I have lamented for nearly 40 minutes about how not a single student has completed their homework. I stare at the online curriculum I continue to pour hours into by redesigning assignments to make them easier to read and understand, implementing scaffolds to reach students’ zones of proximal development, and locating the perfect images to accentuate the concepts, all while hoping I’ll receive a submission from at least one student.
I visit the texts. I reread the texts. A distraction? Perhaps. An evasion? Sort of. A solution? Dear god, strike me as the Great Leader of Student Achievement through these experts’ musings.
I visit the texts. I reread the texts. A distraction? Perhaps. An evasion? Sort of. A solution? Dear god, strike me as the Great Leader of Student Achievement through these experts’ musings.
No alarms. No assignments. I am beside myself, bereft of solutions. I am beside myself, exhausted of experimentation and enthusiasm. I am beside myself, itching to move, reminded of its necessity by the tingling sensation my ass expresses against the couch, the familiar lack of movement required to create excellent lessons.
Yo Miss
If the task were to sum up my days and days of teaching into the most succinct phrase, I must borrow a few words from Kaycee Eckhardt’s introduction to Yo Miss to describe my classroom as a showcase of "imperfections and triumphs." The former is far more prevalent than the latter; the latter allows the former forgiveness. Lamentations such as the aforementioned 40 minutes of absolute bewilderment and frustration require forgiveness, repeatedly. Lisa Wilde intricately describes this art of forgiveness without the slightest bit of sarcasm or rhetoric. How utterly impossible from a comic strip.
Of particular resonance is Wilde’s redirection towards one of her students, Wiliam, “take off your hat, please.” The absurdity and wasted time that comes from essentially meaningless redirections is the boiler plate of teaching. I am a steadfast rule follower; and thus, I am a steadfast rule implementer. Hats? I don’t actually care. If my duty is to enforce the policies of the institution of which I am shephard, then no hats there will be. My first year at Evolutions High School, a startup blended learning community, involved the enforcement of such generalized policies. I remained steadfast while I watched many coworkers choose different battles, saving energy for more important things, like maybe cooking dinner. I have witnessed the complexity of working in a school that enforces particular types of dress and remained for a second year in the same school that reconsidered the aphorism of “the public school dress code.” What I've witnessed is a lot less wasted time on immaterial redirections. I am reminded of a favorite quote from No Country for Old Men (both the book and the film) that I frequently recite in my mind, “If the rule you followed brought you to this, what use was the rule.”
Identities and Social Locations: Who Am I? Who Are My People?
From this, I am reminded of how significant the choices and preferences for entertainment and relativity are as a leader in my classroom. I am, unabashedly, all of the things that comprise me, including the movies I watch. But I wasn’t always this way. It’s taken me quite some time to recognize the gravity of Kirk and Okazawa-Rey’s exploration of the eternal question "Are you one of us or not?" Identifiers tend to be one word classifications: rich, white, female. Fat, poor, lesbian. Even when I’m not some of those things, I’m stuck with them because they’ve been stuck to me. "Others often think they know who we are and how we should behave” (Kirk, Okazawa-Rey). How magnificently ignorant it is to know how one should behave on the basis of a single word. I show up as words like this to my classroom every day, as do my students. What, then, does the word “teacher” imply in relation to how I behave? Probably just as much as what I’ve expected from the word “student” during these now 120 minutes of lamentation.
From this, I am reminded of how significant the choices and preferences for entertainment and relativity are as a leader in my classroom. I am, unabashedly, all of the things that comprise me, including the movies I watch. But I wasn’t always this way. It’s taken me quite some time to recognize the gravity of Kirk and Okazawa-Rey’s exploration of the eternal question "Are you one of us or not?" Identifiers tend to be one word classifications: rich, white, female. Fat, poor, lesbian. Even when I’m not some of those things, I’m stuck with them because they’ve been stuck to me. "Others often think they know who we are and how we should behave” (Kirk, Okazawa-Rey). How magnificently ignorant it is to know how one should behave on the basis of a single word. I show up as words like this to my classroom every day, as do my students. What, then, does the word “teacher” imply in relation to how I behave? Probably just as much as what I’ve expected from the word “student” during these now 120 minutes of lamentation.
Texts Referenced and Used for Inspiration:
- Identities and Social Locations: Who Am I? Who Are My People? By G. Kirk and M. Okazawa-Rey
- Yo Miss! (Chapter One) by Lisa Wilde
- Locating Yourself for Your Students by P. Parmar and S. Steinberg
Wow ellen! Thank you for this rich, poetic reflection. So much to say, but for now two things:
ReplyDelete-Part of what your words bring forward for me is the deep emotional work of teaching, negotiating relationships with our students, developing assignments, waiting, showing up. We are all lamenting, hoping, bereft, forgiving, triumphant although we rarely share/ acknowledge these vulnerable feelings. Where does emotion fit into the ways we position and negotiate our identities with/ for/ in relationship to/ away from students?
-Also, I am STUCK (in a good way!) on your phrasing, "rich, white, female. Fat, poor, lesbian. Even when I’m not some of those things, I’m stuck with them because they’ve been stuck to me. What it means to show up (as teacher and student) each day as words like this? But also how in the space of community--classroom and otherwise--these words can thicken, deepen and shift?
My best
Victoria
Victoria,
DeleteThank you for your thoughtful feedback. It's great to know the words we're writing are being digested with genuine curiosity and responsivity.