Small Answers
Submitted
by
Carla Panciera
Burlington High School
Burlington,
Massachusetts
Subjects
taught: Grades
9-12
I lose things.
I eat too much junk food. I
cannot conquer a fear of spiders and have failed miserably to keep my
checkbook balanced. I have no
sense of geography. I never get
the oil checked. I leave lights
on all over the house. Yet every
September, I stand, full of flaws, before my imperfect students.
How will we accomplish everything we’ve been charged with over the
next few months? The question
overwhelms me.
It is easy to list the things I
can’t do: I can’t inspire
administrators to include students on decision making, can’t force my
department head to order books these young people might like better than those
we’ve been teaching since I was in
high school, can’t take my students outside to read poetry in the sunshine.
Most importantly, I can’t influence their parents to take an interest
in them, to encourage their efforts, to discipline them effectively.
Rather than getting discouraged, I remind myself of a lesson I learned
from poet and theorist, Ralph
And so, my job begins with this
generation. That first September
day, I take a deep breath, introduce myself and listen to my mother’s voice
say the line that sent me off to the first day of school every year:
Just be yourself. To that
I add a wish that part of who I am is role model.
Some of the people my students call mother and father are not good role
models for them; their grandparents probably were not good role models,
either. Empowered by a curriculum
guide and my teaching certificate, I do my best to help them become better
people. This is my attempt at
breaking the cycle.
My goals for my students include:
encouraging them to work hard, inspiring them to approach learning with
enthusiasm, helping them to develop compassion towards one another and
instilling confidence in them as students and as people.
These are the most important things my parents modeled for me.
I worry about what these teenagers may or may not be getting outside
room 207, but again, my mother’s voice reminds me that worrying never solved
anything. Instead, I look for the
small steps within these walls that get us to more important places in a big
world. I make my classroom one
kind of family.
I start by working hard.
In my introduction, I warn them: we
will work every day from bell to bell and then we do.
If my department head can’t buy the texts I ask for, I run off things
I’d like them to read. I stay
after school to help them with make-up work, I write more comments on their
essays than they write words. Each
day, when they come in, I am ready to achieve.
My parents did not stand over me urging me to get busy.
They led the way.
I grew up on a dairy farm, a place where there is no shortage of
chores. However, my parents
approached work with passion. I,
too, care about what I do and I want my students to invest emotionally in
their subject matter so I react to what happens.
Keats’ sonnets make me teary. Scout
Finch makes me laugh out loud. I
clasp essays in my hand and scrawl great verbs across the board, declaring:
Look at this beautiful word. I
get excited when someone stumbles upon an important insight without expecting
it. I pace about the room,
gesticulate wildly, agree that grammar is boring (then make them do it
anyway). Before you know it, my
students react as well. If they
don’t like a short story, they tell me and learn to back up their opinions.
They shout for joy if one vocabulary quiz doesn’t have analogies.
They hate Claudius even before he plots with Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern. Does this
enthusiasm follow them out the door? If it does not, they might at least have
a blueprint for responding to things beyond English class.
Compassion is a much harder thing to
model. Again, I pay attention to
the small details. Team jerseys,
names on photography class field trip dismissals, artwork hanging in the
lobby, these and more provide clues as to who these people are.
If I can show an interest without being intrusive, I do.
It’s not an act. I would
like to know how their concert went or if they’re nervous to deliver an
election speech. If I can, I use
these details in our discussions. I
might ask the movie buffs where Hamlet should be when he delivers his to be or
not to be soliloquy or suggest to the heavy metal lyricist that he research
Iron Maiden’s version of Rime of the Ancient Mariner for his term
paper. I attend soccer games and
the wakes of parents, take a minute outside of class to tell a student he did
well on the vocabulary final. Naturally,
we want our parents’ praise, their presence in the stands, their touch on
our shoulder when things get tough. A
teacher can’t replace that, but I can show them:
this is how it’s done, this is how it feels, and hope that someday,
as parents themselves, they will remember.
Of course, we have safe topics for
exploration in a literature class. We
can study characters in fiction and discuss prejudice, intolerance, cruelty.
We meet characters who appear different from us, but who feel many of
the same things we feel and thus provide us with a vehicle to discover
universal truths about human existence. We
can even discuss what makes a family and what families work.
Atticus Finch, Mama in
One of the most important things I
must model is how to discipline effectively and fairly-- control with
compassion. I lay out the rules clearly for my charges from the first day and
I hold them to what I’ve set up.
If I want these people to be better parents than their parents were, I
need to show them that discipline isn’t about humiliation or power.
It’s about learning to keep peace in the world, it’s about living
with some rules so that we can work together towards something.
We don’t have to use physical force or name-calling.
We can figure out what words to use to ask someone to stop doing
something. We can look at how our
behavior affects others. After several negative notes left from substitutes
for one of my classes, I asked my students why they behaved as they did.
We spent the block discussing the root.
They felt as if someone was listening.
If you misbehave, people will respond negatively towards you, I told
them, a lesson I should have been able to entrust to parents.
If you are polite to people, wait and see what happens.
The next time I had to be out, I got a positive note that I read aloud
to them. This was a lesson they should have been taught at home, but knowing
it, seeing it play out the way I assured them it would, empowered them. Maybe
their own children will benefit from their realization.
Good behavior is only one thing we
celebrate in my classroom. It is
one of many ways students gain confidence.
By writing a personal response to an essay, by saying, Nice job, when I
hand back a major test, I can make my students feel good about themselves.
It’s not a rousing: you’re
the best student I’ve ever taught. It’s
printing an all-star version of an essay response, posting good papers on the
bulletin board, calling out: Good
try! When someone risks figuring out what Shakespeare is really saying.
There are so many opportunities throughout the year to make students
feel successful. I refuse to
parcel out encouragement because building self-esteem isn’t part of a lesson
plan. It’s a sad reality that
children have to learn the language of praise.
They certainly need little prompting to fling words of discouragement.
As adults, we need to ask ourselves why this is.
Are my small contributions enough?
They have to be. More
importantly, I have to believe they are.
In an in-service workshop,
teacher/theorist Mary Ellen Giacobbe suggested we have our students write down
100 possible writing topics. That
year, I had two classes of remedial students, several of whom were serious
discipline problems. I asked Mary
Ellen what happens when most of the kids don’t do the assignment and she
said, “Work with what you have.” I
remind myself constantly to work with what is before me rather than dwelling
on how imperfect a situation is. I
try to be patient awaiting results.
My end of the year speech to
students always includes a line from a Mary Chapin Carpenter song:
We’ve got two lives, one we’re given and the other one we make. We
can’t change where we started, but we have opportunities to carve a better
way for ourselves. Teachers have a responsibility to show the way.
When I check on my daughters each
night after they’re asleep, I can’t imagine not setting the best example I
can for them. It’s hard to
believe there are many parents who cannot do the same for the people who need
them most. Good classrooms are
modeled on good families, not perfect ones.
I’m not a perfect parent any more than I am a perfect teacher or a
perfect person. I am just someone
who gets to stand before teenagers year after year with a chance to make a
difference. How many people can
say that?
Questions Regarding the Required Reading
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.
I
was impressed with the six year old. I
do not have experience teaching children this young so I don’t know how
unusual his insights might be. The
child struck me as a good listener--as someone already capable of taking in
information and then re-stating it in a manner that made sense to him and that
made his audience understand what he was feeling.
He also struck me as someone who could take something fearful and make
it concrete, who could make abstract ideas tenable.
I don’t know a lot of adults who can do that.
I wish I had more of an ability to do that.
I can’t remember a time in my classroom where I witnessed a student
with a similar talent.
Q2-
Were you surprised to read that young children may be “ethically
introspective citizens”? Discuss.
Children
are great absorbers and they have a strong sense of what makes sense.
When they say, “But that
Isn’t
fair,” many times they mean, “But that isn’t the right thing to do.” I
think one reason why adolescence is so difficult is that teenagers still have
strong ethics, a strong sense of what’s fair, and yet they begin to battle
against the status quo. For
example, try explaining to students why teachers don’t get laid off based on
competency. They won’t accept
tenure as an answer. They see
what is ethical: This teacher
works hard, this one doesn’t. Why
dismiss the committed person and keep the slacker?
Q3-
Do you agree that morality can be taught in all kinds of classes. Give
examples from experience.
I
am an English teacher. In my
discipline, morality is an easy topic to discuss.
Does Hamlet have the right to avenge his father’s death?
What statements were the Romantic poets determined to make by flouting
the moral standards of their day? Morality
is fodder for discussion in any classroom despite the curriculum when one also
considers that teachers are forced to address non-academic topics all the
time: the death of classmates and
teachers, a world event, the financial ramifications of tax cuts on schools. I
remember one of my elementary teachers sending a child on an errand then
reprimanding us for our behavior towards him, making us see how cruel our
teasing had been. In a middle
school social studies class, we play-acted a scene in court between laborers
and factory owners. Those of us
on the side of labor were forced to give voice to the oppressed.
Q4-
What was meant by the phrase encountered in you required reading: “We are
all moral witnesses”?
Describe
an instance in the classroom when you were a good moral witness.
A
moral witness is one who realizes something that makes her consider how she is
living her life or how she has lived her life.
With this realization, hopefully, comes the renewed effort to live a
good life, be a good person.
The
advisor of our fledgling Gay Straight Alliance left school on extended
disability. Our principal was
already doing what he could to discourage this group’s formation.
Now, without an advisor, the club had no classroom to meet in nor could
they post flyers recruiting members. They
couldn’t hand Fran, the secretary, announcements for gatherings to be read
over the PA each morning. All of
these things had to be done by an adult.
I stepped in to lend a hand, thinking my battle would be with the
principal. I was used to this.
But the first few times I handed Fran our notice, she snatched it out
of my hand. The message would get
read, but our name would be abbreviated as GSA so many students had no idea
who we were. Each time I dropped
off an announcement, I would ask Fran, with whom I’d always had a positive
relationship, not to abbreviate our name.
The next morning, we’d hear GSA again.
Finally, I confronted her. She
looked at me scornfully, “You need to take this up with the principal,”
she said. It was clear from her
tone that she agreed with her boss. I
am not gay, not a person of color, not someone who sticks out from a crowd for
any reason, but in that moment I felt what people must feel when they are
hated for something they can’t help, something like sexual orientation or
skin color that really shouldn’t matter.
I felt how powerlessness they must feel to change someone’s opinion
of them. But it also crossed my
mind that I didn’t have to take this on.
I had the option of resuming my easy life where acceptance was not a
problem. I can’t say that
option wasn’t appealing. It was
a moment to take moral stock of my life and to ask myself, what do you do to
become a better person? Helping
out these kids seemed like the answer.
Q5_Define
courage. Tell of a youngster who has had the courage to stand up for his/her
beliefs/values.
I
am a high school teacher, someone who observes this awkward stage of
development with a huge sense of relief that I don’t have to revisit my
teenage years. My students are often afraid to appear different. They aren’t
necessarily risk-takers. I
remember my own overwhelming need to be accepted.
I was so all-consumed, I never had courage ¾
that ability to look outward and take the chance to make the world a better
place. I was too afraid to offer
others what I wanted most: positive
attention, genuine compassion.
As
a teacher, the duty I dreaded most was cafeteria monitor and not because of
the food fight threats or the tedium. I
hated to see some tables full of laughing, energetic teenagers and other
tables where one child sat alone, trying not to look up from his sandwich.
One of my freshman boys, a kid whose mother I’d spoken to on many
occasions because he struggled academically in my honors course, sat with his
friends. Ricky was a born leader: he
was a gifted gymnast, full of good humor, good looking.
His peers leaned towards him at their table, laughing at his jokes,
wanting his approval. Meanwhile,
Brian sat a few tables away by himself. Brian
was a junior who was a student in the Learning Center.
He arrived early to informal dances dressed in formal clothes, danced
on the empty floor alone. When
his parents came to pick him up, he left without saying good-bye to anyone.
One day in the lunchroom, Ricky, on his way back from buying more milk,
clapped Brian on the shoulder and invited him to his table.
I cringed wondering if they would tease him for their enjoyment.
Instead, I watched as Ricky introduced Brian to his friends, then included him
in the conversation and walked out with him when the bell rang.
I called his mother the next chance I got to congratulate her.
“Your
son has great courage,” I told her. “You’ve
done a good job.”
Q6-
Comment on the discussion on 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.
The
fourth grade discussion on morality happened for several reasons, the most
important of which is that the teacher let it happen. How many times have I,
as a student, been involved in the beginning of such a discussion only to hear
the teacher say, “Okay, we’d better move on.”
How many times, as a teacher, have I been tempted by state mandates,
curriculum guidelines, syllabus deadlines, to do the same?
My
seniors and I read a piece of creative non-fiction about one child’s
response to a recess bully. The
tone of the essay was light and the author was a former student who many in my
class knew. They enjoyed the
essay and the brainstorm that followed: What
are your memories from elementary school?
The sharing session was lively, animated, full of humor, influenced, I
am sure, by the model essay’s tone, but after awhile, some of us in the room
began to notice that many of the memories centered around students who were
bullied. I had a handful of
popular, attractive, athletic kids in the class who were involved in the
bullying or who were at least amused by it at the time.
In a quiet moment, one of those students said, “Now that I think of
it, we created problems for kids who had enough problems already.”
She hadn’t been led to that conclusion by me or her peers.
She had just been able to step back and examine what she had done to
other people. I hope it was the
beginning of her becoming a more compassionate person.
Q7-
How is a good person described at the end of the required reading involving A
Bronx Tale?
A
good person is someone who lets his good side win out more than his bad side.
We aren’t cartoon characters. We
are human beings who must struggle to keep ourselves “good”.
Like C’s father in A Bronx Tale, we cling to our beliefs, we
try to remain true to ourselves despite the distractions of real life.
Q8-
What should a teacher do when she/he sees a student trying to get another
student in trouble or somehow
I
liked what the teacher did in the example:
before she reprimanded, she thought about motivation.
I wish
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?
Here
are some examples from my life with teenagers:
I
returned to school a few days after my father, with whom I was very close,
died suddenly. My colleagues and
students had sent notes and flowers while I was away, but when I returned, it
seemed no one knew quite what to say until Cathy, a senior, sat down with me
at my duty station in an empty corridor:
“We missed you,” she said. “And
I just want you to know that even though we may not know what to say to you
today, we are thinking about you and hoping you’re okay.”
When
two colleagues and I were laid off one spring, we got mixed messages from the
administration about who might be hired back and when.
We tried unsuccessfully to get an audience with the principal and the
superintendent to straighten the mess out.
Meanwhile, the junior and senior class presidents staged a sit-in
protesting the lay-offs. Nearly
half the student body sat peacefully for three hours, blocking a major
corridor until both the superintendent and the principal appeared to answer
their questions. When it was all
over, one of my freshmen came to class and said, “Some of the teachers are
mad at us for disrupting the school day.
They say we did the wrong thing.”
“What do you think?”, I asked.
He thought for a moment and said, “I think it was the right thing to
do.”
Barry
was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Someone vandalized the boys bathroom and he happened to be one of the
kids signed in during that period. Those of us who knew him, knew he wasn’t
capable of that kind of destruction, but the administrators didn’t ask our
opinion and suspended him. The
students in my creative writing class studied Barry’s empty seat and said,
“It’s not fair.” “What
can you do when something’s not fair?”, I asked.
They drew up a petition, circulated it for hundreds of signatures and
presented it to the principal (who didn’t change his mind).
The students thought they’d failed until Barry returned and said,
“I want to thank everyone for signing that petition.
I was blown away to think you’d do that for me.
I was angry that something like this happened to me, but now I’m glad
it did because I will be forever changed to think people did this to help me
out.”
I
could go on and on with examples. Do
I think you give teenagers too much credit?
I think we as adults give ourselves too much credit if we think we have
nothing to learn from them.
Q10-
If you think your students are capable, will you engage a group in one of our
pilot projects? If not, why not?
Once
I return to the classroom, I would be interested in hearing more about your
pilot projects.
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