The Role of the English Teacher and Literac(y/ies) Education

What is an English Teacher? What should (s)he be?

As far as my question about the role of a teacher, I had a couple of conversations with professors, peers, and my mentor teacher in which the idea of student "need" came up. Professor X told us about some of the things that make life unpredictable from year to year--one year, you might have students who work independently and stay on task, for the most part. "Easy" students, generally speaking, to teach. And the following year, you might have a group of students that need a little bit more guidance, scaffolding, or support. This got me thinking about the odd phenomena of student need, and the role of a teacher. Later in the week, my MT (I'm just going to start abbreviating Mentor Teacher as MT because it makes my life much easier. Sorry, this abbreviation probably makes no sense to those of you who aren't pre-service teachers or involved in teacher ed), trying, I think, to be supportive when I perhaps sounded to her like I was doubting myself (who'd ever get the impression that I'd ever do that), said to me of her AP students, "Don't worry, they're good kids. You can't really mess them up." This made me think a minute. I mean, is there a distinction between "bad" kids and "good" kids, "smart" kids and "dumb" kids, students who struggle and those to whom learning comes with a fair degree of ease?

Certainly, all students, of all levels of academic and cognitive ability, all areas of interest, confidence, parental involvement, etc., need good teachers. But I think there's a reason that so few of my peers in my special education class have students in their classes with IEP's. I may be wrong about this--I've done no fact checking whatsoever, and no asking of professors or others in my program--but I suspect that student teachers/interns generally get placed in fairly high-level classes--honors and AP classes. I suspect there are two reasons for this--one is that teachers of AP students perhaps feel more confident that we can't "mess their students up," but I think the main reason is that most student-teachers are placed in classes with teachers who are generally considered to be expert teachers, teachers with a fair amount of experience and who demonstrate competence.

But, wait a minute, if you're reading carefully, you'll notice that there's something a little funny about what I just wrote. The AP kids are the one who student teachers are qualified to teach, because regardless of how much we might stumble, we won't mess up their learning, because they're independent learners. (This is not me making truth statements, but just restating the hypothetical logic that I suspect, perhaps wrongly so, goes into our placement decisions) We also end up in these placements because the teachers are experts who we can sort of apprentice, who have a lot of desirable skills. Have you caught the drift of what I'm suggesting yet

If not, let me be explicit. In my experience, in my placement now and in the high school I attended as a student, the vet teachers, the real "expert" teachers, taught the AP, honors, and academic sections. The new teachers taught the on-level students, or the "vocational" track students. Again, I don't have the studies/research to back me up here, but it seems to me that the best teachers in the biz might be teaching to the students who, supposedly, need them the least. Of course, I'm not suggesting that AP students don't need good teachers. Certainly, I think they do, which is why I worry so much about failing them, not being the teacher they deserve me to be. But don't struggling students, students with IEP's, students with low levels of parental involvement, students from low-SES homes, single-parent homes, working-parent homes--don't they need strong teachers even more? Perhaps they don't. But I do know one thing for nearly certain. Most of the "lower-level" classes at my placement tend to be a lot larger. And the same was true in high school. And, as far as I know, that's a pretty typical pattern to see in urban low-SES schools (again, no research to back that up, so don't take it for truth--I'm basing this on my experience and what I remember hearing, not always the most reliable sources, and they certainly wouldn't stand up to peer review). At the very least, planning for large classes is a big struggle that, in itself, requires expert maneuvering. My point in all of this--and I know I'm slow at getting to it; I told you, I had a LOT of time to think while I was brooding last week and cheering this week and blogging neither week--is that I'm trying to decide where I belong once I finish my program at Pitt. I was thinking, really, truly thinking about teaching at an urban school in NYC for the first couple of years, at least, of my career. My reasoning was that I suspected there was a higher need for talented, committed educators in those schools (and at that time, I still saw myself as potentially talented. Now, I may be revising that idea. I still think I can do it--teach well, that is--but it may take a lot more work than I anticipated) and I had a duty to go to the schools where the need was highest. This, perhaps, is an incredibly, incredibly arrogant thing to think--as if I'm going to spend two years in a school in the Bronx and suddenly the students will realize that they have value and will become scholars and grow up to be congress(wo)men, all thanks to my self-sacrifice. Maybe it is arrogance, but I think it's important for me to work with students who other educators don't want to work with. Maybe it's a misguided feeling--I can't really fully articulate a rationale for it, but I feel that it's important for me to do it, and maybe that's enough, but maybe it isn't. Anyways, regardless of my motives, last week, when I was feeling lower than a bow-legged caterpillar, I was certain that I wasn't qualified to work in an urban school--I was sure that I didn't have the "with-it-ness" (or is it spelled withitness?), the classroom management skills, the rapport-building-skills, the experience with "difficult" students to teach in an urban school. But then, something funny (not in the "hahaha" way, but in the "oh-my-word" way) occurred to me--urban schools are the ones with the job openings, the ones where we, entry-level teachers, are often told we may have to work for a couple of years to gain experience before getting the jobs we "really" want. Shouldn't we be sending our best teachers to our "high-need" students and leaving the ones that "you can't mess up" to the rookies? I don't know how much of my reasoning here is solid logic with facts to back it up and how much is my cynicism coming across, but I know the job I'm going to get as an entry-level professional will not be working with "good" "independent" learners--they're a reward for dealing with the tough kids for enough years, it seems.

Anyways, what this weird little aside comes down to is simply this: I don't know what the role of a teacher is/should be, and I don't know how much that changes based on the "neediness" of a particular group of students. And I don't know if it's even fair to think of urban schools as "high need" schools. Who are we to think they need us? (Those pronouns aren't plural because I have a group in mind, but mostly because I don't want to think of myself as the only arrogant starry-eyed educator to feel this way) Do they, or don't they? Do low test scores mean high need? Are students failing just because they're not doing well academically? Bob Fecho wrote about students in his "urban" school in Philly, which served a largely black and Carribean student body, refusing to "play the game" of standardized tests. (Sorry, I don't have the book with me right this second to give a full citation) I don't know if that can be generalized to all "high-need, low SES, urban" schools, but I know in my placement, many of the students with below basic scores on their PSSA pretests seem smart and engaging enough to me, but they don't want to play the game of school. Is it clear, I wonder, what I mean by that? These students demand authenticity, transparency about purpose. If they're doing worksheets just for the sake of completing a packet and covering a unit, they don't buy it, and they don't care. And then they don't do well, and so teachers give them lower level work. Then, they care even less. And I can't blame them. Is it my job to make them care? (The answer to this question may be different between my pre-service year and my first year teaching)

It all comes down to what English classes should look like, and this was another question I had. A lot of my students don't care about English, because it's hard for them--many of them have learning disabilities that make reading really hard for them--and the purpose isn't clear, so it doesn't seem to be worth the effort it takes. I wish they saw words the way I do. I love words so much, because I use them in so many ways, and I see how much they empower me--they put me in dialogue with experts in Education, many of whom I'll never be able to meet, they help to expose me to so many different world views and cultural perspectives that inform my own and help me see the richness of the world, they help me express myself, understand how I'm feeling when I miss my fiance who's living in NYC but also can't bear the thought of going in to a class I know I don't understand, they help me tell others about my struggles with my teacher prep program and seek insight into my career trajectory, and they help me see through political speeches, media bias, and so much other crap that gets thrown at me daily from all sides (for example, I'm at y brother's house right now, on his computer, totally inside, with the TV off, and I can spot 5 advertisements from where I'm sitting) This awareness gives me power. I want them to have the power of words, too!

But they're not getting it by filling out worksheet packets. Or by not filling out worksheet packets while their teacher shakes her head.

The Purpose of English Class: The Power of Literac(y/ies)

I don't know what the students think the purpose of English class is. I don't know what my placement school or my MT think the purpose of English class is. But I know what the purpose is for me. Making students strong, strong, strong. Showing them how to determine what was influencing the author of a text--living in a racist, sexist society, for example, and either incorporating those assumptions into their texts or pushing against them. Talking to them about how we can read a book to think about history--not the facts of history, but an artifact of a cultural moment. Teaching them to read the world around them with a critical eye. Teaching them how to advocate for themselves, how to actively oppose unfairness without needing violence. I want them so badly to know the power of writing in their own voice, dialoging with themselves through writing to understand themselves. I care so much about English and so much about students. But is this really what English classes are for? Is that what my MT's classroom does? I don't think so. Maybe I'm wrong. About a lot of things I've written here. But I know it's possible to gain autonomy and power from literacy, because I've read parts of Malcolm X's biography, and I've read Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and I've read Virginia Woolf and Luce Irigary and Gloria Anzaldua (forgive the absence of accent marks, I have no idea how to insert them in a blog post. Why can't html cooperate with word processing software keyboard shortcuts?) and so many others who say such brilliant things that people get to read and talk about only because they're written.

These students aren't reading these things, though. So is this a canon war I'm fighting? Or is it a pedagogical one? Or is the "war" a figment of my imagination, and, really, an overreaction to a fairly good education system. (Sir Ken Robinson doesn't seem to think so http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U ) But what do I do about that?

Let's say we can buy my premise that English classrooms are about empowering students with literac(y/ies) skills ( I just got Reading, Writing and Rising Up and Teaching for Joy and Justice, 2 books by Linda Christensen, at the recommendation of a very smart peer/colleague of mine, we'll call her Catherine, and I suspect, though I haven't read them yet, that they may support this premise, as well. She spoke--Linda Christensen, not Catherine--at the PCTELA conference I wrote about last time, and she dealt with this idea a bit) and that my presumption that AP kids are fairly independent learners with a pretty sophisticated repertoire of literacy skills, and that the students not in AP classes--the students in my MT's remedial reading class, for example, with IEP's and low-SES backgrounds, who live in foster homes and haven't been "good at school" in a very long time--aren't getting access to those literacies, which leaves them, in some ways, disempowered. Oughtn't someone step in, and say, "enough, quit cheating these kids out of a fair chance in a game that is, in a lot of ways, fixed against them." Okay, so that's a grossly oversimplified way to think about it, but it conveys the general sense of frustration I feel when I try to negotiate the sophisticated "best practices" I'm learning from Pitt with the students at my placement who just need me to make sure I don't mess up too badly, and with my prospective job options--what I feel I ought to do, would like to do, but don't know if I can do vs. what I think I probably could do but don't feel "called" to do. I know the notion of being "called" to work in an urban school sounds so, again, condescending, and I don't mean it to be. I don't know, perhaps my attitude isn't the right one, and I'd be inauthentic and not confident enough and wouldn't be successful in an urban school as a result of these types of thoughts exactly. But who's going to teach in the cities, then? New teachers waiting for the jobs they really want to open up?

Sorry, this entry really must be laborious to read. It's what I'm thinking right now--back and forth, back and forth, highs and lows, highs and lows--which must be torturous to read--assuming anyone's bothering to read by this point--but maybe it'll put you in my shoes a little. No linear path of logic to follow. Just trying to navigate a minefield of thoughts and doubts and questions without losing all my limbs before getting to the other side.

But, since I'm into the topic of what English classes should look like, I might as well move on to my arch frenemy for the year--unit planning!