Unbelievable

As I’ve said before, I know there are bad teachers. And yet I still find my jaw dropping when people whisper racist, anti-immigrant crap to me as if I’m some co-conspirator. Things like, “That’d be hard enough for normal kindergartners, and these are immigrants, so you can imagine.” I know it’s easy to say normal, when you mean kids who aren’t in “special circumstances”, or who are native English speakers, but trust me, this was not used in that way.

Or, even better — yelling at the kids for speaking their native tongue in class. Yes, we want them to speak English as much as possible, but guess what — bilingualism and biliteracy are good things. I used to think the NYCTF was just telling us things we should already know by teaching us to rely on and bring out diversity in the classroom as a strength. I was like, “No kidding!”, but now I see what they were raising this in response to.

…and we’re back

Today was the first day back after our President week vacation. In one of my first grade classes, he teacher was asking kids what they’d done over the break. One of my kids, a rather bright and verbal 6-year-old, said, “I went to space.” The teacher, who has increasingly become kind of sick of her class (that time of year?) was annoyed, thinking he was joking around. I asked him what he meant, where did he go, and he said he went to Florida. He didn’t know the word for airplane or to say “took a flight”, but clearly he had seen enough movies about things going into space!

Great or Small, Sometimes Expectations Are Just F*ng Wrong

The NYCTF’s training really sets you up with low expectations of schools and high expectations for your students (even if they’re not ready to meet them yet, which is kinda the point). They drill you with an understanding that kids fail when teachers fail to expect tremendous leaps from them, or prepare them to make those leaps. It’s the teachers who make or break a classroom of students who are working hard to excel. I know a lot of people disagree with this philosophy, but it’s one I still tend to agree with (even if administrators also have a heavy hand in what teachers can and can’t do). Soooo, when I first got hired, I was pretty much expecting to be trying to lift up a school by my bloodied fingertips. I expected meager resources, mismanaged classes, and long hours lesson planning at home. Those expectations were, gladly, not really met.

However, what I wasn’t expecting was a school where teachers were actually reticent towards allowing an ESL teacher into their classrooms because it “disrupts classroom management” and is “just one more thing to think about”; a school where the politics of dealing with territorial teachers is more stressed-out-chocolate-binge-inducing than lesson-planning is; a school where, despite the majority of English Language Learners, so many classroom teachers are willfully ignorant of the needs of ELLs and strategies they could be implementing; the unprofessionalism of many teachers (it made me grateful for my more corporate background); and the lack of in-depth collaboration between teachers.

I was surprised at how many teachers boast about how they’re basically not meeting the standards the school has set, or are sooo far behind and blame all this on the students, and they’re doing this in front of people who really shouldn’t be hearing that (like a representative of Teachers College)! Or how many of them gloat about how they look forward only to their preps, lunch, and vacation time. Or how they make fun of their students (and, in doing so, further expose their ignorance of people learning a language for the first time, not to mention ignorance of their special ed students as well).

I complained when I worked for television. My job felt purposeless, boring, rote, and degrading. Sometimes I felt like I was doing something meaningful or important. Rarely.

But as a teacher, you work with kids! That in and of itself should always make your job feel purposeful! Yes, it can suck but we’re talking about kids! Maybe I sound naive, but this is coming from someone who didn’t even like kids before I started working here. On top of that, this job lets you be a scientist, experimenting on theories and ideas, and an artist; a leader and explorer, etc!

Seriously -how can you be a teacher and decide you don’t need to learn anymore about how children learn? Or ask yourself why a student answered the question so “bizarrely” rather than just show the work to other teachers, remarking how stupid your student is?

*I have to note that there are a lot of awesome things about my school and I feel really lucky to be there. But it has its skeletons as well – as do I!

Not the Worst, and It’s Not Comforting

The other day at my seminar for my masters class (it’s only with other TESOL Fellows), we were discussing our expectations about the schools where we’re teaching as well as our expectations about the students, and then what we’re really seeing, any disillusionments, or nice surprises, etc..

One of the Fellows said that she was surprised she wasn’t the worst teacher in the school. Most of the class whooped, like, “That’s great!”, but then someone said, “Actually, that’s kind of disturbing when you think about it.”

(Because we’re new and not yet trained to teach, really)

I must say the same is true with me at my school…