Teaching Journal Issue 3

It has been disturbing me that when writing my educational autobiography my recollections about primary school were virtually nonexistent. Why is that? Could it be because my memory has just faded because of age, or there was just nothing memorable about those years? So I asked my wife about her primary years and like a flood she rattles off each and every teacher she had from kindergarten through 8^th grade, with a little story to tell about each. What the hay? She knew the good ones and the not so good, but most feel into the good experience category. Maybe because her community was smaller than mine, classrooms seldom exceeding 15 students. Where I was on a self imposed quest to just get out of school with a diploma, she was a committed to the learning experience, and was a model student achieving good grades, regents diploma, and an eyelash short of National Honor Society. Whatever that was.

In Oakes, Teaching To Change the World, the chapter this week dealt with grouping, tracking, and categorizing programs. Essentially, labeling students. Now I am by no means stupid, and I don’t expect I was plain stupid back in elementary and high school. Did I not apply myself, certainly? Was I an annoyance to my teachers, most defiantly? Could it be early on in my academic life I was labeled a “don’t waste your time” student, and that followed me throughout my education? I never felt pushed by my teachers to do anything, and by my parents, pushed to just pass and move on. In the Ayers reading this week, the chapter on “Seeing the Student”, I saw the challenge there to identify with each of your students, to understand them. What excites them, what stories do they have to tell about what’s important to them, and how we as teachers can tap into those dreams, and ambitions to help us teach them as individuals. I find Ayers, inspirational so far. Maybe it’s idealism, but so what. Should we not always strive for the best? To give the best in ourselves, so that our students receive the best, everyday. I liked the method of how Ayers, engaged the parents with their input, to learn more about their children so he could better adjust his methods to each student. I ask myself does teaching in what appears to be a very structured curriculum afford me the time to individualize each students learning experience, so that I don’t get into the “why waste my time on him or her attitude”. Please let me be memorable in some way to my students. Was that selfish? I think we all seek recognition. Hopefully, from a good experience.

I have a teacher story that I heard from my brother-in-law, a middle school PE teacher. He and another fellow teacher were attending a school sporting event and were standing by the fence observing the game. From across the way, two former students, no longer in school anymore shouted, and waved to the teacher standing alongside my brother-in-law. “Hey, Mr. Smith, you asshole”. With that the other teacher turned to my brother-in-law with pride in his eyes and said, “do you see after all these years, they still call me mister”. I guess we choose what we hear. God, I hope I am not remembered like that.

In our kindergarten class we have no less than four reading groups, and as you would expect they are based on ability, at least in my observation. I will ask this week how in fact that is determined. My group having an autistic child, and two or three students who barely understand English, having recently arrived from Europe, Korea, and India. Talk about having your hands full in trying to get through the most rudimentary sentences, keeping their attention. No small task for the teacher to be sure. Certainly I help, taking care of my youngster, and the Korean child next to me. I believe these children also get at least a couple to three hours of individual attention in reading. What I find so very amazing, maybe because I struggled in high school with learning Spanish, is how within weeks these children almost without exception pick up the language so quickly. Is it that these children are wired for understanding languages or is it the child in us that is so receptive to picking up another language? I have more questions, than I do answers but I am learning more every week. My experience this past year as a paraeducator has truly in itself enriched my life. I think I may have said this before but I love going to school, I love the children, I love doing this. Even what one would perceive as a bad day, do not seem that way to me. This past week I have been kicked, almost bitten, chased an unruly child on the spectrum, and you know, it does not matter. To understand a child is to love a child. These are not bad children, these are children who need our help, to overcome or make the best of their situation, and we are there to help them.