The Lessons Are All Around You

Years ago, I was inspired by Douglas Brinkley’s The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey. In it, Brinkley described how he taught history to college students. He took them to historical sites and had them speak with eyewitnesses. Wanting this, but not knowing how to pay for it, I looked inward. I realized that our high school campus was surrounded by history, just like every other place.

Since then, I’ve been taking my students on low-rent tours of the campus. I’m lucky. I teach on an ancient, creaking, musty smelling campus built in 1923. And, like a beat-up boxer, it is still standing, even if it is leaning against the ropes. In among the cracked concrete and ratchet-fitted air conditioning (that works when it wants to but never when it’s hot) are historical treasures. There’s the Japanese garden that was destroyed after Executive Order 9066 but rebuilt on the 50^th anniversary of the Japanese internment. There’s the hallway where bold students demanded educational change and were then beaten by police in 1968. There are also two quiet memorials in a garden hidden on campus. They honor two teachers who dedicated their lives to our students and who died too soon.

Students looked at the campus in a different way after they took these tours.  I was satisfied with this, content even, when I read Ira Shor’s When Students Have Power: Negotiating Authority in a Critical Pedagogy. It is a memoir about teaching working class college students. Shor couldn’t engage his students until he had them do a critical exploration of their campus. The students came back with questions. How come only the provost’s offices are carpeted? How come the heat and air conditioning can be controlled in the dean’s and president’s offices but not in classrooms? Why do they get comfortable chairs and we get these?

I read it (twice actually) and realized I wasn’t taking my students far enough. So we began to look specifically at the monuments and memorials of our campus. We defined monuments and memorials as those things that help us remember and celebrate. My students soon discovered that our school celebrated cultural pride and sports. But it did not really celebrate academic success (other than testing). My students wondered why there was nothing on campus to honor successful graduates. They also observed that boys’ sports got more attention than girls’. This led to rich discussions.

All of this showed me that we can’t keep history in the past. It must be applied to our surroundings. We can’t just wait for these discoveries to happen. We must have students explore the rituals and practices of our own schoolhouses.