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Profile
Name: Eight Year Teacher, White/Male School: Stratford High Grade Level: 10, 12
Position: English Teacher % of Low-Income Students: About 20%
The majority of the kids would be level two [basic level] students. Going
on assumption, most of them are probably minority but not all of them. Black and Hispanic
are the two major groups. There are whites in there also but I wouldn’t know the
number. I don’t have a lot of other minorities (Koreans, Asians). I would say a lot
of them come from single-parent households and some of them come from houses where there
is no parent: foster homes and grandparents. Some of them do come from two-parent
households. Some of them value reading and education but don’t have money and some
kids are really on their own.
Through their writing is a large part of it. That’s where I find out the most intimate details. I find out a little through guidance and special education teachers. Sometimes during staffings and PPTs. A little when talking to them but not much because usually when I’m talking to them I’m in front of other students and there’s only so much I feel I can bring up. Some students have no problem bringing up personal stuff in front of an audience which either means that they’re comfortable or inappropriate (laugh). It could be both.
Over 90% of the time it affects it negatively…their ability to succeed. I don’t see them getting the kind of support they need at home. Now sometimes they get attention but it’s not necessarily the kind of attention they need, to help with homework or academic life. I’ve had meetings with parents who were very interested in their achievement but as soon as I have the interview with mom or dad I realize why the child is having such difficulty. I have met with parents who…one of the parents was drunk at parent conference. And it’s obvious why her child smokes pot and thinks that that’s okay. I had one father try to start a fight with me in front of the administrator. He wanted to punch me so bad that he was flexing. His child was acting inappropriate in class and he thought that it was my fault for picking on this child. He was not thinking straight. This is the kind of support that the kids are getting at home, so when you have a parent that’s not rational and not logical and basically just dysfunctional. So they have this dysfunction at home. Mom and dad may be paying attention but it doesn’t mean that they’re getting a positive…I’ve had parents tell me that their child is bringing stories home and I find out that the stories are inaccurate and the parents are believing it. I know some kids that are on the lunch program that have interested, caring and productive relationships at home and in their cases, sometimes the amount of income affects their ability to have a computer at home or e-mail or the proper supplies if they happened to be involved in an honors program and the teacher asks them to buy the book well they might have a problem there. So that’s more of an economic disadvantage than a social or cultural disadvantage.
I make an assumption, correct or incorrect, that they do not have the ability to do homework at home. The home environment isn’t conducive to homework they don’t have a place to do homework or they don’t have someone at home encouraging them or guiding them or there’s actually a negative environment at home where if they tried to do homework there would be some negative consequences. So, I actually do tailor my work to try to avoid homework with my level two students. Reading books especially is a problem. I enlist their student support assuming that they’d like to pass. I enlist their support in getting as much done in the class day as we can, realizing that if we don’t get enough done in class then we’ll have to send it home, which is a Catch 22 because if you send it home some of the students won’t do it, even the students who want to do it. I think it’s the best idea is to tailor the assignment to the student, do exactly what the student needs. But I find myself more often doing what it is that I need as a teacher to manage the class. We’re talking two classes of level two students that are maxed out at 30 students with 10 of them being Special Ed., students which by our math adds up to the 35 by contract. That’s too many students. I don’t know their personalities and all their situations and learning styles. I just don’t know it. I don’t have the ability or the capability to juggle that which I think would be ideal but I don’t do it.
In response to how his own background affects his ability to respond effectively…
I really did grow up in another world. I grew up not even understanding that there was another world other than the one I was growing up in. I didn’t understand that there were women’s issues until I was 30. I had a biased and prejudiced attitude against inner city folk until I was 30 or so. I just had no idea. That is totally ignorant. Completely. I think that what ignorance has done for me is it has given me the perspective into other people’s lives, that people come from that perspective without even knowing that they’re coming from that perspective. There is a whole world out there that doesn’t even know about our level two kids, that doesn’t understand it at all. In terms of statistics and numbers, they know they exist but they don’t know who they are on a personal level and I know what that’s like. I’ve been there. That is using my negative as a positive if that’s possible. Reading about and knowing people in the inner city has helped me. The Women of Brewster Place, Black Boy and They’re Eyes Were Watching God had a tremendous effect on me. Feminist literature I’m still trying to wrap my brain around.
I’d love to change the entire system [the way teachers are professionally developed]. For me what it would look like is the ability to work with a group of teachers on an ongoing basis. Trying things, seeing if they work, and going back and working with the teachers again and trying it again. It would be more of an ongoing, peer sharing than a workshop. More than just a class where I learn something and putting it in a three-ring binder and go back to doing what I did. To somehow get into the classroom with students and actually do it with other teachers. I never get to see how you teach. Every other job I’ve ever been in, you learn from each other. This is the only job where you don’t learn from each other. I’ve worked as a carpenter, as a swim coach as a salesman. This is the only job where you don’t learn from each other. I’d want to be there physically in the classes. Something new and different. I know what I do…I’d be looking for some other style that might work for me, some other assignment.
I don’t really know how to answer that question…it’s huge. Okay. Some of the things I’ve done with my lower level kids…some of the things I’ve done I don’t think are particularly effective. Reading aloud in class. I don’t like it. I don’t think it works well, I don’t think the kids pay attention. But I don’t know my options. If I break them into groups and have them read on their own, what will happen is I’ll lose kids. There will be some kids who finish and some kids don’t. I would lose kids…well, actually you’re probably right. I’d lose control of the momentum of the class where I’m probably losing kids in slow increments anyway, they’re sleeping anyway. So I’m already losing them but[reading aloud] makes me feel as if the class is moving ahead. From a teaching standpoint, the beauty is that you can stop at the end of the chapter and discuss the chapter. You can have them all respond to questions. The only reason that we do it, I do it, is to keep them in the book. I don’t know whether we have to, I guess that’s what your whole project is about. So, I read aloud in class. I send work home to be read and I find that the kids don’t read it.
I’ve done literature circles with them picking their own books and I find that that is one of the more effective… They actually read to each other, they’re actually paying attention, they’re much more vested when they’ve chosen the book with one or two other people. When they’re done, what I try to do is I try to let them choose from a variety of options. I’ll have them develop a test, develop chapter summaries, some of the students even did journals where they would write to one another where they would be dialogue journals and some of them even used e-mail to talk to one another. One of them did a diorama which I wasn’t impressed with because I really like for the essence of the book to show through in the project. Now, if the student had been able to take the time to orally present the diorama maybe I would get the impression that the student had put the work into the book and gotten the insight in the book. I had another student do artwork that was supposed to depict the theme of the book. They really can do whatever. I try to steer them away from book reports because I don’t find them particularly effective.
In response to his overall feeling about the department’s approach to teaching reading…
Having a core novel that we read in senior level English, something that is just accepted that that’s what we read. I like Lord of the Flies, I like all the imagery and all, but for 90% of the kids they don’t like it. So the only book that they’ve read, they don’t like. My reading program involves reading things aloud and forcing them to read things that they don’t particularly like…in one shared text. Some of the things we are getting are more accessible, like the Vietnam texts which they do like more. I find that even though we do end up reading it aloud in class, more students are awake. Something where they are not turned off by literary technique that is sophisticated. They need a strong plot, interesting characters they can relate to. Even if the story has literary technique, they need the basic story, almost modern, identifiable characters. I would say that in general they find characters that are closer to their age, social status, race to be more accessible than characters that are not. Characters of another culture, gender or economic status I think they find harder to pay attention to and read. With the independent reading, our book racks are quite good. I know there’s a lot of trash but if you scrounge around you can find good books. I make some stereotypical judgments when I assign books, I’ll say you might like this book and if it happens to be a black girl picking a book I might pick a book about black girls and say you might like this one it’s about some black girls. Most of my students know me well enough now to not take offense or just say I don’t want to read a story about black girls. I do what I can to make it relevant to the students.
In response to his approach to teaching writing…
The philosophy of writing is probably to do more than I do and to put more effort into it than I do. I find that the best writing teaching involves a tremendous amount of input and feedback from me and I don’t have time to do that. So, the second best is I try to get them to write a lot. I have them do a lot of journal entries, a lot of essays, I have them write out their homework when they have to answer questions. I do not spend a lot of time correcting spelling and punctuation. I do spend some time with organization, paragraph organization and logic, thesis statements and conclusions because I think that goes to the very heart of logic, of being able to get a point across in writing. But I don’t spend a lot of time going over individual writing. I don’t find peer conferencing effective. I have not found a way to have them effectively give each other feedback on their writing. The students either don’t know what to say, what to look for (even though I’ll give them even checklists) or they’re reticent to say anything. But with a little more effort maybe that would work better, [maybe if I had] smaller classes it would provide an opportunity for me to be there when they’re conferencing instead of trying to orchestrate an entire class of peer conferences. If I could get to a point where I had more things going in my classroom rather than one thing it would be better. If I had five or six different tasks going at the same time I could probably assign appropriate tasks to the students rather than one task. Part of me thinks I should just give up grading and start just working with them. I have rubrics. Most of my grading, 80%, is based on effort. So, if they are turning out the product, they’re getting the grade. When it comes to rubrics, we’ll use them for essays and for projects, for research papers. But most of the stuff, most of the grading is just doing the work. They do the work, they get the grade. In an ideal world everything would be evaluated and I don’t have time for that.
I would need participation from some other teacher that I wouldn’t have to worry about evaluating me, not having to worry about supervisor backlash. Ideally, developing some way to diversify my classroom. I keep thinking elementary school. That’s what I should have. Maybe it’s doable.
When asked whether he has considered Nancy Atwell’s work…
I consider myself an average teacher. Maybe an average guy can do it. I see Atwell and I see someone giving 110% all the time. This is my job. This is not my life. The teach-me-for-a-day-and-then-never-let-me-use-it model of Professional Development is not effective. You know I did DEI (Design for Effective Instruction) and now we’re on to Essential Understandings. What I really need, and I do some of it with technology, is the ability to actually do what I’m trying to learn. I need to just take it and do it. That’s the way I learn. Using it during the day, having someone come in and say let me get one on the board for you. Actual hands-on stuff. I can Essential Question with the best of them. It’s not a question of not being able to do it it’s a question of working it into the day. It’s crazy. It’s hard to do.