Why We TeachExcerpts Why do people
choose teaching as a career? What is it that entices them to spend
their days engaged in learning with other people’s children?
Why do they decide to go into what are frequently demanding situations,
sometimes in poorly funded and rundown schools? Why do they choose
teaching rather than other professions that would give them better
compensation, higher status, and more respect? I teach because
it gives me a purpose. Teaching gives me a really good reason to
get up and try my best every day. I may be naïve, but I believe
that what I do day in and day out does make a difference. Teachers
do change lives forever. And I teach in public school because I
still believe in public school. I believe that the purpose of public
school, whether it delivers or not, is to give a quality education
to all kids who come through the doors. I want to be a part of that
lofty mission. The future of our country depends on the ability
of public schools to do that. What troubles
me about teacher questions, my own as well as those of my colleagues,
and the endless barrage of questions in the ever-expanding test
culture, is that other people’s questions interrupt a person’s
thoughts and define the mental territory a student is allowed to
enter. Just as I don’t want to be like my hometown librarian,
who was tempted to limit what I could read, I am worried that we
teachers constantly interrupt the kids’ own thinking—to
the point where thinking becomes subordinate to, often limited to,
guessing what the teacher thinks on the topics that the teacher
is thinking about. Watching young
people grow and find their depth is another incredibly gratifying
benefit I’ve derived from teaching. The most compelling sense
of closure to our brief time together doesn’t show up on any
tests or score sheets or essay booklets. There’s just something
in the eyes of each and every one of the kids that tells me that
I made a difference. Some kids come right out and say thank you,
and that melts me every time. But whether or not a single word is
exchanged in parting, that look in their eyes reflects the power
and purpose they’ve created within themselves. I glimpse a
little piece of the future as they walk out the door. Deep within
my being, I know that my eyes are giving me away, too, because I’ll
emerge far better for the experience. I often have
thought about writing an essay on learning how to teach. I would
call it Teaching with Latirah. Latirah was a student in my F period
class. This group was filled with some pretty smart, although not
necessarily book smart, students. Refusing to sign her first-quarter
progress report, she threw it on the floor. I was totally unprepared
for her actions. I tired to cajole her, but after one or two attempts,
I picked up her progress report from the floor and taught my lesson.
I needed more time to decide what to do. Finally, I opted to go
to Latirah’s counselor, a man I knew she liked. I didn’t’
want to go to her assistant principal, as it was too early to lose
her. When the counselor talked with Latirah, she repeated what she
had told me. She said she wasn’t a D student and that was
why she would not sign her progress report. In the end, Latirah
agreed to sign her progress report, but only after vocalizing that
she was going to show me that she was a B student. True to her word,
Latirah earned a B that quarter. My mother kept
a chalkboard near the kitchen sink so she could drill us on our
phonics, handwriting, and multiplication tables while she was scrubbing
potatoes and dishes. From a very early age, academic achievement
was linked in my mind to my mother’s singing, scolding, praising,
and praying. She instilled in each of us high expectations, respect
for teachers, and a deep, passionate love of learning. I distinctly
remember arguing with my sisters about who would get to be teacher
when we played school—and now three of us are career public
school educators. I know it’s
easy to sit back and listen to the gossip in schools. These kids
can’t learn, is what you hear. The truth is they can and do.
We have to see and believe. There are great obstacles, of course.
Teaching is not easy. There are so many incompetent administrators.
There are many uncaring teachers. The political obstacles are almost
insurmountable. But the truth is that an excellent, caring teacher
can excite children to learn more. I believe that empowered students
love learning and it was my responsibility to excite them. My background
led me to teach for educational justice. I taught at a Boston high
school because my father was a union organizer in the 1930’s
and in his house I learned about social and economic injustice that
fell heavily on the poor and people of color who lived in cities.
When I see students not working up to their capacity, I tell them
that they are fulfilling this culture’s demeaning belief that
that they cannot achieve. Moreover, the wealthy do not want them
competing for positions at colleges and jobs reserved for their
children. I teach to empower my students, not to succumb to the
culture’s lowest expectations. As an artist
and teacher, I believe youth is where character, questions, and
desires are born…Hiding behind the camera and watching for
a moment of insight became somewhat of an exploit, a mission for
more differences. There was something out there that I needed to
know, something that would answer the questions I had about who
I was. The camera made me determined to seek relationships and spaces
with the hope of finding within it my true identity. Teaching…unsettles
me. I’m continuously vigilant, constantly policing myself.
I can let go of other things: I can pay my mortgage late, or let
my car insurance expire by forgetting to pay the premium, but teaching
is different. It has insinuated itself into my very being. It is
a spiritual experience that brings peace to my life when I do it
right, and I know I have done it right when I have exhausted all
possibilities to make learning wonderful for my students and for
me. I love to laugh.
To be a good teacher, you have to have a good sense of humor….The
other day a little girl named Judy attempted to walk out of the
classroom with bulging pockets. She was questioned by my student
teacher about her destination and the contents of her pockets. Judy
feigned a bathroom emergency and scurried off to the girls’
room. Watching from afar, I was amused by her zest to accomplish
her mission of getting to the girls’ room. When Judy came
back, her head was draped with plastic beaded necklaces. My assistant
described her as looking like a lamp. I laughed so hard inside at
the sight of the green, blue, and red acrylic beads wrapped around
her plats and dangling in her face with her eyes peeping in between
the strands. Of course, you can fully appreciate children’s
humor only if you allow space for that kind of sharing and familiarity
in yourself and in your classroom. If children
are to help create a society that is more socially responsible than
that of their parents’ generation, I believe it must start
with quality classroom experiences. By allowing the class to be
a forum for open discussion and respectful listening about meaningful
stuff, by grounding the subject matter in the lives of my students,
and by trusting them to evaluate their own sense of fairness and
justice, I have discovered that students are better able to critique
the real world. They are better prepared to make positive change
in a world that desperately needs it. Throughout my
educational history and my professional life, empowerment and social
justice have galvanized me in my desire to remain teaching, even
in tough times. But overall, I have come to the conclusion that
love is at the center of everything, especially why I teach. It
is through collaborative and open-ended relationships with my family,
mentors, and students that I receive and share this love. It is
love that provides me with the ability to give back. In turn, I
hope that these young ladies, and other students that I have had
in the past and those I will have in the future, will share their
gifts with others like themselves so that future generations will
continue the chain of community, social action, empowerment, and
love. I am never satisfied
with the notion that the longer I teach, the more expert I become.
I am not an expert, but I am striving to learn more and become experienced.
I live in the learning mode. I am motivated to learn more because
I am a teacher reaching for higher standards for myself and for
my students. There is nothing more rewarding than helping to transform
students who thought they could never create anything meaningful
into confident and excited historians. A lesson in world history
on the art of Michelangelo finds me jumping on a desk, lying face
up, showing students how Michelangelo created his masterpiece. Students
are engaged, excited, answering difficult questions about art, style,
and form. The students add their own critical analysis to the work
and I, as their teacher, am in awe of them. This is a gift, a miracle.
Not many people
plan out their goals at age 3 or 4, but there I was in preschool,
looking up at my teacher and thinking, I want to be like her and
do what she does…I want to have my own class one day. Perhaps
it was the seemingly effortless control she had over us, the creativity
she had in the classroom, or maybe it was that sense of happiness
and satisfaction she seemed to exude every day. Whatever it was,
it was then that I set my goal of becoming a teacher and my response
to the what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up? question remained
the same as the years passed. Now, looking back, I realize that
my first teacher was more than a teacher. She was proof that there
was something more to life, that I didn’t have to be stuck,
unhappy, and struggling like so many of the Latin women I saw daily
with tired and longing faces, walking up and down the streets of
Brooklyn, New York. Real teaching
and real learning both require great acts of courage. As teachers,
we constantly ask students to take big risks: to try a new way of
thinking, to answer a question without being sure of the answer,
to reveal their true opinions. If I wanted to be a teacher who taught
students to truly engage, I had better model courage, continue to
be open and honest about myself, and take the same risks that I
am asking them to take. When I do take these risks, my life becomes
richer, more exciting, and more exhilarating than I ever thought
middle school teaching could be. Teaching has
remained as challenging today as it was when I first started. I
have lived through three cycles of teacher layoffs and under funding
of public education. Students continue to cross the school threshold
with many of the same issues that have plagued society throughout
my career, making my commitment as important now as it was 30 years
before. The greatest gift I receive as a teacher is being recognized
by a former student who might have had difficulty learning to read,
became a parent too young, or was involved in gang activity. More
times than not, these students tell me of their latest accomplishments.
One might be attending community college, another has a good job,
and another might recall a literature project that made it possible
for her to enjoy reading. Those cherished exchanges fuel my commitment
and motivation to teach. We, who do this
work, are caught in a conundrum, working within the system to create
change. We willingly hand over our careers, sometimes it seems like
our lives, to a massive bureaucracy so that we can work hard to
connect with one individual at a time, light a fire in just one
mind. Our successes, the ones the system sees as such, usually go
unnoticed or, worse, became institutionalized failures: mandates
that crash and burn. Our failures—our frustrations and defeats
in the classroom where the work that matters actually is done—become
our successes, our chances to rise from the ashes and become new
again. Renewal is an oxymoron another paradox we strive to attain.
Perpetual proximity to youth, though, gives me courage or delusion
enough to believe I can come in and try it again a different way,
make the lesson, the text, or the class new again. Thirty-five
years later, I still get out of bed every day and head to school,
try to figure out what I can do to connect kids with one another
and with learning. I know I need to help them make it in today’s
world. I also know they need to know that things do not have to
be the way they are. There may be better ways of doing things. There
may be other ways of looking at things. If I just teach them how
to survive in this inequitable society, how to get along, I am doing
them a tremendous disservice. Teachers have enormous power and we
must use it wisely. If we teach them to accept the status quo, most
of them will do just that. If we teach them to ask questions, most
of them will learn to think carefully before they accept things
just because it’s always been that way. I am always asking
kids, Are you sure that’s true? How do you know? Where is
your evidence? Could things be different? Do you think everyone
sees this the way you do? So why do I
teach? I teach because someone has to tell my students that they
are not the ones who are dumb. They need to know that only the blissfully
ignorant and profoundly evil make up tests to prove that they and
people like them are smart. I teach because my students need to
know that poverty does not equal stupidity, and that surviving a
bleak, dismal childhood makes you strong and tough and beautiful
in ways that survivors of similar childhoods can appreciate and
understand. I teach because my students need to know that in their
struggle to acquire a second language, they participate in one of
the most difficult of human feats. My students also need to know
that 4 days of reading in a second language under high-stakes testing
conditions would shut down even Einstein’s brain. I teach
because my students need to know that right and wrong are relative
to one’s culture, and that even these definitions become laughable
over time. I teach because the people who make up these tests don’t
know these things or, worse, they do. As a teacher,
I want children to leave school with a social conscience, an appreciation
for diversity and life, a thirst for learning, and an understanding
of how knowledge can allow them to achieve their dreams. I also
want them to leave the classroom with good memories because, since
teachers are life-touchers, we want to be a part of children’s
childhood memories. Other teachers might not admit this, but I will:
Even if I might never get to hear it from their lips, I want my
former students to recall their time in my class. I want them to
remember something worthwhile, great or small that happened there.
I hope that my students will remember my class not because it was
perfect, but because of its unique flaws. Hopefully, they also will
remember that I was a teacher who truly cared and strived to teach
them. This is my definition of a life-toucher. I remember that
my teachers talked about the Mets winning the World Series and about
astronauts going to the moon, but we never talked about why there
was fighting in Vietnam and Northern Ireland, why there were riots
in American cities, why Martin Luther King was killed, what possible
reason there could have been for inventing napalm, why the National
Guard shot the students at Kent State, why Patty Hearst decided
to join the Symbionese Liberation Army. I wondered terribly about
all these things by myself. Finally, in 7th grade I had a teacher,
Rita Rappaport Rowan, who was willing to talk about the world and
who asked me to write about my life, from mud pies to mildew to
napalm. She read what I wrote, and wrote back, asking me to write
more and more. She was the teacher I needed. She helped me find
ways to make sense of the world and encouraged me to question everything,
not just so that I could learn the 7th-grade English curriculum,
but so that I could learn and learn and learn. I know I am not Rita
to all of my students, but I know that I am Rita to some of my students.
That alone is reason enough to teach. COPYRIGHT ©
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY |
