Looking for Cultural Relativity in All the Wrong Places

Every Monday and Friday, we started our time together in second block by writing for six minutes. I was lucky enough to get a document camera half way through the year in order to project my own writing so I could model for students just how cluttered and unfocused this warm up could be. After the six minutes were up, we shared our writing and talked about some of the issues brought up in the writing.

While I always strive to be developmentally appropriate with students, I also strive to show my authentic self in my writing with them. This means that I wrote relatively freely about my year of dating disasters and my on-going questioning about whether or not I want to have kids. One of the great joys about that eleventh grade class was that we could talk about these subjects to create a classroom community which in turn led to students really opening up in their writing (and for those of you who think this all sounds too touchy-feely to be of use, I have to say that I have observed that a student who feels valued and safe writes much better than a student who is merely trying to please a rigid requirement).

My students continually surprised me with their forward thinking on some issues that really bogged me down personally in the past year. I once wrote about a dream I had in which I decided to append my mother's unmarried name to my father's last name. I wrote about how the idea to do that stuck with me. I wondered if I should follow through since I do believe that our surnames should reflect as much equity as possible. But I wrote that I knew it would be a lot of clerical work and that people would find it really strange.

"Do it, Ms. T!" B told me enthusiastically when we got to sharing time. She told us how she planned to change her last name to her mother's when she turned eighteen to reflect the fact that her mother had worked so hard to raise her right while he father had never really been in the picture.

Another time I wrote about how I really loved kids but worried about being able to balance caring for them while also dedicating myself to improving public education. I also wrote about my worry that I, like many people of my income and education level, wouldn't marry until very late in childbearing years, rendering my balance concerns moot.

The answers to these problems were so simple to my students.

"Just adopt a baby when you're ready," K told me, "and figure out the balance as you go along." But wouldn't adopting before I had a partner make it harder to meet someone in the long run?

The classroom full of children of single parents told me I was wrong. They explained how their parents had known that a boyfriend or girlfriend was for real only when he or she was willing to really invest in their kids.

Duh, Ms. T.

Dear Ms. Thornton

Dear Ms. Thornton,

I want to say that I am sorry. I just want to let you know some things. First is that when I came to your class I thought you were kind of weird. But that's how I feel about all my teachers at first. Then I learned that you care but we were blinded by stupitity and obnoxiousness. Over the past month I think that I've seen you trying to reach out and help us. I think that the talking is going to stop. Second being in your classroom helped me realize when there is a time for fun there's also a time for work. It's not always possible to mix the two in a way that's not distracting. You have helped me grow up. You have helped me see that what I was doing was distracting and that it needed to stop. I now realize now that ou are a very interesting, fun teacher. And that just as much as I think I need respect, so do you. And if you're wondering, my mom didn't make me write this. I felt responsible, too. So, I just want to say sorry. Senseriously.

Your new friend,

J

An Update from First Block

Good morning friends! I'm rushing off to work in a few minutes, but I wanted to share something that happened in first block with one of my very toughest students.

Ms. T: We're going to do silent sustained reading today for just about fifteen minutes today so you can wet your whistle with your new books.

Student who is Typically Trouble (under his breath and upset about spending less time than usual on reading): Awww, man.

Student Who Loves to Call Out: What does wet your whistle mean?

Student who is Typically Trouble: Dude, you know what it means. Stop talking so we can start reading.

I've got approximately one and a half kids I can't quite get to in this class and just three and a half weeks left to do it, but I could have ended the school year on that exchange right there.

Dear First Block

Dear First Block,

You know a lot of things about me. You know that I before I came to you all, I worked with elementary students who didn't speak English as their first (or maybe even second) language. You know that I also worked in an alternative high school for students who couldn't make traditional high school work for them. You know that from that place, I found out the importance of dialogue and teaching behavior just as often as I teach English. You know that I had planned to spend this weekend not thinking or doing anything school-related. But, if you've been paying attention as we've been getting to know each other this semester, you know that committing myself to forty-eight hours of not thinking about work wasn't likely to happen.

I keep thinking about you all and what needs to change for us. I think about our discussion in our community meeting about how I'm "mean" for expecting you to sign in and out to leave the classroom. I think about how I'm "unfair" for "yelling" at the wrong person for talking. I think about how hard it has been for many of you to take responsibility for your actions and realize that answering someone's question is still talking and that asking you to be quiet and raising my voice are two very different responses -- one of which happens pretty infrequently.

I also keep thinking about how many of you insisted that your other teachers let you leave class whenever you feel the need to, take late work even after the grading period ends, and aren't bothered by people up out of their seats for no apparent reason or pens becoming missiles. I checked with those teachers and they said they don't do those things. These all seem like normal teenage behavior, but that doesn't mean we have to accept it. We have to grow.  I feel like you all have taken advantage of my willingness to engage in discussions about our classroom community.

So, we're going to try something new. Tomorrow, two eleventh grade students who used to struggle with finding their place at school are going to come talk to you about how they behave in the class after yours and how rewarding and enriching they find that community because of everyone's choices to engage and work hard. Another teacher is going to come observe our class for a week and hand out detentions that will not be like when I ask you to stay after to talk about behaviors that are creating problems for you. We're going to see if you can start to frame your choices as yours if you see that other adults find similar issues with your talking and disrespect.

I'm not giving up on you or the power of dialogue in a classroom, but you're going to have to earn our community meetings back. I've recently realized that my classroom management philosophy comes out of my desire to teach habits rather than procedures when it comes to respectful, professional behavior. I think you all do not need to get in the habit of making your voices heard; you need to get in the habit of making them heard constructively. That's going to require some quiet time to think to yourself.

I know I seem mean and that it is hard to see how learning these behaviors now will benefit you in the future.  I hope that some day you will come to understand that I've given you this information and these expectations because I really care.

Love,
Ms. T

P.S. Cabin in the Woods was hilarious. I don't know what y'all were talking about.

"Why Can't Separate Be Equal?"

My last class of the day is reading Night right now. In addition to a basic overview of the Holocaust, we also spend some time talking about the eugenics movement pioneered in the United States. We talked about what was different and what was similar between Eli's experiences in Night and the experiences of African-Americans, Catholics, and other minority groups in the U.S. During the course of our conversation, my students said some pretty horrific things:

"I don't believe it should be a law or anything, but I think it's better when the races are separate so that there's less fighting."

"It just doesn't look right when people who are white marry people who are black."

"Why can't separate be equal?"

My students made this comments very matter-of-factly. They spoke one at a time. They used people-first language like we have talked about and they've also worked on the terms they often use to describe people of color. They even asked me what I thought about interracial marriage and when I indicated I didn't have a problem with it, one boy noted that's probably because I live in a city a ways away from where I teach and that I'm used to seeing "people who are more diverse." No one yelled. No one talked over top of another. No one went nuts when I told them that we'd tried separate but equal and it hadn't worked. But no one advocated for racial harmony either.

A couple of weeks ago, we were reading The Odyssey in my first class of the day. We reached the part where Odysseus shoots one of the suitors through the nipple. The class of mostly fourteen-year-old boys lost it. I don't mean there were a couple of chuckles and then we kept reading, but they could not continue for several minutes. I don't mean to sound like a fuddy duddy or that I never want to have fun or laugh at silly things in my class, but I have spent a lot of time talking to my students about finding that line between having fun and still being able to do meaningful work.

One incident is horrifying and the other makes it hard to do my job, but I think they are both related. I love my students. I have such affection for each of them and their unique talents and strengths, even when they drive me crazy with their chatter or their parroting of views they hear at home. But days like the two above just make me wonder what am I supposed to do? How do I teach tolerance and maturity?

I think that job belongs to teachers whether or not parents have abdicated their role in teaching those virtues. I think that any one who works with young people takes on the task of being a person who helps raise those people. I'm just having a really hard time figuring out how to incorporate those virtues in my classroom. We stop and talk a lot and I like to think those times plant some seeds. We've also started doing weekly community meetings where we can talk about things that are bothering us. I'm interested to see if these help matters any. I'm reading so much about teaching kids how to advocate for themselves and be proud of their heritage. I haven't stumbled across any material about how to teach character in a way that works with a student-directed English curriculum. Any ideas, teachers and laypeople alike?