what students remember

This is a piece from Pursuit of a Joyful Life from 26 January 2014 entitled What Students Remember About Teachers.


Dear Young Teacher Down the Hall,

I saw you as you rushed past me in the lunch room. Urgent. In a hurry to catch a bite before the final bell would ring calling all the students back inside. I noticed that your eyes showed tension. They were faint creases in your forehead. And I asked you how your day was going and you sighed.

"Oh fine," you replied.

But I knew it was anything but fine. I noticed that the stress was getting to you. I could tell that the pressure was rising. And I looked at you and made an intentional decision to stop you right then and there. To ask you how things were really going. Was it that I saw in you a glimpse of myself that made me take the moment?

You told me how busy you were, how much there was to do. How little time there was to get it all done. I listened. And then I told you this:

I told you to remember that at the end of the day, it's not about the lesson plan. It's not about the fancy stuff we teachers make -- the crafts we do, the stories we read, the papers we laminate. No, that's not really it. That's not what matters most. And as I looked at you there wearing all that worry under all that strain, I said it's about being there for your kids. Because at the end of the day, most students won't remember what amazing lesson plans you've created. They won't remember how organized your bulletin boards are. How straight and neat are the desk rows. No, they'll not remember that amazing decor you designed.

But they will remember you.

Your kindness. Your empathy. Your care and concern. They'll remember that you took the time to listen. That you stopped to ask them how they were. How they really were. They'll remember the personal stories you tell about your life: your home, your pets, your kids. They'll remember your laugh. They'll remember that you sat and talked with them while they ate their lunch.

Because at the end of the day, what matters is you. What matters to those kids that sit before you in those little chairs, legs pressed up tight under tables oft too small -- what matters to them is you.

You are the difference in their lives.

And when I looked at you then with tears in your eyes, emotions rising to the surface and I told you gently to stop trying so hard -- I also reminded you that your own expectations were partly where the stress stemmed. For we who truly care are often far harder on ourselves than our students are willing to be. Because we who truly care are often our own worst enemy. We mentally beat ourselves up for trivial failures. We tell ourselves we're not enough. We compaer ourselves to others. We work ourselves to the bone in the hopes of achieving the perfect lesson plan. The most dynamic activities. The most engaging lecture. The brightest, fanciest furnishings. Because we want our students tot hink we're the very best at what we do and we believe that this status of excellence is achieved merely by doing. But we forget -- and often. Excellence is more readily attained by being.

Being available
Being kind
Being compassionate
Being transparent
Being real
Being thoughtful
Being ourselves.

And of all the students I know who have lauded teachers with the laurels of the highest acclaim, those students have said of those teachers that they cared.

You see, kids see through to the truth of the matter. And while the flashy stuff can entertain them for a while, it's the steady constance of empathy that keeps them connected to us. It's the relationships we build with them. It's the time we invest. It's all the little ways we stop and show concern. It's the love we share with them; of learning. Of life. And most importantly, of people.

and while we continually strive for excellence in our profession as these days of fiscal restraint and heavy top-down demands keep coming at us -- relentless and quick. We need to stay the course. For ourselves and for our students. Because it's the human touch that really matters.

It's you, their teacher, that really matters.

So go back to your class and really take a look. See past the behaviors, the issues and the concerns, pressing as they might be. Look beyond the stack of papers on your desk, the line of emails in your queue. Look further than the classroom of seasoned teachers down the hall. Look. And you will see that it'st here -- right inside you. The ability to make an impact. The chance of a lifetime to make a difference in a child's life. And you can do this now.

Right where you are, just as you are.

Because all you are right now is all you ever need to be for them today. And who you are tomorrow will depend much on who and what you decide to be today.

It's in you. I know it is.

Fondly,
That Other Teacher Down the Hall

memphis

This past weekend I visited the Memphis Teacher Residency.  My travel companions and I had the great privilege of meeting with the staff and professors of the program, current residents, and graduates of the program. They showed us a lovely time while in their classes, eating delicious food, walking down Beale street, and getting a feel for the city.  Christ is moving there.

over breakfast

writing  //  a historical/biographical criticism of Mary Hays's The Victim of Prejudice, published 1799 as one of the first feminist novels.

watching  //  "Les émotifs anonymes"/"Romantics Anonymous" directed by Jean-Pierre Améris. It's a French movie with English subtitles and bursting with romantic comedy warmth.

reading  //  Robert Kendall's White Teacher in a Black School, a nonfiction telling of the author's experiences during two years of teaching in a public high school in Los Angeles in the 1960s.

thinking  //  about how to explain my desire to teach in an urban school.

waiting for  //  an opportunity to sail.

molbak's with my grandma

We went so I could tutor Grandma on some of the finer points of using her camera. We also went because we could get away long enough to buy my mother's birthday presents. Here's to sneaky grandparent outings, riots of flowers, and being together.

academics and love

I have not spoken enough about Tutorials. Mainly because I have been so in love with them that I don't want to scare away the glow surrounding them by putting the wrong words down...somewhat similar to how explaining a romance for the first time opens it to analyses.

It's in the wonders of walking up the hill from city center, feeling the sweat start on your neck, and realizing that you get to go back to your room, sit on your bed, and dig into a piece of literature that you chose yourself. It's the sudden, exhilarating feeling following your tutor saying "well, what did you find most interesting in the text?" It's the crisp morning cycles down the back roads, under the bridges, and over the Thames towards your tutor's house where you know a cup of tea awaits along with criticism and praise.

The structure breeds respect. We are junior members of the university while our tutors are senior members. We're working towards the same end: a better understanding of the world through our disciplines of choice. My tutors want to hear my thoughts...my writing.

I keep telling myself to soak it in. To carry this perspective with me into the US system. To give this gift to my future students.

Dead On

This could potentially be a brilliant introduction to Shakespeare's English in a high school class. Not to mention that it's brilliant all on its own.

Why am I studying abroad?

Cultures have always drawn me in. From a very young age I have sought out new cultures and endeavored to not simply know about them, but to learn them. While growing up in the greater Seattle area, Native Americans became by far the most impactful people group I have encountered. My desire to become a cross-cultural teacher stems directly from my love and respect for both the people themselves and their rich culture. The education necessary to reach that goal has taken me beyond anything I expected. Currently living three thousand miles from home in an already unfamiliar culture, I am about to travel even further to study in Europe. By once again transplanting myself into the midst of an unfamiliar nation and people, I will have the opportunity to make valuable observations, expanding my learning beyond academia and into the people who will surround me. They will make up my study as I sharpen my perception and embrace new perspectives. Such skills will vastly improve my ability to teach where I long to - in cities and towns where people are vilified and children are forgotten.

teaching inspiration

These following books have, in some way or another, changed my understanding of teaching.

Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts
Sam Wineburg

This book completely revolutionized what teaching history means for me. The best way to express how is to give you this quote:

"What is history good for? Why even teach it in schools? My claim in a nutshell is that history holds the potential, only partly realized, of humanizing us in ways offered by few other areas in the school curriculum...coming to know others, whether they live on the other side of the tracks or the other side of the millennium, requires the education of our sensibilities. This is what history  when taught well, gives us practice in doing" Excerpts from chapter one.

Throughout the first chapter and the rest of the book he explains the importance of teaching your students how to think historically, rather than giving them historical facts. Such knowledge will take them much further because they will no longer be reliant on a teacher but able to explore the past on their own.

The Year of Miss Agnes
Kirkpatrick Hill

This charming little story is about a teacher who heads out into Alaska and teaches in a one room school house. It offers a unique perspective as it is told by the children who attend the struggling school which is unable to hold a teacher for more than a year. Miss Agnes' perseverance and high expectations sets her apart from all of the other teachers who have come before. This book made see see the accessibility of teaching even in difficult places.

Up the Down Staircase
Bel Kaufman

Another wonderful story about a teacher's tough situation, this book is a classic. A first year teacher enters into the bureaucracy of a public school. She finds herself in way over her head. The reader watches the year pass by through snippets of notes between teachers that wind up in the trash, through emails posted from the school board, and other writings from students and the teacher herself. As time goes by, the teacher learns to understand, love, and advocate for her students. This book opened my eyes to the amount of time teachers spend not teaching, and yet also encouraged me in the value of those things.

why we tell stories

I feel like this could potentially be a brilliant introduction to a poetry unit for a high school class. It captures so beautifully the reasons I love poetry and why it's relevant in even day to day life. I definitely pinned it onto my "teaching" board.

Thank you to Metaphysical_Plumbs for sending me the link!

Scripture for parents with exceptional children

ISAIAH 65:18 | "But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create, for behold, I crated Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness."

All God creates He creates for joy. God creates all children. He knitted them together before time. Exceptional children are no less children than typical children. Therefore, God creates every exceptional child for joy and we are to rejoice in them.


PSALM 22:10 | "On you was I cast from my firth, and from my mother's womb you have been my God."

Just as you rely on the LORD, so also your children are under His protection.


HOSEA 13:5 | "It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought."

The LORD is with you even in trial, despair, mourning, and frustration.


PSALM 127:3 | "Behold, children are a heritage [blessing] from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth."

There is no limit on this promise...no qualifications. All children are blessings.

Deuteronomy

DEUTERONOMY 32:2 | "May my teaching drop as rain, my speech distill as the dew; like gentle rain upon the tender grass, and like showers upon the herb."

The first time I read this verse, I thought "that has got to be taken out of context. There is no way there is that practical of a verse in here...especially in the old testament." However, as I poked around, lo and behold I found that it is really just that beautifully practical. Deuteronomy usually a bad rep. for being a book of rules, regulations, and thou-absolutely-shall-nots. However, I propose (and many others agree) that it is far more beautiful than that. While I have not yet studied it extensively, I have looked particularly at what it has to say on teaching and have found it to be eye-opening.

It answers the question I have so often asked: "Why do we teach?"

Yes, there are a lot of laws...laws that we have been set free from in the gospel...not that we are to avoid them, but that they no longer dictate our salvation. Rather, Christ's sacrifice covers us. The parallel that Deuteronomy makes is that God saves you and me from sin when we are slaves to it just as he saved His people from Egypt when they were slaves there. Therefore, we are to rejoice in the LORD and do what pleases Him just as the Israelites rejoiced in the LORD and committed themselves once again to follow Him. Deuteronomy doesn't teach us an obtuse number of things we have to memorize and which are only good for scribbling onto doctrine tests...it teaches us practical laws about how to care for people.

The essential understanding is that we as teachers, neighbors, parents, and students are sinners who need a Savior. God sent that Savior in the form of His Son who died on this earth and rose again triumphant. Every time a teacher reaches out to a student or a parent in kindness, every time a parent is patient with a teacher's misunderstanding or a student is willing to put their own interests down in the interest of their classmates, we are living out the love that marks Christians.

1 JOHN 3:10 | "By this [love] it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother."

1 JOHN 4:8 | "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love."


all scripture from the English Standard Version Bible translation

Educating Peter

This is a response to "Educating Peter," a film by Home Box Office films that we watched in my Educating Exceptional Children class.

While I could not find the whole film, here is a link to the first fifteen minutes of it. It's plenty to express some of the greatest benefits of inclusion for students with disabilities.

The film “Educating Peter” tells the story of a third grade boy with downs syndrome entering into a general education classroom for the first time. Through careful documentation, the film shows Peter move from a struggling, disruptive child to a successful student. The shift is made not through his own ability to achieve, as he was always had the capacity to do so, but through the attitudes and expectations of those around him. Having always attended a special education class with children who also had disabilities, Peter didn’t have the social skills necessary to have positive interactions with his fellow students. The teacher, having had no training in special education, struggled with how to react to his violent outbursts and unpredictable behavior. By collaborating with a special education teacher, she put in place opportunities for Peter’s fellow students themselves to take ownership of his education and behavior. While the expectations for them were higher than is usually recommended, they were the people that Peter interacted with most often. As they began giving Peter positive reinforcement as well as a starvation of attention for his bad behavior, he was able to begin to understand the expectations that they had of him. With a firm structure in place, Peter learned how to focus and began learning more than anyone involved expected. By the seventh week he had fewer outbursts and by the fourth month he had become a part of the class. The teacher began to expect more of him, changing her expectations from “I don’t think you can do that…” to “I expect you to do that because I know you can.” Peter matched the higher expectations and continued to push against them, constantly improving. By the last day of school, the other students valued Peter in their classroom both as a person, and as a fellow student. Not only had the inclusion process benefitted Peter by helping him gain a fuller education with higher expectations, but it also benefitted the students that were in class with him by teaching them about social interaction and loving those who are not easily loved.

All throughout the time that I watched this film I could not help but smile. Many of those smiles had to do with Peter being an adorable little boy and seeing the improvement he was able to make, but those that have lasted the longest are connected to the reactions that the teacher and other students had. All of the groups involved benefitted from the experience even though they didn’t expect good to come from it. This is exciting. It’s a clear example of the benefits of inclusion that doesn’t just show the good outcome, but also shows the real and sometimes harsh difficulties that led to that outcome. It proves that we as teachers cannot simply decide what a student’s least restrictive environment is without giving them time to adjust to that environment. It is also desperately important that a student’s Independent Education Program puts them into environments that challenge them rather than caudle them. It is only through a healthy level of challenge that they will be able to improve and gain the opportunities that their fellow students have available to them.

"Teaching Exceptional Children Plus"

The link below is to wonderfully scholarly articles via an amazing journal. Found an article here to write a paper and have since continued reading articles from here. Amazing resource.

 Teaching Exceptional Children Journal on Google Scholar

Victory Rolls the Subtle Way

For the current theatre production (Arlene Hutton's "See Rock City"), I learned to do victory rolls. They really aren't that hard...so long as you use enough mouse...or bobby pins...or a curler...and drown it in hair spray afterwards. Granted, not all victory rolls have to stand up to thirty second fast changes into dresses and out of hats.

We ended up toning down the look so that her hair could be let down for the second act of the show. To do this, we pin curled her hair before putting it up, used combs to pull it back and up, and only rolled her bangs. Such a pity as she looked really good with all four rolls framing her face, but not to worry as she still looked very nineteen-forties. And good for you too! Because you can learn how and actually use it in public without people thinking you're a strange history nut. But hey! If you are a history nut, go for it! I'm thinking I will definitely need to wear victory rolls to my future classes when teaching about World War II.

Peaceful Sunny Days

Sailing.

I got out on the water here near school. I haven't gotten to sail in over a month and I haven't got that much wind in longer. The weather cooperated perfectly with our plans with warm sun and warm water. The company was fellow sailing lovers and those who now love sailing because we went.

Turns out that teaching sailing is perfect for me. My two passions melded into one.

It really is true that you don't really know something until you have to teach it. Two people down, ten to go.

Build Me a World

[ source: movie review by Our Chattanooga ]

As the first integrated school in the South and the home of the first high school group to start a sit-in movement, The Howard School has a long and important history. It fought through deep segregation, lash back for those who endeavored to bring change, and the numbing process of being forgotten and being allowed to fail. The 1980s began its quick decline into the bottom 5% of American schools and that was where it was left for many years. Its students resorted to such things as drugs, sex, and gang activity in order to find their identity – in order to vent their frustration against a world that refused to listen and refused to help. Fancy Rhino’s goal was to change that. By entering into a community unlike their own, they worked to build friendships in order to tell the story of The Howard School. They wanted to start a movement that went beyond the film and encourage their audience to participate in what they were seeing. Fancy Rhino put cameras into the hands of the students themselves, giving them the opportunity to speak for themselves. They gave them the opportunity to break the silence. Only they can give a true glimpse of their lives in which high school graduation is for many the last celebration in their lives or where death, jail, or fast food is the highest expectation. With 95% of the students living under the poverty line, the majority are constantly gripped by crisis and unable to even comprehend looking beyond high school or even turning seventeen. Because a successful school depends not only on a supportive and knowledgeable staff but also students who have a longing to do, a key change that must take place in order to revitalize The Howard School is for the teachers to use their limited resources to expose their students to the goals and dreams that are possible.

Mimi, one of the students who takes the film's audience into their life, was a teen mother in elementary school and often found herself in trouble with the law. However, she was able to enter the Talented Tenth program at The Howard School where she not only learned of the opportunities that were open to her, but also found the support she needed to graduate high school early and move on to be a college student at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga (UTC). However, once she arrived at UTC, she found that none of the support systems that she desperately needed were in place. She found herself slipping back into the silence of poverty. There were no other viable options open to her once she failed her classes and she slid back to the beginning. This is where the world left her. However, because of Fancy Rhino’s work on the film, she found herself suddenly wrapped up in a support net. People contacted her about her part in the film – people who wanted to see change. She was no longer hopeless and silent, but listened to and supported. Where she will go from here, I don’t know, but she has another chance to work towards her goals. It is this kind of story that I want to be able to watch unfold as a teacher. Not only do I want to be able to provide a good education for my students like The Howard School provided for Mimi, but I also want to be able to connect my students to networks that will support them as they go out into college, university, or whatever else their life leads them into. Being called to teach in schools that are filled to the brim with stories like Mimi’s that do not have a good ending is frightening to me. However, seeing the impact that even a small group of people were able to make for the betterment of a school gives me hope.

Build Me a World was filmed by Fancy Rhino. To see more of their films, go to their youtube channel.

Textbook Love

"I am not trying, O Lord, to penetrate thy loftiness, for I cannot begin to match my understanding with it, but I desire in some measure to understand thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this too I believe, that "unless I believe, I shall not understand." Anselm quoted by Kelly Kapic. A Little Book for New Theologians. 2012. 70.

 
"...the [New Testament] does not correct the [Old Testament] view of God, but rather proclaims that which had been previously mysterious." Kelly Kapic. "The One Triune God." Worshipping the God Who Is. 2011. Section 2, Chapter 1.


"...we constantly need to be shaken out of a false sense of familiary with the past, to be administered doses of culture shock." Robert Darnton quoted in Sam Wineburg. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. 2010. 10.

Her Voice

The excited energy pouring out of my professor as she closes her eyes and clasps her hands in front of her, preparing to pray. Her voice. You can hear the excitment as she lifts it to the LORD.

It's an excitment we often become distanced from. Students and professors alike talk about "the immense privilidge" and wax eloquent on the places we've been where prayer is not well recieved. It becomes a cerebral exercise. Now, here stands genuine rapture at being able to dedicate a class period to the LORD through community prayer.

"So why is this two-year professor trumping all of your other professors?" you ask.

Penn State. She taught there for two years. You open a Bible in class and people shuffle uncomfortably. You need to watch what you say or you could get a stern call. If a professor prayed in class, they're no longer a professor.

She could hardly contain herself as she reveled in the freedom of talking to her creator and lover and bringing us with her.

I'm determined to never look on opening prayer as a mundane ritual or yet another time when I have to struggle to stay awake.

I'm determined to remember the look on her face when she opened her eyes.

Textbook Love

I am going to start to post my favorite quote from a text book some time at the end of the week. A new...feature? I suppose you could call it that if this was a normal blog...which it's not...but hey! It's fun, though it may not be consistant. You'll notice that there are two here. I couldn't decide which I liked better, and they're both from the same pages of my syntax notebook so I figured you'd let it slide.

"Someone, somewhere, must be making decisions about "correct English" for the rest of us. Who? There is no English Language Academy, and this is just as well; the purpose of the Academie Fracaise is to amuse journalists from other countries with bitterly argued decisions that the French gaily ignore." Steven Pinker on Syntax. The Language Instinct. 1994. 384-85.


"Who would settle for being a schoolmarm when one can be an upholder of rationality itself?" Steven Pinker on Whorfianism. The Language Instinct. 1994. 385.

presumption

Every once in awhile

(more often than I like to think)

I decide that I have no idea what I'm doing.

Something must be wrong.

Perhaps I was careless.

Things aren't supposed to be that easy...

...that clear.

Decisions like what you're going to do with your life

shouldn't just happen.

How could I be so presumptuous as to think that I could teach...

...touch lives...

...actually make a difference.

I don't even know how to walk straight some of the time.

and then I remember

It's not even going to be me changing minds thoughts attitudes viewpoints anyways.

My responsibility is to love.

To love until I can't love any more

and then love more.

To be passionate about what I'm revealing showing unveiling discovering

and then give them the opportunity to join me

in my passion.

To care for those in my charge

as if they were my own children

and show it through caring about them

even if I can't express it as their parents can or should.

it's a shift of perspective

It takes God into account.

How do I forget His goodness so often?

He has taught me that maybe is alright.

Healthy even.

I can't ever know the completeness of a world without maybe

Not this side of heaven.

So I'm going to rest in the maybe and let him take care of the for sure.

He's the one I want planning my life anyway.

He's the one who will give me the strength to love beyond myself.

He's the one who will open their hearts minds ears hopes dreams aspirations.

Pure presumption for me to be nervous.

Not like I'll be the one doing the forging anyways.

I need only follow after.

Walk in behind Him into every classroom.

I can do that.

I may not be able to walk straight

but I can sure walk forward.