Last May, I had my teaching license. I could’ve been employed in a public school already, indoctrinating over a hundred students for the duration of the school year – but two big reasons I felt uncomfortable diving into teaching were 1) I didn’t know what I was going to do on a day-to-day basis and 2) I didn’t know exactly what kind of teacher I wanted to be.
Though I haven’t worked on (1) a ton yet, I think I’ve finally worked through a lot more of (2).
One of my hopes going into the year was to experience a teaching setting different from the ones I’m used to. Though I haven’t gotten to see “inquiry-based labs” or “project-based learning” (among other models) in action, I was placed at a turnaround school that served a population of low socioeconomic status – in a remedial test prep classroom of all places.
And I was pretty nervous to actually start. What would “that kind” of school be like? Frankly, it was the closest to a “ghetto” I’d ever been, and I’d grown up with my mom locking the car doors when an African-American walked by. So I read up on the subject to prepare myself. For a short period of time, books about stereotype threat, school segregation and teaching for social justice sat on my coffee table. What if I was racist? – or, I knew I was implicitly biased, but what if it showed? Would I fail to meet people’s eyes as I walked through the streets of South Dorchester? Would some part of me believe these people were somehow less than people?
Walking into the school on day one, I did a mental double-take. Are you kidding? Is this 2018? I expected a skewed student body composition, but not a populace where literally every student in all my classes was black. Students were being herded through metal detectors as they and their backpacks were searched by security. Was segregation really illegal?
And their teacher – this teacher with 17 years of experience, purportedly helping remedial students pass the test they’d need to graduate – did very little. Most days, she gave students a worksheet and a Chromebook, and they were expected to fill in notes from a powerpoint or website. If I were still a high schooler, these students would be the ones I couldn’t get – like, “wow, how are you so bad at memorizing the two facts you’d need to pass this unit test?” But watching these people struggle through things I never had to go through – watching as they were given no clear meta-framework for the curriculum and were thrown word after word after word (not even grouped by topic!) to learn, effectively sitting through a foreign language class where they only ever grinded (ground?) vocabulary; watching as they jumped from one blank to the next on the worksheet, not even reading the question most of the time, since grades were eyeballed and those who wrote down any sort of words (including the question verbatim!) got points and those who knew it but didn’t want to write failed; watching as people who literally did not understand English were forced to through this same process, and ended up about median gradewise – watching this all, I realized how ridiculous the system really is for them.
And as I worked with these students in small groups for a couple months, my S1 updated strongly away from them being scary in any way. The people who were failing were just people. The people who were loud and “disruptive” were just people. The people getting into fights in the halls were just people. They’re all just people. I didn’t get that because I was sheltered from “that kind of person” growing up, and over time, I began to fear that which was unknown. But now I’ve finally gotten to – S1 can finally overlook, more or less, the color of their skin. Sure, these are clichés you learn about in kindergarten on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but not ones I truly internalized. Now I see – truly believe – they’re just students like any other, with friend groups and the ensuing sitcom-esque dramas, hungry for lunch a period or two beforehand, ready for the bell to ring five minutes before class ends, curious about cool things in the world around them, with parents who tell them to work hard and be kind. And sure, they’re also students that may have grown up without the supports of “here’s how you traditionally show respect in the classroom”, or “did you remember to bring your homework?”, or “here’s how you get an A” – but their values, goals, & dreams on a higher level are the same as mine or anyone’s.
So after all this belated revelation, have I decided to go teach in an inner city school? “Close the achievement gap”? In my time placed at Tech Boston, I learned more than empathy. I also came to understand that teaching in this kind of environment requires a fairly different skill set from teaching in an “average classroom” – in particular, a skill set I don’t have. While I was able to connect to and work with individuals well, I’m not convinced I could effectively show care, elicit buy-in, and teach them as a group.
That said, I have updated fairly significantly towards teaching these “struggling” students. I see systemic issues that are pretty troubling. For instance, the higher level the class (where AP > honors > college prep > remedial), the better the teachers tend to be. Struggling students aren’t receiving support, and teachers are so biased that when students actually try and do better, they don’t even notice and still give an eyeballed D by default. And there’s that whole disturbing trend that the remedial class is all African-American males. Even if I can’t realistically solve these problems single-handedly, surely I could make a small but positive difference. Even without the skills needed to do this well, I’d do better than a nonnegligible proportion of the teachers I observed. I’m much more open to this idea than before.
But even after all these updates, it’s ultimately not enough to actually change my course. Since then, I’ve also had some other thoughts about why I think it’s good for me in particular to push for gifted education. After all, just because better teachers exist at higher levels doesn’t mean that people on the high end of the curve are served well either – most teachers simply aren’t equipped for that, or can’t empathize. I’ve seen the quiet people and the people who already know what’s going on get passed over in classrooms so many times now. I bet even I’m guilty of this – they’re not the ones being disruptive or confused, so they don’t get the attention by default. As my education teacher last year was fond of saying, “90% of your attention will go to those 1 or 2 ‘trouble kids’”. As someone who does empathize deeply with this underserved population, can’t I do a better job than most people? I think so. I hope so. Pompous as it sounds, I believe it enough to pursue it.
But why teach at all? I’ve been asked this too – by slightly-condescending professors, by acquaintances, by close friends. Even though I know I like education and am excited to think about thinking, there are still many paths within the field. Why this one? Is it just because it’s the clearest path, if not the easiest?
Teaching isn’t going to make me rich. It’s neither glamorous nor particularly intellectually stimulating. It isn’t the most impactful job – I could be “doing good better”. But after overhearing someone I look up to (E) that impact at an EA level didn’t really matter to them, that stayed with me. It felt right in the same way that I was astonished to hear a friend want to major in astronomy. Like, wow, that’s actually an option. I don’t need to be so purely S2 about this decision. Because you know what? I like working with individuals. I like ranting about cool things. I’ve decided it satisfies enough parameters – I will have enough to live on fairly comfortably; I’m not doing explicit evil (and maybe doing good); I don’t hate it (and maybe even like it sometimes). All that, and the schedule is extremely good and gives me autonomy to pursue other things. But are these reasons good enough? Am I sure I’ve thought of enough of the alternatives? What happens in a year if I hate it? What are these “other things”, and why am I not doing those all the time?
Ugh. Is it not enough that for once, I’m actually excited about what I’m doing? That I like to talk and think about teaching and learning? And another thing – realizing I want to catalyze people’s growth as much as possible, that I want to be what Gaida was for me – but even better – also made me update astronomically towards teaching. I can barely begin to imagine how different my life would be right now without him as a teacher. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to attribute most of where I am now to him – his class had this huge butterfly effect across my entire life. One person’s time & energy saved me from being “just another 4.0 student”; led me to all my friends today; gave me a green light to look towards, telling me not to settle, a mindset that led me to become a more confident and fundamentally happier person – for no matter how lightly he intended the comment, it was exactly the push I needed. I want to help people be their best selves. As one SPARC instructor puts it, being Professor X, finding mutants and making them into X-Men. I want to be that push, the catalyst towards greater things. As a teacher, you’re given so much time to work with students, and hopefully, mentor them for the better. With great power, great responsibility. And I think I want it.
So here I am. I’m getting all my principles straightened out, consistent, distilled into words. And don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to be exclusively for the “gifted” people either. I’m one for high ceilings, low floors, & wide walls in my classroom. That is, I want to design environments for everyone, with low barriers to entry but high expectations, and probably even many ways to get there. And sure, nothing works for everyone. Still, I’m going to strive to not hurt anyone, or make anyone’s life worse. And yes, perhaps you’d laugh at how weak that statement sounds, but actually achieving it is pretty hard. I’m for teaching meta-skills and metacognition. I’m for helping people verbalize their goals and figuring out how to get there. I’m for exposing people to different ideas & perspectives. I’m for being flexible and reasonable, and remembering all my students are people. And maybe along the way, I’ll really change a handful of people’s lives for the better.
So is teaching the only way to achieve these goals? No. Do I think I’ll be teaching forever? Not with particularly high confidence. But I’m pretty happy where I am and where I’m headed. I still don’t have a good answer to what I’ll do if I hate it, but this scenario feels unlikely for a while. Sure, I could probably think about this a bit more, and I might look back at this post with a raised eyebrow. But worst comes to worst, it’ll probably end up as a fun journey to figure it out anyhow.
Next step: actually develop a curriculum worth teaching…