Articles

Somewhere around Thanksgiving, we’re bombarded with the commercial celebration of the holidays. Schools are no exception, and the hype is difficult to ignore. Is this a great time for our students to study the holidays celebrated throughout the globe?

Whenever I see a movie about teachers, I get a little nervous. I wonder how my profession will be represented. I’m always curious, but usually disappointed. I have found that on-screen teachers tend to perpetuate two frustrating stereotypes about the profession. The first is that anyone can teach—or worse—“those who can’t, teach.” There’s a misconception that teaching requires no special skills or talents beyond a basic knowledge of the content area. The other stereotype is teacher as martyr-saint. This portrayal assumes that the one qualification for being a good teacher is a heart of gold, a willingness to sacrifice everything out of love for children. Most films ignore the complexity of the craft of teaching. This makes me cringe.

When I was in elementary school, it was common to overhear adults say that children were from “broken homes” if they lived with a single mom or dad or sometimes with grandparents. One of those families belonged to my friend Ellie, who lived with her mom. So I asked my father, a Congregational minister, why some people thought Ellie’s family was broken? Dad gently explained that strong families, Ellie’s included, have three characteristics: love, connectedness and commitment.

One of the most powerful gifts we can give our children—for the future of our nation—is a college education. It may, in fact, be the most powerful gift. For so many of our country’s greatest success stories, the golden ticket that launched the inspiring life was the chance to go to college.

I used to tell my art students that some of the best art comes from mistakes. It seems the same is true for teaching. If we can be flexible enough to recognize the lesson in mistakes, we can go a long way with our students.

Hands jut into the crisp autumn air, restricting my field of vision to a sea of shirtsleeves. While this is not an odd phenomenon after a new writing assignment, the types of questions are. “When will we mail it?” and “Can I make this longer than three paragraphs?” replace heavy sighs of “When is this due, again?”

I asked a small group of second-graders what they would like to find inside their mailboxes. That was after we read a story about a goose who opened her mailbox and found a kite. I expected to hear answers of things: video games, toys or basketballs. But the first student who raised her hand looked at me with sincere, big brown eyes and said, "I'd like to find a letter from my dad." In my classroom, my kids say the profoundest things.

A young language arts student teacher directed her class to “close your eyes and imagine what your characters might look like.” I was observing her second-ever presentation to one of the classes where she would practice-teach for the next few weeks. “Details are very important in descriptions,” she continued, “but you can’t write about them if you can’t see them. Maybe you want to write about a beautiful young girl. Think about the details. She’d have big blue eyes and long blond hair, and her hands would be slender and delicate.” As she spoke, I watched her seventh-grade students. They represented the lower-middle-class school’s racial and ethnic mix pretty well: About half of them appeared to be Hispanic, almost a third could be considered African-American and the rest looked Caucasian. I didn’t see a blond hair or a blue eye among them. Most also had round, soft bodies.

In order to enhance my sixth-graders’ ability to connect personally with topics we read about in class, I assigned a writing assignment. I ask students to make real connections to demonstrate their understanding of the topic. There are three areas of connection. First there’s the connection to their lives, then to another piece of literature and finally—the most sophisticated connection—to the world.

Have you ever been the only (fill in category) person in the room? Race, class, gender, age, body type, marital status—any number of identifiers can place us outside the norm, depending on the room. Otherness is a specific experience, especially for those who don’t live it every day. A couple of my students unwittingly placed themselves squarely into the role of “other” in an assignment outside our classroom, and I suspect learned a more powerful lesson than I ever could have taught them in class. The assignment was to find, attend and write an article covering an event. When two students proposed attending a senior citizen fundraising fashion show on the other side of town, I immediately approved the idea.