Outstanding Teachers

Rapport/Classroom presence

I didn’t take the ACT for the first time in seventh grade. I did take several advanced/honors classes in middle- and high school, and a few AP courses during my later secondary career, but I wasn’t counting on the additional credit to launch my GPA into the academic stratosphere. I was a high achiever, with demanding self-expectations, but harbored no death wish. I prioritized: advanced math and advanced English, left and right.

In college, however, I had to choose (…English) and have only occasionally coveted the less-abstract, more product-driven nature of math and science: disciplines with wonderfully definitive answers. Notwithstanding, when I found myself recently in H.M.’s pre-calculus high school classroom, I was uncharacteristically excited. It had been too long.

H.M. is a math teacher at Goshen High School and an excellent educator for a number of reasons. Like other outstanding teachers, H.M. is a clear communicator, enforces explicit classroom expectations, has high academic expectations for his students, and demonstrates effective instruction. But where H.M. really excels is with student rapport, the ease with which he banters with students, his dynamic classroom presence and the way he generates energy for subject that, for many, becomes so easily lifeless or lackluster. 

“Sam, you haven’t contributed anything worthwhile to class, today,” he rejoined playfully that Monday morning, calling on a student to answer. 

Need I even mention, Sam rose to the occasion? 

Pedagogical Insight/Content Knowledge

M.Y., the choral director at Goshen High School, is another outstanding teacher whose reputation justifiably precedes her. In fact, as a student teacher, I was vaguely aware of the prestige of the high school’s music programs, but failed to recognize the extent of their talent—thanks, in great part, to directors like M.Y. 

I attended one of M.Y.’s advanced choir rehearsals on Wednesday, and even during the choir’s warm-ups found myself impressed by their mature sound. M.Y. is obviously an incredible director and an accomplished teacher, modeling extraordinary instruction, impressive content knowledge, and important pedagogical insight. M.Y. generates interest with a brief, musical-trivia question at the beginning of each class, projects the day’s schedule on powerpoint, and keeps the class paced to maintain energy. Students never dwell too long on any one piece of music. Sometimes, in fact, they will begin with one piece, move on to another, then return to the original piece. 

Like H.M., M.Y. is dynamic and animated in the classroom and has obviously earned her students’ respect. Although I won’t (often, anyway) make my students sing, I can certainly aspire to the same pedagogical insight and content knowledge that M.Y. models daily. 

High Expectations/Opportunities for Success

L.N. has only been teaching for a year—this is her second—and she handles herself with all the youthful energy and undiminished enthusiasm of other young teachers. Notwithstanding, L.N. is an expert teacher, one who genuinely cares for her students and who also demonstrates tight instructional and management techniques.

I observed L.N. during a low-level English lab class—a supplementary course for students who are not expected to pass their end-of-year assessment, and was thrilled by L.N.’s instructional and emotional approach to these difficult students. I was even impressed by the students themselves—the effort they put into their work and their level of personal investment. Frankly, I expected apathetic students, but these students craved success, affirmation. I can only assume a large part of their personal accountability is a result of L.N.’s high expectations. In fact, I think I was most inspired by the way L.N. believed in her students and the way she communicated that confidence, enabling likely-defeated learners to begin, ultimately, to believe in themselves. 

Relationships

J.H. is a teacher in the World Languages department at GHS and has become a mentor  to me throughout my placement. (I love being greeted by his subtly “French”-ified Spanish when I pass his classroom on my way to my own, and attempting to reply with own stilted—albeit enthusiastic—“bonjour!”)

I had the privilege of observing J.H. teach for the first time this week (a combined French IB IV and V class), and was unsurprised by my takeaway. While J.H. is a great teacher, I am most inspired by the way he nurtures incredible teacher-student relationships. J.H. takes a unique interest in each of his students and interacts with them in a deeply caring, thoughtful way. That morning, I caught the eye of one of our mutual students, a girl he has in IB French IV and who I have for English. This student looked at me across the room, and raised up leaf of coupons from KFC, giving me a goofy thumbs up. This student adores fried chicken, something J.H. picked up on, and passed along to me.

Those coupons? A promotion J.H. had apparently stumbled upon in the newspaper and brought in just for this student, placing them on her desk that morning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a teacher do something quite so thoughtful, if for no other reason than that he knew she liked, or all things, fried chicken. 

It’s the little things, they say.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

At Goshen College, MLK day—a celebration of the courage and contributions of Martin Luther King Jr. toward justice and American race-equality—is trumpeted with speakers, activities, and numerous opportunities for the campus and the community to get involved. The visiting author, Dana Johnson, and speaker, Dr. Wilburt Smith (who is also, incidentally, an author, film producer, board member for the community colleges of Southern California, and director of an insurance agency) of the 2012-2013 school year both hail from sunny California and are both key figures in American race relations. They each spoke at Monday’s opening convocation preceded by a Goshen College choral group, The Parables, who sang a powerful, repetitive refrain that asked over and over again: would you harbor a stranger, a foreigner, a felon? Dana Johnson, the first speaker, then read a passage from her novel, Elsewhere, California about an African-American middle school student moving from inner-city Los Angeles to the suburbs, with novel with some autobiographical influences. Dr. Wilburt Smith then shared about his recent film, Hole in the Head, and his friendship with Vertus Hardimon, a man who, as a child, had been the victim of radiation experimentation. In the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., Hardiman’s story was a story of forgiveness and redemption. As Hardiman said to his friend Dr. Smith, who was recording and publishing his story, “I think [God] wanted me to live, to tell the story. I think He wanted it told to show the magnitude of His mercy.”

As college students, as contributing members of a larger community, and as citizens of nation that has known the great chasm of racial hatred and the painful reparative process of forgiveness and reconciliation, all of us here at Goshen College were blessed by the powerful stories of Dana Johnson and Wilburt Smith. Their stories moved me to tears, to laughter, and to a renewed sense of the power of forgiveness and grace. When, during the trailer for Smith’s, A Hole in the Head, many members of the audience—myself included—turned away from the sight of Hardiman’s painful disfiguration (he literally had a large hole in his head), Smith admonished us for our insensitivity. “Do not look away,” Smith rebuked, and I was sorry that I had. I was reminded that in order to begin the process of healing, I must look injustice full in the face. I must take ownership for wrong, share in the pain of the oppressed, and believe in the redemptive power of grace. Like Hardiman, I must be attentive to blessing: “I can see, I can hear, I was raised in my right mind this morning. That’s a blessing. That’s three blessings.” After seeing and hearing a brief piece of his story, I would like to add to his list: today I have witnessed the miracle of forgiveness, that’s four blessings.

 Both Johnson and Hardiman’s stories were a good reminder of—in my own role as an emerging teacher—the ways that I must be sensitive to racial differences in current and future classrooms. Some teacher’s tout “color-blindness,” as an effective means to equalize racial differences within the classroom, but I would argue that color-blindness is merely another tool for denial. Rather, I think teachers must promote “color and difference appreciation.” White students and black students often come from different cultural norms, and within each group are various subgroups with similarly different values and expectations. As a teacher, I want to model this value for color and difference-appreciation and to encourage my students to do the same, honoring their differences with respect, sensitivity, and, naturally, appreciation. Furthermore, I want my students to remember; to remember the dark emptiness of the oppressor and to known the bleak fear of the victim’s pain. Most of all, I want my students to be moved—to be really moved—by the power of forgiveness and to know that while grace doesn’t erase all wounds, it can heal them. Finally, I want students in my classrooms to look at a scarred, broken nation 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement and to see the way it continues to stumble haltingly along… to fall. I hope most of all that I equip my students to get up and stumble along with it, lending here an arm, there a shoulder… and knowing that their imperfect help, however small or seemingly insignificant, is everything: it is a blessing. 

Anti-Racism Workshop

Unlike some of my peers, many of whom were anticipating a dry, dull, lecture-style presentation illuminating the continued reality of 21^st century American racism and providing actionable methods to counter it in schools, the workplace, and communities, I entered the anti-racism workshop expecting the opposite: something highly-interactive, engaging, and (dare I say it?) fun. (Interestingly, I cannot identify with any certainty the source of our expectational differences…) Regardless, however, the anti-racism workshop was a combination of the two, incorporating helpful periods of lecture, important periods of peer-interaction, and, above all, encouraging transparency and open communication as we explored the sensitive topic of  privilege and racial prejudice.

Led by Regina Shandz Stoltzfus, a professor in the Goshen College PJCS department, the anti-racism workshop began with a short “quiz” that asked basic questions—and illuminated common misperceptions—on the topic of race. To my embarrassment (I was not, however, alone) I only answered one question out of eight correctly. From the perspective of a developing educator, this was an effective and engaging way to begin the workshop (or “hook”) and encouraged discussion and transparency from the very beginning, which set the tone for the duration of the workshop. Regina also had each table group discuss their experiences of race, diversity, and racism and to present (after a short break and snack) to the larger group a key issue that emerged from these discussions. Following these presentations, Regina lectured on the topic of race and racism—meanwhile asking some insightful questions and substantiating the lecture with a powerpoint presentation—and ultimately ended the session with a powerful, 20-minute TED talk by Chimamanda Adichie titled, “The Danger of a Single Story.”

Although I enjoyed the 4-hour workshop and found some of the material—as well as the discussion it engendered—enlightening, much of it was familiar and echoed ideas/realities already covered in my Transforming Conflict and Violence Class. Nevertheless, this is material that must be covered and discussed several times over, and thus I think the workshop was still a valuable experience for me as both a person as well as an emerging educator. I was surprised, however, by the general unwillingness among my table-group members to admit to our inherent, racist prejudices. Although we were able to acknowledge that racism continues to be an issue in American society, it was difficult to acknowledge personal roles within its framework—which reinforces the relevance of the workshop and reminds me that racism cannot be resolved with a single, 3-credit course.

As an educator, again, the topic of race, diversity, and classroom prejudices is an important discussion. Several of our assignments have stressed the inevitability of prejudice as well as the importance of naming them, (with the objective, ultimately, of learning to overcome them) particularly within the classroom. Anti-racism workshops like these give students and educators the valuable opportunity to identify personal prejudices and social realities and allow us, once named, to finally begin the process of deconstruction. They also equip us with tools and strategies to begin doing so, and thus, while I found some of the information in the workshop redundant, I also think it was an important opportunity to begin the process of naming ingrained racial-prejudices and learning to deconstruct them. 

Board Meeting

Arriving at one of the biweekly board meetings for Goshen Public Schools on Monday evening, the 14^th of May, I was surprised at encountering such a large crowd with several people standing in the back of the room and even a small crowd spilling out the door. I guess I hadn’t imagined school board meetings were quite so popular! However, after questioning a woman standing beside me, I realized that the first half of the board meeting was set aside as a time to honor exceptional students with a casual ceremony of recognition. Later however, after the awards began to wrap-up and parents and families of award-recipients began to leave, the customary, logistical board meeting began.

Each of the topics for discussion was organized by number (to the tenth place) and label. There were 10-12 members present and the president of the board acted as chief administrator. The meeting consisted first of logistics regarding building maintenance, progressed to the approval of various motions (including items such as computers, textbooks, the purchase of land), and finally included the institution of new administrators, including two new principles and a new board representative. It finished with miscellaneous items such as the scheduling of a summer board meeting in mid-July and an announcement of upcoming retirement parties and other events.

The dynamic between members of the school board and the general public was formal and very respectful. For some of the night’s more weighted proposals, the outcome had essentially been pre-determined and the board’s involvement was ultimately a mere formality. For instance, the institution of the two principals had already been determined, but the board completed the process formally. The research behind many of the finance-related proposals had also established the best financial plan prior to the meeting, and the board served merely as the means to officially pass the proposal.

Interestingly, none of the board proposals were refuted, and, furthermore, each of them passed with unanimous support. For this reason, I wondered if the board was really involved in the decision-making process. However, at certain times the board did ask questions, requesting further information on a proposal in order to better understand it. I wonder, then, if the board’s unanimity is a reflection on its homogeneity, or if, instead, the board members were just well-informed and the proposals extremely well planned. Likely, however, it is a combination of each which contributes most to the uniformity of their decisions. And although more discussion may have been useful, the process still appeared very organized and democratic.  

Grant and Gillette's 9 Elements

         It has been said, (according to a fairly non-professional source; regardless, however, the message demonstrates great insight), that “with great power, comes great responsibility” (Spiderman, 2002). This statement is most applicable to primarily two professions: politics and teaching. Momentarily disregarding politics and focusing instead on teachers, it is unlikely that many would dispute the extensive influence teachers have on the younger generation. In fact, according to Philip Jackson, in his article “The Daily Grind,” “. . . aside from sleeping and perhaps playing, there is no other activity that occupies as much of the child’s time as that involved in attending school.” Since, therefore, teachers occupy such a large part of their students’ time, two experts in the field of education, Grant and Gillette, have identified several key actions that will aid today’s teachers in wielding their power responsibly. These actions include: having experience with the different ways children learn as well as understanding the ways their families either promote or hinder their education, being critically active and aware, and understanding that, as a teacher, one is still, nevertheless, always a student. They also identify the importance of a teacher’s awareness of his or her influence, the necessity of having experience with people different than oneself, and the importance of identifying ways to recuperate and “regenerate” in- and outside of the classroom. Finally, 21^st century teachers in the US ought to behave according to democratic principles, find allies in the classroom and in the community, and study/learn from effective teachers in order to improve their efficacy inside the classroom. With these tools, teachers can effectively and responsibly guide their students toward adulthood and toward contributive roles in their communities

            As a first-year, 19-year-old Secondary Ed. Major, I have had some experience with these nine elements but I have not participated in all of them. Incidentally, some of my more significant experiences have occurred with the fifth action, which identifies the importance of volunteering with a group of people different than oneself. As a sophomore and junior in high school, I volunteered at an organization called, West Michigan Refugee and Cultural Center, which is essentially a wordy title for an organization that provides tutoring services to former refugees. There, I tutored Ethiopian and Somalian refugees every Thursday for about two hours. Many of the kids came from Muslim families and several of the girls wore head coverings and long skirts. While our traditions, customs, and religious were very different, however, our similarities vastly outnumbered our differences. Understanding that the bond of humanity far outweighs any cultural differences was an illuminating realization that will aid my future experiences in the classroom, where I will undoubtedly encounter children of different cultural, economic, and demographic backgrounds.  Furthermore, it will also serve as a reminder that my own cultural tradition isn’t the only tradition, and, even more importantly, it is not superior or more valuable than other culture or tradition.

            A second significant element with which I already have some experience is the sixth of Grant and Gillette’s nine elements, or the importance of identifying and employing ways to relax, recuperate, and regenerate. As an introvert—albeit, a very, very extroverted introvert—I understand that I need some alone-time in order to accomplish these three “R’s.” And since teaching is a very demanding and exhausting job, I have no doubt that I will need to employ these techniques effectively in the future. For me, silent reading is a great way to recover lost energy. I also enjoy doing crafts, running, and spending some time devotionally. Each of these activities allows me to relax and reenergize, which is essential to the job of a teacher, who—if he or she fails to find the time and means to recover lost energy—will also fail to teach effectively and may unintentionally rob her students of their fullest education.

            Although I do have experience with some of the nine elements Grant and Gillete have identified, I nevertheless do not have experience with all of them. In fact, the first element, or having experience with different learners and their families, is one with which I have little or no experience whatsoever. It is, however, a very, very important aspect of a teacher’s job. A teacher in any classroom, for example, will undoubtedly have a room full of diverse children and learners. It is important, therefore, to understand that specific teaching techniques generally cater to specific intelligences, and if the teacher fails to teach to each of her student’s learning-styles then someone will inevitably get left behind. It is important also to understand the context from which different types of learners emerge and how their families either aid or hinder their education. The amount of experience a teacher has with this diverse range of intelligences will undoubtedly reflect itself in the classroom and will aid the teacher in identifying and employing the different techniques which will allow her students to flourish.

            The ninth element in Grant and Gillette’s list—the study of effective teachers—is also one with which I have very little experience. The only viable experience I do have, in fact, is with my own teachers throughout middle- and high school. This study, nevertheless, is very important to the efficacy of a teacher. He or she must both: 1.) know what “works” and what doesn’t, and 2.) draw from many different classrooms in order to create a stimulating learning-environment for her students. This can be done only through the observation of teachers who have already accomplished this. I have no doubt that in the years to come (through classes that require field placements in middle school and high school classrooms) I will have ample opportunity to observe and study good teachers in their own environments, and reflect on which techniques I would like to employ in my own classroom and which techniques I can disregard. With this in mind, I will endeavor to create a stimulating environment for my students in which they can “learn to learn,” “learn,” and “learn to enjoy learning.”

Works Cited

Cliff, R. (Actor). (2002). Spider Man [Motion picture]. Sony Pictures.

           

Jackson, P. The Daily Grind. The Institution of Education.