by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.
Of course, that was stolen from Portia’s famous lines to Shylock in a Merchant of Venice in her speech on mercy:
The quality of mercy is not strain’d.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Act IV, Scene I
In this case strained means something that can not be forced. Mercy’s greatest quality is that it is voluntary. It must be naturally so or else it is no longer true mercy.
I think about this in relation to teaching. We can train teachers in pedagogy, even show them what it means to be compassionate, to love children. But that compassion, that love of children, that recognition that true learning depends on relationship and sharing your story. That part, that can not be strained. That part, that’s the passion that calls many of us to our profession. And it is what keeps the majority of us who stay.
Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.
~Isaac Bashevis Singer
Why do anything unless it is going to be great?
~Peter Block
Is there a big difference between public attitude towards teachers in the US and Canada?
When people find out that I am a teacher I NEVER (and I am not a wanton all caps user) am made to feel like I have settled on teaching for lack of ability to do otherwise. Did I mention NEVER?
On the contrary, people usually respond with cools and wows and I have great respect for you, it must be hard, how do you do it? They then follow with talk of their memories of school, the teacher who they’ll never forget, the cafeteria food – whatever. The point is that my job conjures up memory, stories – of hard times and good. The stuff that life is made of.
Ken Dryden talks about our personal Board of Governors and who we would like on it. He reminds us that while few of us could name specific accountants or salespeople for it we could all think of teachers we’d like to sit on it.
I can definitely understand teacher burn out. When you love teaching sometimes it’s hard to find the off switch. There’s always one more thing to do, to plan, to correct, to prepare, to present, to remind ourselves of, to talk to a student/colleague/parent/volunteer about. And that’s during the regular school year, figure in report card season and the things to do possibilities multiply exponentially.
I can definitely understand that feeling of loss when you just can’t get to that one (or more) kid. No matter what you try, s/he will still give you the cold shoulder, still skip class, still (seemingly) not care about learning. Then I remember that this is learned behaviour. That the child must have experienced so much loss of her own that she can’t let anyone else in. And my feeling of loss grows.
I can definitely understand the frustration of massive failure, when a large chunk of your group fails. Within a long history of failure, a few months with a new teacher will rarely be able to make the monumental difference needed to turn 30s to 70s – no matter how much we want it. Though it is sometimes possible with the proper structure and trust.
Working towards that structure is what keeps me sane.
But I don’t understand the lack of social recognition Sarah Fine writes about in fully one half of her article. Or, rather, the dismal recognition she describes it as having. She writes that teaching is considered as being for the unambitious and untalented, that people think it is a second class profession.
Do I live in a bubble? Are people coddling me with cools and wows and then sneering once I leave the room – can you believe she’s a teacher? How gauche!
I don’t think so. The reactions I get are honest and from the heart. People don’t share stories through whimsical smiles about things they think are second rate and undervalued.
She does have it right though. Teaching is hard work, it is life work. I wouldn’t describe it as grueling and the fact that she does makes me think that Sarah Fine was just not meant to teach. My gut reaction? This article was an attempt at justifying that.
Then I read the comments and there were quite a number that supported her views. As well as a number who felt like me, if you aren’t meant to teach don’t teach.
But I recognize that I write this from a Canadian perspective. Which begs me to ask – are Canadian teachers more valued than our American colleagues? What is different here?
3am sleepless update: Apparently Michael Doyle tried to reply to this post but he wasn’t able to post the comment. Lucky for us it made it to his own blog. Go read his take on the matter – as always, it points to truth for me. —> On Why Sarah Fine Left Teaching
This post is going to be about an excerpt from Stephen Downe’s blog summary of Michael Wesch’s talk at D2L Fusion. Wait, you think that was a bit confusing? Before I get into the meat of this post, let’s take a moment to recognize exactly how I found these words.
This morning I decided it was time to update a few things. Many of my networks still had me as living in Montreal, QC, which I moved away from about 6 weeks ago. (Facebook won’t let me make the change, it apparently won’t let you list a current city that it doesn’t recognize and, well, Bainsville is not exactly the largest speck on the map.)
After doing that I decided to update my blogroll (go see the new ‘hot blogs‘, they really are), and then I decided to change up my featured blog posts (those are the ones in the black strip at the top of the blog). So, as I was reading through some of my favourite posts to determine which ones to add to the list, I also read through the comments. I had forgotten about Heidi Pence, and there she was, commenting on ‘Who Are Teachers?’. So I clicked through to her blog, Think, Think, Think and found A New Beginning, a post about what is on a lot of our minds as we get past the middle point of each summer: the year to come, where I came across this sentence, attributed to Dan Meyer:
It’s basically about shifting from getting people to love you, to you loving them.
So, I clicked on over to Dan’s blog to see the context and found its attribution to Michael Wesche. And yay, there was a link so, of course, I clicked through it and found where the sentence began – with Stephen Downes. It is embedded in a lengthy blog summary of a talk by Michael Wesche. So, I can only with certain accuracy attribute it to Stephen Downes, awesomely inspired my Michael Wesche. (Yes, I am a bit of a research geek. A bit.)
This is basically what that all looked like:
That 23 and sunny business is a lie. I need to find a new weather applet. Haven’t found one yet that recognizes Bainsville either…
Ok. That being recognized, here is the meat, snipped from Whatever by Stephen Downes at Half an Hour:
…her hairdresser said, “Love your audience and they’ll love you back.” Instead of focusing on self, she focused on the beauty of the audience and the whole event. And I allowed myself to do the same thing.
I never let that leave me. I would start with that. I would start with loving my students. And it’s striking how much my teaching has changed in five years, as a result of that. It’s basically about shifting form getting people to love you, to you loving them. It has four parts (Fromm, 1956):
– caring
– responsibility
– respect
– knowledge
It requires all four. For example, caring without the rest is like patronizing. Respect without the rest is idolizing. The four together are true long. And focusing on that, instead of focusing on your performance, opens you up to your audience. It makes the walls go away.
Be genuinely interested, caring, kind, and loving to your students. Heidi’s going to be mindful of this come September, I am as well. I can’t imagine teaching any other way. If you don’t do it with love, why at all?
I appreciate how he framed it – teaching really isn’t about being liked. Some of the teachers I have worked with in the past who have had the most difficulty in terms of classroom management and getting students to perform were overly worried about whether or not their students liked them. Of course it’s nice to be liked. I know I would generally prefer to be a well-liked person than a poorly-liked person. I still find myself at times thinking, ooh – but that won’t be popular, they may not like that (and by extension, me) but teaching is not about that. It is about loving your students and caring for what happens to them both in and out of the classroom. And then it is about making sure all of your decisions are, if not based in, at the very least touched by that love.
It’s a lifelong learning process, keeping that frame in place.
Edit —> Added, a few hours later.
Look what just showed up in my feed reader from Kelly Hines. I had to include it here, it’s so timely. There are no accidents.
So, no, I don’t teach like my hair is on fire. I don’t really think that Rafe Esquith does either. He teaches like his heart is on fire, and that’s the greatest thing a teacher can offer his/her students. And when you are reading about astounding things that others are doing, don’t get overwhelmed by the how’s. Focus on the why’s. When you do that, you will find inspiration to light the fires of your students.
I love the image of the fancy dancer, spinning forward, head held back. Photo by Melissa Chasse, click image for source.
I’ve had a few conversations with other teachers over the past 2 weeks or so about how quickly we transition into coming school years, even before the previous one is completely done.
For me, I know the students who I will be teaching next year, for the most part – they went through an interview and careful selection process – and I actually found myself letting go of my grade 11s and focusing more on my incoming groups even as exams were still going on. The exam schedule facilitated it – kids were only at the school during the time allocated for their specific exams – so we went from spending just about all day together to seeing each other for a moment or 2 before and after their exams. I invigilated a few of their exams but it wasn’t the same. The group was quiet, serious, anxious – alter egos of their loud, opinionated, emotional, wonderful selves.
Last year I promised myself that I would honour closure in a more formal way. I’m not sure I really did what I was intending to do when I made that promise last year. The schedule was somewhat confusing at the end of the year and it seemed that all of a sudden the year was done. It was the first year for senior school reform exams and no one quite knew what to do with them – these are exams that last approximately 9 hours and are based in group work, dialogue, some individual writing, video viewings… so the exam period began about 2 weeks earlier than usual. Some of my students made a point to come see me during that period for some one-on-one time, to talk about the future, to say goodbye.
Despite the slipperiness of the end of year, I did manage to create a reflective piece for the final Student in Society exam. They had two choices, to either choose a topic that we covered during the year, describe the major issues, and then talk about how it has personally affected them (topics like substance abuse, suicide, teen pregnancy, date rape, self-esteem, protest, controlling parents). A few chose that one and in reading their papers I was moved in ways that I will never return. One girl wrote her exam in tears, loud sobbing tears. I asked her quietly if she preferred to write in a private room and she shook her head, I want to stay here. I think she needed to be with people.
The other choice was a letter to me about their own development over the school year, with permission to vent about things I did that drove them crazy. Some of those were very touching, some made me laugh out loud over forgotten jokes, some made me realize how much what I do sets the tone for learning – both positively and negatively.
I guess grade 11 is about letting go and allowing them to say goodbye and drift off on their own. It’s what they have been looking forward to for so many years. As one of my students wrote – I feel like my life is on hold. I can’t wait to finish school and get on with it already.
So, while they contemplate their changing futures, I contemplate mine. I know (though I also know these things can change) what I will be teaching next year. We have decided to share our students more and become subject specialists as opposed to core group teachers. With all of the work required when teaching the new reform courses it is suicide to try to do so for 7, 8 different programs. Logically it makes sense, I’m not sure yet how it will play out within the alternative program, not having core groups.
Next year I will be teaching History of Quebec and Canada, which has become a research course more than a fact memorizing course, so I will be focusing on themes in history and historical process. I will also be teaching Ethics and Religious Culture, a controversial course in Quebec. With it’s focus on dialogue and ethical process I am looking forward to it. I will be teaching a brand new course called Contemporary World, which is very much a research course designed to move from teacher presented material to student created material throughout the year. My last course is Visual Arts. I love that I am able to bring art back into my daily practice.
My summer will be filled with research for these courses and I am jived. So much more so than if I had to teach math or science (my apologies to math and science teachers) next year. I’m using my tumblr site to collect the resources I find for next year in one place. It’s called 09/10 ~ Thinking Forward.
Besides that, I will be spending a lot of time working on my new home. There is so much planting to do on 2 acres of land! I also have some art projects brewing and now that I have a room dedicated as my studio I have the space to let them breathe.
What are you doing to transition from this to next year?
Waiting to see what the new year brings us, like at a starting line, so many factors contribute to success – including being prepared to run the race.
I work in an alternative school. Actually, it’s an alternative program within a large school. We have a closed off area of the building with a separate entrance and run by a slightly different schedule – we don’t hear the bells and are just fine with that!
I am completing my first year here and am excited about continuing next year. What makes this program so exciting for me after 13 years of teaching? I believe it has to do with a few things, the biggest being the heightened sense of entanglement with my students’ learning.
There are an increasing amount of alternative programs across North America. Each one is different. They have to be because one of the purposes of an alternative program is that it is tailored to the needs of the learners within it. Though each school is different, studies show that they have basic elements in common (Boss, 1998; Johnston, Cooch & Pollard 2004; Quinn & Poirier, 2006) :
1. A focus on changing the educational approach, not the student.
2. A belief that all students can learn with high expectations for learning.
3. Teachers and administrators are caring leaders.
4. “Low adult-student ratios in the classroom are considered integral to successful outcomes” (Quinn & Poirier, 2006)
5. Ongoing PD for teachers in the areas of alternative learning environments and factors, as well as communication with students and families
6. Relationships at all levels are key – they are positive, trusting, and caring
7. Students are able to create a solid connection with an adult who believes in their success.
In our program, our class sizes are small. This year our 3 classes ranged from 13 to 18 students. We interview students who are recommended to the program and each and every one talks about the distractions of a large classroom, the need to connect with teachers who explicitly care about their success, the need to learn outside of the box.
Things will change a bit next year. We will have a new head teacher who has never taught in an alternative environment before. We are meeting today to talk about our vision for the program. I’m writing this post to remind me of key factors, what needs to be in order to do the right thing by these kids. They only deserve that – to be done right by.
