overcome such tremendous obstacles and who always greets me with a fist bump and talks to me about reggae. I will miss the immigrant and ELL students who prove every day that the stereotypes are wrong and that this country is strengthened by diversity. I will miss the fiery debates between Y and E and their contributions to my vocabulary and especially the memory of "Where I'm From" and "I am from la chancla."

Some of these students will haunt me, and I will probably always search for their faces in supermarkets and on crowded streets. I will see J's soft brown eyes looking up at me sleepily, brimming with intelligence and potential and an overwhelming ennui. I will recognize the defiant posture of that girl who always arrived late and left early and wonder if, given time, I could have softened her further, peeled back those layers, dug in to find the wound and help her repair it. There are so many more that will haunt me. They will not be the reason I burn out but the reason I strive to do better, hoping somehow to reach others like them. I probably will never know how any of my students from this year choose to write their life stories, but I hope I that I have impressed upon at least some of them that it is indeed their choice. 

I close out my year of student teaching with a full heart, reluctantly saying goodbye to some and grateful to know that others will continue to be part of my life and my community. You all have enriched my life and taught me so much, and I am eternally grateful.

The Waiting

Tonight as I sit my desk trying for the umpteenth time trying to decide what to write about for my last blog post as a student teacher, too many thoughts and feelings crowd together. They flood my eyes, spilling out, and splashing down onto my keyboard. They are so tangled that I can't begin to separate them into something that makes sense. The only clarity comes from a record playing on repeat in the recesses of my brain: Tom Petty singing "The Waiting." 

Music marks my life more than minutes, and Tom Petty's voice is one that often sings to me in my dark and difficult hours. Hearing that familiar tune reminded me of how Tom Petty has been there for me before. I recalled writing about "The Waiting" before on my (no longer public) old blog, so I dug up that post and reread it. And it helped some, so I am reposting it here as a reminder to me and anyone else it may comfort. (I'm sure I will write a blog post that actually counts by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday!)

This is how life is. "The Waiting" always comes back around. Don't lose heart, don't give up, and don't forget there are still things to be done and life to live even while you are waiting.

(Post from 8/9/10)
Lately I've been a little low. Overwhelmed with thoughts trying to work their way out of my brain and onto paper (or monitor as is more common these days). Depressed about things I can't write about here and things I could write about that are crowded out by those other things.

I know what I need to do. I keep hearing it in the words of one of the coaches at the local high school. "Git yer mahnd raght!" Dang, I wish I had a video of Coach Ast saying that--or just Caleb doing his Coach Ast impression. But anyway. It's getting there. There's been vast improvement over the weekend. Maybe I'll write about that, but, honestly, it doesn't sound too promising. Or interesting.

One of the things that often helps me is music--so long as it's the right music. The wrong music can just pull me down deeper. It doesn't necessarily have to be upbeat or have lyrics that are entirely positive. If the lyrics hint at some of the same things I'm feeling, sometimes that's enough.
The Waiting

On Saturday I was cleaning the house while listening to the radio when this song came on. Although the verses are in the context of a romantic relationship, it was the chorus that hit home for me. Waiting seems to be my life these days. And I have to agree, it is the hardest part.

It was interesting also to see this clip about how Tom Petty came to write The Waiting. Sometimes even rock stars get stuck and spend some time waiting before that little bit of a tune stuck in their heads becomes a hit.

So, it was The Waiting that got me hooked on a Tom Petty theme for this Musical Monday, and I found that there were a handful of his other songs that fit pretty well for me right now.
Runnin' Down a Dream

The Waiting is always easier when you know what dream you're running down. The real challenge is when your working on a mystery, the vague outline of a dream you can't quite pin down. That's when you have to remember there ain't no easy way out, stand your ground, and say, "I Won't Back Down."

Once you've learned to stand your ground, it's time to move on to other skills, like
Learning to Fly

I've heard it said that landing is the hardest part of flying a plane. (Heh, not just coming down. Gravity will take care of that, but landing safely is another matter.) I don't know if that's true from the pilot's perspective, but being able to land safely, whether at the planned time and place or setting down in an emergency, is this passenger's biggest concern. Have I mentioned before that I prefer ground travel? Preferably with me at the wheel? I don't like that feeling of not being in control. It's also hard to maintain that sense of control if you don't know where you're heading.
Well some say life will beat you down
Break your heart, steal your crown
So I've started out, for God knows where
I guess I'll know when I get there.

A little shift in perspective can help with that.
Stories We Could Tell

So if you're on the road tracking down here every night
And you're singin' for a livin' 'neath the brightly colored lights
And if you ever wonder why you ride this carousel
You did it for the stories you could tell
And oh the stories we could tell

I bet you have some stories to tell, too. I know I do. Here's to running down your dreams, standing your ground, learning to fly, and all those stories you could and will tell. I hope it makes the waiting easier.

Questions for Practice: Reading, Writing, and Student Choice

Today I interviewed for the second time with one of my preferred schools. While the interview went well, I walked away once again with more questions than answers. In spite all the things I know for certain about education, young adults, and my own teaching philosophy, I realize that I have yet to work out exactly how these things will play out as I am confronted daily with a classroom of real teenagers. My student teaching has helped prepare me for this to an extent, but very soon it will be my sole responsibility to prepare daily lessons within cohesive units under an overarching theme, all of which meet the standards and guide students in their journey to becoming thoughtful and capable adults able to read, analyze, evaluate, and communicate effectively. I know that I will continue learning and growing as I engage in reflective teaching practice in my own classroom, but now is the time for me to start thinking about more of the specific goals and finer details for my first year of teaching. Below are two of the questions brought up at my interview today.

·      For a number of years, our ELA instruction has focused more on literature and less on writing. What percentage of class time or lessons do you plan to dedicate to each of these areas?          

This was difficult for me, as I do not tend to think in numbers. It also turned out to be a bit of a trick question. I thought this meant that the school prefers a focus on literature with less writing, but, while I allowed that reading and analyzing literature is important, it is at least equally important to have a strong writing component in an ELA classroom. I pointed to the fact that students need to learn to read, understand, and analyze for life beyond school but that they would also need to have writing and communication skills even if they are not college bound. 

Reading adds knowledge and gives us new perspectives, but writing helps us to work out the ideas we have read or heard or thought and formulate those things in a way that others can understand. At both the high school and college level, I have seen that students frequently do not know how to formulate coherent thoughts and put them on paper. Whether their writing mechanics are good or bad, their content and their ability to fully develop and support their ideas is too often lacking. Many times I am not sure exactly what I think until I begin to write about it. That process of writing helps me to sort out my thoughts and make sense of them, and it can do the same for my students if they are shown and have plenty of guided practice.

Reading and writing go together naturally. Students write in response to what they read, building on what they have read, or model their own writing on techniques they see professional writers use. I am still uncomfortable with the idea of nailing down an exact percentage for each (and I don’t think that is what my interviewers wanted), but I feel committed to a balance and interplay between the two that flexes to accommodate my students specific needs.

·      How do you determine what literature selections you will teach? How will you make sure that students engage with the texts you teach?

I admitted that this is a question I have been considering a great deal lately and that I am not entirely sure of the answer yet. In my student teaching I have seen that many students do not read the book selection, even if it is a newer young adult novel chosen specifically to appeal to them. If they aren’t actually reading it, why go through the motions of doing dialectical journals, class discussions, activities, and essays based on these novels? These things are meaningless unless students are actually reading the book. Without students reading, all of these things are a waste of their time and mine, and continuing to go through the motions ensures increased student failure and apathy toward the class. More and more I am reading and hearing about teachers who advocate allowing students to choose their own novels and keeping whole class reading to shorter texts. It sounds good in theory, but I have yet to see it in practice. I’m willing to give it a try, though. I’m sure a lot will depend on the school where I work, what they require, and how open they are to new ideas.

As I finish up my student teaching and move closer to graduation, I am excited to consider all of the possibilities ahead. I pray that I will find the right school where I can be of the most help to students and where I will be able to continually learn and grow into the best educator I can be for those students.

The Key to School Success: Community Involvement

While it is true that teaching has been a dream of mine since I was a child, I did not originally enroll in college as an education major. After working for three years as a special education para at an elementary school, I didn't want any part of the bureaucratic red tape I had seen my teacher friends fight their way through day after day. My passion for helping people had grown stronger, but I was convinced there must be some other way to achieve that goal. I had ample opportunity as a para to see the baggage that so many children come to school carrying, and it made me angry that some of this was due to abuse or neglect on the part of parents. Yet, I also saw that most parents do love their children and want to see them succeed in school but that many do not have the resources or have needs and problems of their own that get in the way of helping their children.

With the desire to help both parents and children, I explored social work as an option before settling on psychology as my major. During my year in the psychology program, I took Community Psychology, which, along with some encouragement from my English 101 instructor, eventually led me back to teaching. Through that Community Psychology class, I realized a few things.

1. As a returning adult student, I would be much closer to retirement age by the time I actually got to work in my field if I pursued a career in psychology over one in teaching.
2. It is possible to teach while also helping families to be more successful AND helping the community overall. Cue inspirational music/nostalgia break:

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Schlemiel, Schlemazel, Hasenpfeffer, Incorporated!

That's right, I'm gonna make my dreams come true--doin' it my way.
(Yes, I am old a returning adult student and I watched way too much TV as a child.)

So, imagine my delight upon completing my first reading assignment for my English Methods 2 class titled "Involving Parents and the Community," a chapter from Myths and Realities: Best Practices for English Language Learners by Samway and McKeon. Although the book appears to primarily deal with English language learners, this chapter brings to the forefront questions I had as a parent of children in public school, ideas that emerged from my observations as a para in a rural district with few minorities or ELL students, and issues faced regularly in my student teaching placements in an extremely diverse urban district. I believe the principles and strategies in this brief chapter can be successfully applied anywhere and the potential is tremendous. Uge, I say! Absolutely uge! Make our schools great again!

Too soon? Ah, well, something it is certainly not too soon for is parent and community involvement. In fact, this is a particularly timely topic with an incoming Secretary of Education who touts parent choice in education as reason to institute a voucher system that would take money away from public schools without ensuring increased quality for schools or greater academic gains for students. While it is not my aim to discuss Betsy DeVos' qualifications, further examine her proposed methods, or support in any way the ideas she has put forth, I would like to point to one fault I see in the majority of our public schools that may be helping forward the rhetoric of those who agree with DeVos.

The simple fact is that many schools have failed to use one of the best resources available to them: the very communities from which they draw their student populations and within whose boundaries they reside. While scrambling for government funding, we have forgotten that the best facilities, textbooks, and technology mean nothing unless our students make the best use of whatever resources and opportunities they have access to. In order to get students to the point where they are actively availing themselves of all that schools offer them, families and communities as a whole need to help reinforce the value and necessity of education. Yet schools often push away parents and other community members who should be their best allies rather than welcoming them and encouraging their involvement.

Perhaps educators' defensive stance and habit of presenting themselves as the sole experts and givers of knowledge¹ is an understandable reaction to a public constantly questioning teachers' qualifications and effectiveness and too ready to cast the blame for society's ills upon schools.

Perhaps. But the cycle of blame and resentment must end somewhere if we are to work together toward that common goal that parents, educators, and all community members share: raising children to be happy, healthy, and successful individuals, engaged in the community.

As leaders within the community, educators must take the first steps to build bridges between home life and school life and open up the pathways for community involvement within the schools. "Involving Parents and the Community" cites four levels of cooperation first identified by Menacker, Hurwitz, and Weldon (1988) for school personnel to develop: parents as clients, parents as producers, parents as consumers, and parents as governors². The first level, parents as clients, may be the most familiar to our thinking about schools, although it challenges the typical view of the student as the client with parents largely out of the equation. The next three levels, however, are where we can really expand community involvement and begin to tap the wealth of resources available within our communities.

With parents as producers, educators retain their role with a wider pool of resources as parents and other community members take on responsibilities that help the school function. The chapter lists some jobs that parents frequently volunteer for such as helping in the classroom or on the playground, but help with these tasks becomes less necessary in high schools. Parental involvement in middle schools and high schools can be tricky, too, as teens work to establish their independence, but roles for parent and community volunteers abound. The possibilities are only limited by imagination and the effort we are willing to put into seeking and establishing these opportunities.

Every community has members with knowledge and skills to share, and it is a human conceit that we tend to value those who take an interest in us. When school personnel show their faith in the ability of community members to add something valuable to the school and community, interest in doing so rises. Likewise, when the community shows it values students by investing time, effort, and resources, students see themselves as valuable and gain interest in contributing in turn to the community. Thus begins a virtuous cycle antipodal to the current cycle commonly seen.

The parents as consumers level brings parents and community members into the school on a regular basis for programs that aid or benefit them. This may involve classes that help community members with English language acquisition or teach parents strategies for helping their children succeed in school; support or focus groups for addressing individual, family, or community problems; or partnerships with health clinics and others interested in expanding service within the community to name only a few possibilities. For a number of years these ideas have been implemented with great success in several urban schools, but the idea has yet to catch on in most places.

At the level of parents as governors, parents and community members share in making decisions that affect their local schools. For most of us, this only happens when voting for school board members or on special issues or if a huge controversy is scheduled to be discussed at a school board meeting. Even at these times, community members do not turn out in large numbers to voice their concerns or influence policy. Viewing parents as governors, however, requires schools to actively seek greater participation from community members in setting and implementing policy--something educators and administrators generally balk at. The effort to keep the larger community out of this decision making process, however, has only helped to fuel the flames that people like Betsy DeVos and Sam Brownback try to throw on public education. The answer is not to tighten the ranks and further distance the public the school system is designed to serve but to welcome that public in and tap the wealth of resources it has to offer, and it begins with establishing the first three levels of parents as clients, parents as producers, and parents as consumers so that parents are then informed and capable to become parents as governors.

There are so many more things I would like to write on this topic and links and articles from that Community Psychology class I need to find. For now, I'll close with another cheesy inspirational moment from 1970s television for my fellow student teachers who can turn the world on with a smile.

(Tosses hat into the air) This is it! Only one more semester to go! You're gonna make it after all!

And one more:

We can do it! Yes we can!