The Classroom as Community
Rachel
Weimerskirch
New York, New York
Current
Teaching Assignment: Grade 8
Past Teaching Assignment: Grade 3
When my students leave at the end of the day, the classroom seems to sigh
with all that has transpired there since first period.
The fading light over Harlem settles across circles of empty desks and
stacks of student journals with the weight of so much history.
I imagine this twilight has traveled from the Apollo Theatre and the
historic brownstones, just a few blocks away, to this space, where my students
write their days on streets named for Frederick Douglas, Adam Clayton Powell and
Duke Ellington.
As
I open a journal to read some student writing, my colleague enters and crumples
into a middle school desk that is too small for his strong, adult form.
He puts his head in his hands. “We
are fighting against a giant,” he begins, and I can hear the weight of our
eighth graders in his voice. “The
giant is this community.”
While my teaching partner and I spend our days laying foundations for
abstract concepts, engaging young people in accountable talk and attempting to
face history with a group of impulsive and hungry teen-agers, we know that our
students leave us at three o’clock to follow a different code and speak a
different language. Some may head
directly to 125th Street, where hip-hop and consumer culture is their
community. Hip-hop seems to be an
art form rooted in poetry and self-expression has digressed to a money-centered
iconography, but it serves as an alternative family for so many of my students
who have few sources of guidance and inspiration from the adults in their lives.
When we traced the roots of hip-hop culture in class, they made it clear:
hanging out on 125th beneath larger-than-life posters of Foxy
Brown beats an empty apartment building or the corner store.
Sexist and violent lyrics matter less than the sense of belonging.
On
their way past the few blocks that separate our school and the shops on 125th
Street, they’ll pass what used to be known to members of the community
as the “Field of Dreams.” Some
of these students played baseball there as young children, but a developer
bought the land and turned it into apartments.
They
may pass gang members, street fights, drug dealers and gun violence.
These images appear in their writing and in our class discussion daily.
They’ll pass the newsstand where the headlines might inform them that
Bush is doing all he can to “Smoke ‘em out of their holes.”
They are confused as to how they are supposed to set their own moral
compass when the North Star of adulthood – from the President to the men and
women on the streets to their parents – are so frighteningly misaligned.
As
a teacher, I wear the mantle of role model, charged with the job of helping
young people become good people. Despite
my students’ lack of bedtime stories, family dinners and sense of community, I
know that my students can find a positive role model in their classroom.
That role model might be me as an individual. I only feel up to that challenge because I have had role
models myself. It’s easier to
become one when you have watched yours carefully all of your life. It is a cycle of each one learning to teach one.
However,
the role model that they find in my classroom may not be me.
It may be someone else in the room or someone they have encountered in
their study of literature and history. It
may be a community volunteer, college student or retired person who has come
into our class. The important thing
is that the classroom will give them community.
The key is allowing them to flourish in a school environment which
addresses how we speak to each other, how we problem solve and what moral code
we follow together while we exist in this space.
As teachers, we set expectations and we are the examples of what we
expect. We must follow the rules of
the community that we have created.
In
my eighth grade classroom, we recently faced a major challenge that tested this
system of community. It has been a difficult year for my class and one of the
biggest challenges is my own personal one.
I have communicated with my class about my mother’s recent battle with
brain cancer. They are aware that I
must take personal days frequently this year to help care for her.
They are aware that I often travel from New York to her home in
Pittsburgh to be with her. I have
also communicated to them that I want to move to Pittsburgh to help her
full-time, but I must see my class through to graduation, because I have a
commitment to them. Throughout this
communication, my students have become aware of the importance of my cell phone.
It is only on my desk or turned on when I am expecting a call from a
doctor. It is my daily link to my
mother.
A
few weeks ago, my cell phone was on my desk at the beginning of a class period,
as I was awaiting a call from the oncologist.
At the end of the period, the cell phone was gone.
I followed the steps that we always follow in communicating to problem
solve. We took time out for a
community meeting to reflect on our individual responsibilities to the class.
I began by taking responsibility as a member of the community for leaving
my cell phone in a place that may not have been safe, though I believed it to be
safe due to trust in my students. Students
reflected, mostly in silence, as I asked a number of questions to allow students
to evaluate themselves. The next
morning the cell phone reappeared on my desk during our home base period.
When
adolescents are given tools to buy into a school as community, they will not
want to damage, cut off or destroy the experiences and relationships they learn
to value. The importance of their school environment is crucial,
especially when we exist in a larger social climate that has failed to retain a
sense of connectedness. A
detachment from one another -- from the realization that what happens to one
group in our society affects us all – is one root of young people’s fight
against the circumstances of the dysfunctional families and violent streets of
our difficult world.
The
issue of equality in education is a perfect example of this detachment.
While teachers strive to impart empathy in adolescents in our classrooms,
we are struggling in our society to stress the idea that education is not just
about my child, but all children. This
educational palaver is all over campaigns of seemingly good-natured “education
presidents,” but the reality of resource allocation and community struggle
remains in our segregated and class-based school system.
Adolescents see that in their families, in our schools and in our nation,
we lack a sense of community; we lack an awareness of our part in the whole.
For
teenagers, who simultaneously seek and reject community, a classroom where there
is freedom within a structure allows them to more clearly define a sense of
self. The logical next step, with
the right questioning, is that they begin to wonder how this self fits into the
larger picture of their community and world.
If that becomes clear in their classroom, it is much easier to translate
when they step beyond the school walls.
Unlike
family structure, the daily events in a classroom are a microcosm of the world.
When we allow students to learn to be themselves in relation to others
and to view their learning critically and responsibly, they acquire knowledge of
goodness and truth from history, literature and society.
Each begins to define the journey towards becoming a good person:
one who is equally equipped with knowledge and self-awareness.
I
believe that this environment is based on three cornerstones:
the teacher must follow the rules of the community, the focus of the day
must be the process of exploring the academics (through which much of this moral
work is done), and the structure must be clearly communicated and agreed upon by
all. Teenagers may not necessarily
like everything, but they do understand compromise and they will agree to
reason, despite all of those excess synapses in the brain that stand in the way
of judicious decisions. That
adolescent unfinished prefrontal cortex can actually work in favor of the
classroom community – though adolescents may not be able to organize and
prioritize tasks as adults do, they certainly want control over their
environment. They definitely want
to confer with their friends about what is important.
Let them confer and ask questions that guide them towards debate.
Those student-centered debates often end in reasoning out what we can all
accept in order to prosper together in the community.
The
truest knowledge is the realization that if we love learning we can see all
experiences as teachers (not a powerful individual in a suit, but a lesson that
can be extracted). The knowledge is there to make us good people.
We certainly need powerful human beings -- teachers, leaders and parents
-- to serve as models. However, the most important thing we can do for our
young people is give them the tools to create their own daily environment that
serves as a community in which they can see themselves
as teacher in all that they do.
Q1
-- Comment on the 6-year old with a telescope and his interest in abstract
ideas. How unusual was he?
Have you encountered students with similar focus and reasoning abilities?
Discuss.
The
6-year old in Robert Coles’ account wasn’t at all unusual.
Childhood is a period of intense wonder, when our minds are mutable and
wide-open to everything we experience. Given
a stimulating environment, most children will focus intensely on what is around
them, connecting ideas and stating the most honest of observations.
The
6-year old with his telescope reminds me of Nick, a 5-year old I once met who
was fascinated by dinosaurs, earth science and astronomy.
Nick had an acute ability to not only absorb what he learned about his
interests, but to connect them to his questions about the beginning of life on
earth. He guided me through a
picture book on the subject, opening first to a page about the Big Bang and
explaining, “This is where it all began.”
Q2
-- Were you surprised to read that young children may be “ethically
introspective citizens”? Discuss.
Children absorb the ethical issues that surround them – in the news, in
adult discussions and through their own questions about fairness and justice.
Though young children are in an egocentric stage of development, they are
beginning to question what is fair and what is right about the way they move
through their days, especially when something touches their lives and appears to
be wrong or unfair.
During my first year as a third grade teacher, I taught an extremely
insightful child, who was as aware of ethical issues as she was of her
multiplication tables. Ruth became
known as our class problem-solver, since she would often judiciously help to
manage issues from pencil ownership to fist fights.
Early
in the year, I was attempting to line up my class for lunch.
I was frazzled. My systems
and routines were brand-new and inconsistent.
I was on the verge of tears. Ruth
was standing at the front of the line, two-fingers up (our symbol for quiet),
casting a disapproving glance to her peers who were not yet in line.
In the midst of her quiet whispers to her classmates to get in line, she
noticed my emotional state. She
turned to me and asked, “Is it hard to be a teacher?”
I
answered, “Sometimes, Ruthie, but it’s never hard to be your teacher!”
She
replied, “Well, you should get paid as much as a movie star.
That’s not really fair.” What
an ethical reflection on a fact that our society accepts with little
questioning.
Q3
-- Do you agree that morality can be taught in all kinds of classes?
Give examples from experience.
Any academic subject can serve as a catalyst for young people to suddenly
connect with a question that is nagging their sense of morality.
It can be triggered by something written in the 1500’s or by a math
problem about a population comparison between third and first world countries.
The teachable moment emerges in every subject and a student’s question,
based on a moral issue, can serve as the meat of a brilliant class discussion.
One of my most promising experiences has been my literature class this
year. After reading Mac
Beth, the class translated the play into modern language and set it in
present day Harlem. The
universality of the issues hit us all. While
reading Romeo and Juliet, my students
found that they grapple with the same struggles of the Capulets and Montagues.
Where Capulet and Montague solid moral leaders for their children?
How are they like the gangs in my students’ neighborhoods? A student in this class recently brought up the issue of
equitable housing. Why are housing
projects called the projects?
The student asked, “Is it an experiment or a project to see if poor
people can survive?” These
questions emerged from a scene study of the Capulet ball.
Q4
-- What was meant by the phrase encountered in your required reading:
“We are all moral witnesses.”? Describe
an instance in the classroom when you were a good moral witness.
The
phrase “We are all moral witnesses” serves to remind us that we are
connected. Injustice, lack of moral
leadership, poverty and other moral issues may not strike my individual life,
but I am affected by the struggles of others in my world community.
We can all choose more happiness if we attempt to live as Emily Dickinson
described, with this idea: “If I
can stop one heart from breaking/I shall not live in vain.”
In
my classroom, I have been a moral witness by building a community.
My students feel safe within my class, despite circumstances of their
lives in a neighborhood challenged by violence and a city recently challenged by
terrorism. We think about the way
we speak to each other and they way we connect to each other.
They know the depth of my commitment to them is not based on personal
satisfaction, a fact that is clear to them because I haven’t left mid-year
despite the health issues in my family.
Writing
about our class community, one of my eighth graders explained, “I feel that if
I am on the community team, I will get the greatest award -- not the noble
prize, not a trophy, I’ll get a community. . . To have a helpful community is
to be human and living life to the fullest.”
Reading this student’s essay, I know that I am not the only moral
leader who helped him find these words, but I am with him each day, helping him
to actualize these seeds of thought into his future actions.
Q5
-- Define courage. Tell of a
youngster who has had the courage to stand up for his/her beliefs/values.
Courage is listening to the still,
small voice inside when other voices are shouting above it. I have students who do this everyday.
During my second year as an elementary school teacher, a third grade
student came to me during our paired reading time and asked if I could be his
reading partner that day. As we
began the book, he looked at me and asked if it’s okay for a mommy to hit her
child so much all the time. He then
lifted his shirt to show me welts so deep I was reminded of Toni Morrison’s
description of Sethe’s back in her novel Beloved. As a mandated reporter, I was obligated to call the case,
with the guidance of my administrators. Before
doing so, I explained to my student what might happen, taking into consideration
the history of this family’s case. As we waited after school for Children’s Services to pick
him up, I marveled at his resolution. He
was afraid to leave his mom, the security of what was familiar, and his home.
Yet when I asked him about how he was feeling, he told me that he knew
that his mom was wrong. It was
almost as if he was fighting for the idea more than for his own safety.
Q6 -- Comment on the discussion of Courage that took place during a 4th grade history lesson, as outlined in the
required reading. Share an
experience where your class spontaneously engaged in a moral analysis.
Robert Coles is right: the spontaneous student-prompted discussions are the most
rewarding moments. Giving students
the stimulus to reach such an exciting discussion is a good teacher’s job.
We learn from what has come before, especially as fourth graders.
My class spontaneously engaged in a moral analysis during a reading of
Katherine Patterson’s novel Jacob Have I
Loved, in a literature class just after the 2000 Presidential Race.
The protagonist in the book fantasizes about meeting President Roosevelt
to receive a medal for discovering a “spy” in her community.
My students seemed confused at the character’s deep adulation for the
president. “If Bush walked in
here,” one of my students began, “I’d probably spit on him.”
Strong words, so I let them go with the discussion.
I prompted the student to explain why and the moral analysis flew.
He
began by pointing out the way people stood behind Roosevelt during World War II.
My student felt that the country was united by Roosevelt’s leadership
as a man, as well as behind the moral issues of what was occurring in the
European theater. My student
wondered, “Would we stand behind Bush in a conflict, since no one in the black
community even bothered to vote for him?”
Another
student brought up the fact that she sees him as a “shady character.”
She asked why his drinking and driving didn’t matter.
Why was his drug use over-looked? Why
did he admit that he didn’t have to work hard in college?
Taking into consideration media portrayals of politicians, my students
still felt that if they did drugs, got behind the wheel drunk and earned only
C’s in college, that they wouldn’t be able to reach the presidency.
“But Bush is rich and white,” a student pointed out.
“You’re black.” The
discussion curved around the sharp turns of racial double-standards and barriers
set up by class. We wrapped up with
a return to the moral character of leadership.
Q7 -- How is a good person described at the
end of the required reading involving A Bronx Tale?
A
good person is described as someone who decides to live with an awareness of
herself in relation to others. She
recognizes that her emotions, actions and rationalizations impact others.
Most importantly, a good person knows that answers to ethical questions
will rarely be clear, but he is willing to begin down the road in search of
them. Along the way, he checks in
with his history and his society to serve as a teacher.
Q8
-- What should a teacher do when she/he sees a student trying to get another
student in trouble or somehow disrupting the class?
My approach is to always steer away from negativity in the classroom to
emphasize the academic priority and the focus.
I often do this with humor while I’m teaching to keep the class
flowing, then I will process with the individual student as we are working
individually, at the change of class, at lunch or in a meeting.
This “checking-in” may touch on the student’s affective domain,
reinforce trust in our relationship, or set a consequence.
I attempt to focus on students who are doing the right thing, pulling the
distracted student out of the flow, if necessary, when the rest of my class is
moving forward.
Q9
-- The Harry Singer Foundation pilot projects, Dream Machine, White Hats and
Problem Solvers are based on the premise that students have the capacity to act
responsibly, interact with adults in the community and make mature decisions.
In light of the article by Shannon Brownlee regarding the development of
the teen brain, do you think the Foundation may be giving teens too much credit?
I think the best way for teens to exercise their developing brains is to
engage in activities like the Foundation pilot projects.
They are laying foundations as their minds grow, literally hard-wiring it
for adult function. Young people
are much more fully programmed for empathy, thoughtfulness and measured impulse
if they have experienced and observed these paths as teenagers.
Q10
-- If you think your students are capable, will you engage a group in one of our
pilot projects? If not, why not?
I would love to engage a class in Problem
Solvers. The premise of our
community meetings in my current middle school classroom and my previous
elementary school classrooms is that of working together to problem solve within
our class community. It would be
invaluable to take those skills beyond the classroom walls.
This idea of applying our skills as community problem solvers outside of
our school would also reinforce the idea that we are discovering in class how to
bring our talents and decision-making into the larger world.