To My Dear Students

To My Dear Students,

Two years ago, I sat on the floor behind my desk, not giving a care. The Bi-Lo had just been robbed and armed gunmen were being chased through our neighborhood. We were on lockdown, but someone decided to squirt the fire extinguisher through our trailer, causing half of you to run outside and the other half to loudly hack and cough inside the trailer while comparing death by gunshot with suffocation. Our review game was forgotten.

You came behind my desk, where I sat on the floor, determined not to react lest something break inside of me, and told me, “We’re not afraid out there, because that’s what it’s like every day where we’re from. We hear gunshots all the time. So this is our life.” You were being jaunty and distancing, but also honest. I looked at you through the haze of the fire extinguisher and thought, “Yep, your life. How the hell can I teach you? Or even keep you safe?”

A year later, we sat in a trailer on the other end of campus, taking a test. Suddenly, a piece of the ceiling crashed down, dangling by a thin scrap of metal mere centimeters from a stunned student’s face, and showering him in dead wasps and other dirt. You turned around in your seats, and watched me sprint to support the ceiling so that he could move safely. Then you turned back and continued to test. Aghast, I waited for you to start screaming or at least take your phones out and put our broken classroom online. But the next time you spoke, it was to ask me whether #26 on the test was part of Maslow’s Hierarchy.

What made the difference? Why do you sometimes choose chaos and other times scholarship? How did my top students file out of their IB exam this year and start listing the studies they’d used in the test while two paces behind them, one girl attacked another and a violent brawl broke out? How did they continue to calmly tick research studies off on their fingers without even turning around to see the blood pouring out of a girl’s jaw while behind them, students shoved to get a good view? Why did I fail to get some of you to lift a pencil and watch others emerge into dazzlingly articulate young adults?

I’ve spent the past two years puzzling over it. What unlocks your motivation? What pushes you towards success and away from failure? Teaching you reminds me of when I was a child, trying to fly. I used to jump from my dresser to my bed, over and over, for hours, emerging from my room covered in bruises. I felt like that every morning in our classroom as I jumped off the highest point I could lesson plan, trying to vanquish gravity, holding your hands and promising that if you just had enough faith, we would fly. I spent two years looking for the magic key, the incantation, the right potion, or the fortuitous combinations of perfect circumstances that would unlock your motivation and your brilliant, compassionate understanding.

But here is the truth: I, and the rest of your teachers, can be as magical as we want. We can open the door to Narnia for you, set you up with a stalwart band of fellows and drown you in fairy dust, and still, your success is not certain. Because Goethe is right:

You are the decisive element. It is your personal approach that creates the climate. It is your daily mood that makes the weather. You possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. You can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, you can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is your response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized.

Across the nation, adults are doing research on what causes success in school. Statistics will say geography, and socioeconomic status; educational academicals say good teachers and punitive evaluations; the Charlotte Observer makes it seem like whatever it is, our school can’t offer it. People will tell you that it's predetermined, a cocktail of potent genetic and environmental causes. In the trifecta of biological, sociocultural, and cognitive causes of behavior, the first two get a lot of attention. But they're not under your control. So focus on what is. Reread Harry Potter, and agree with Dumbledore-- it's your choices that determine who you really are.

Because you are the decisive element. You decide, each and every day, whether you are going to fly. My most extraordinarily delightful job the past two years was to believe in you, and yours, to prove me right. You did, and you have, and you will.

What I Wish I'd Known:

In my first year of teaching, I scrabbled around my mentors, visiting classrooms of other teachers, trying to figure out how they made their classes work. I would watch as boisterous students came in from the hall, picked up their supplies for the day, and subsided into scholars. It looked like magic.

Slowly, I picked up techniques, and now that I have accumulated enough to make my classroom work, to truly be a beginning teacher instead of a frustrated babysitter, I need to write them down so that when a beginning teacher comes to me in three years asking how to teach, I can do more than shrug my shoulders and say, “your class needs air-conditioning" (Yep, that was actual advice from an administrator last year. No, she did not show me how to put in a request to fix the AC). This is what I wish I'd known from the beginning:

1. Save your no’s. Just because you don’t want your students to do something, doesn’t mean that you need to veto every request or action. Sometimes you can say, “later” (“when pigs can fly” may be the silent addendum), sometimes you can say, “when our class has earned it” (again, flying pigs may soar through your mind), sometimes you can ask, “why are you doing that? Do you think that’s really a good idea?” Help them develop their own set of rules. Instead of shouting, "get back to work!" ask, "what motif did you choose here?" to redirect them. And then when Michelle slugs Kimmy while dropping enough F-bombs to make your classroom look like a place America is trying to free, your quiet “no, that's not what we do-- has that ever worked for you before?” has a lot more force than when you used it previously at top volume because Kasey snuck a potato chip.
2. Keep student supplies in the back of the classroom. NOT in a place where they have to cross in front of you to get a pencil. You will feel frustrated and interrupted, they will feel frustrated and ask, “Miss, how can I write your important notes without a pencil?” and you will get into a debate every class instead of teaching.
3. In connection to the above: learning is the most important thing that happens in your classroom! As a bit of a loudmouth myself, I found it incredibly tempting to respond to student snarkiness with my own. I mean, my comebacks are so much better than theirs, why not teach them what good repartee really looks like? Well, unless it’s debate class, zip it and let them learn—defusing every situation or brushing it off to focus on the lesson until you can speak with the student individually shows them that you hold their learning more important than personally establishing your own dominance, and eventually they will, too. If they refuse to quiet down and deal with something on personal time, not class time, then I give them 30 seconds of misbehavior, and after that, they’re out. Learning is the most important thing! (Note: once you have established a good relationship with your class, you can occasionally let the snark fly-- I found that students were more willing to laugh, "Ms. W's being salty again," after they knew I cared about their learning first).
4. Make it very clear when students should and should not be speaking, and make the ratio at least 80/20. Students will be much more likely to hold silent for directions, or for a quick presentation on the intricacies of bibliographies, when they know that they’re going to get to talk afterwards. It’s okay to set rules about their speaking—use popcorn style to get students to call on each other, or mandate eye contact instead of hand-raising during Socratic Seminars, or talking chips during small group discussions—but be aware that your students want to talk. Of course they do! Don’t you feel muzzled and like your time has been personally hijacked during PD’s or faculty meetings? They feel the same. Give them space to use their voice.
    
5. Don’t raise yours. My first year I used to pretend to be hoarse so that the rest of the class would quiet and I could deliver directions in a normal speaking tone. My second year I started out refusing to speak unless everyone (yes, everyone! Even that kid you've been warned about in the back-- they need to know from the beginning that you have the same high expectations for them as the rest of the class) was silent, and speaking without shouting, and it worked. Students would hush the few talking in order to be able to hear me. They were also readier to give me their attention because they knew they’d have mine soon (see #4).
6. Have a clear vision of where you want your students to be, skill-wise, by the end of the course. Use rubrics! Set a rubric at the beginning of the course, for writing, and speaking, and research standards, and use them throughout so students can chart their progress. Have them peer edit so they become extremely familiar with the requirements. Scaffold until what began as sentence stems ends in a blank sheet on which they have to make their own outlines. Watch them learn. It’s cool.
7. Be like a duck. Stay calm on the surface, but paddle like hell underneath. The students should see you serene and helpful in the classroom, available to help them. My first year I spent hours creating vocabulary cards, kahoot quizzes, sets of questions for class discussions, presenting material to my bored students… and I learned a lot about world history. So instead, give them scissors and cards, i-pads and notebook paper, and a set of guidelines on what you expect, and let them do the work. Then have them present it to the class. They will learn so much more when they teach! And you're free to evaluate, to guide, to correct misbehaviors, while they're running around like clowns at the front of the classroom, juggling the material.
8. Have color in your classroom. It’s amazing what a difference it makes. Keep your classroom a warm, inviting place, a place that declares, “this is our home,” and your students will treat it like theirs. I had no problems with graffiti or vandalism this year, because students felt that the classroom was a nice place to be, and wanted to keep it as such. They responded to their environment.
9. Read to your students. Yes, mine were high schoolers. But they still like to be read to. Fill your voice with the passion and curiosity you feel when you learn. And then have them read to you. 
10. Ask your students questions. You don’t know anything, or at least not everything, about your students’ lives. So find out. Sometimes, you’ll learn about unavoidable court dates that are causing absences, or homelessness that’s affecting sleepiness, or help forge a connection between the developmental psych we’re learning in class and the parenting that your student is doing at home. Sometimes, you'll learn that reality is not what you thought, and go home more totally mind-flamed than your students.
11. Sometimes, you need to play. Lob the paper ball back at the student who threw it, and tell them that for every question they get wrong, you get to throw paper at them. Bring your class outside to play review-500. Mimic your funniest student and watch their best impression of you. Crank up the music and let your class turn up a minute to celebrate their unit mastery (firm class rule: NO twerking!). It’s easier to learn when you’ve just laughed.
12. Love your students. Love them for their humor, their dedication, their cluelessness, their quiet quirkiness, their sassiness, their compassion, or their kindness. Love them because they’re a pain-in-the-butt who taught you to be a better teacher. You can’t love all of them—there’s always one or two who defy human connection. But love 98 out of 100. They say students don’t learn from teachers they don’t like. The opposite is also true—how can you give it your all for students you don’t love?

The Other Half

Remember when you were a child, and used to spend hours tying lanyards into intricate patterns that you would then loop as a choker or give to your bff as a friendship bracelet until forever? It’s my last full week in Charlotte, and I feel desperate to tie up the past two years into a neat anklet I can take with me. It’s a gradual process—I started saying goodbye after exams last week, and will finish next week at graduation. In every area of my life, I’m twining memories and people into farewells.

Last week, I showed my classes the video I’d made of them. The sillinesses, the pranks, the jokes and laughter of the year, threaded through with cries from each student when they spotted themselves.

“We really do dance a lot,” noticed one.

“Put it on youtube! Put it on facebook! Put it on all of the internet!” the rest cried.

“Will you show this to your new students?” somebody in each of my classes asked me. By the last class, I understood—“will you tell your new students that we came first, that we matter? Will you forget us in your new school?” was what they meant.

Students o’ mine, you are enmeshed in my teaching for the rest of my life. I will use you as archetypes, remember your reactions, reflections, and realities, and coast off of your jubilance, for the rest of my teaching days. Your personalities wreath my teaching. I will not forget you.

Friday, some of the teachers sat out on a restaurant patio, clinking drinks and toasting the end of the year.

The Teacher of the Year asked us, “what are you going to miss the most about teaching at our school?”

“The students.”

“The stories.”

“Knowing my job matters, that I make an incredible difference.”

“Introducing students to things they might otherwise never have seen. Like smores made in tinfoil solar ovens.”

I thought about it, since, certainly, all that had been said was true. “The intelligence of our students—the real-world experience they have that they bring into the classroom, that I certainly didn’t have at that age. Their degree of reflection and intelligent compassion.”

I feel knots forming in my throat as I think of leaving them. Their wisdom will form a tightrope upon which I will balance as I cross an ocean to my new classroom.

On Shabbat day, the community—nay, family— that has adopted me here sat in the Charlotte Torah Center, eating the kiddush that they’d sponsored to say goodbye. I stumbled through a dvar Torah, thinking that every second of it couldn’t possibly express my gratitude for their warmth and moral guidance and the feeling of belonging they’ve given me over the past two years.

Several of the people with whom I have built the closest bonds spoke after the meal. They forgot that I’m very much alive, and I felt like Tom Sawyer, eavesdropping on his own eulogy. It’s an experience I’d much rather be dead for. I wanted to crawl under the table, but I also appreciated what people had to say, especially the rabbi, who in the course of his encomiums managed to praise my future husband at great length. He seems to know a lot about him—maybe he can introduce me to him.

At the end of the kiddush, a man from a couple whom I consider in the closest part of my Charlotte Torah Center family came up to me and referenced a blog post I’d written after Simchat Torah, about not belonging in the Jewish community as a woman. He told me that I may feel like that, but the community feels that I belong in it. We’re braided together as intricately as the scrumptiously browned challah that Sara bakes every Shabbat, and I leave this part of my Charlotte community secure in the knowledge that I will see all of them again. I am, after all, moving to our home. Moving to Israel.

This morning, a friend and I ran our second half-marathon this year. We both got bitten by the running bug at Disney, and nothing seemed like a more fitting end to two years of insanity than finishing the second half of a marathon. We made our goal, and I finished in 2 hours and 28 minutes, running full out for the last part. As I pounded across the finish line, muscles aching, heart pounding, but oh so proud, it felt like a physical manifestation of the past two years—the pain, the pride, the triumph. Running these past two years has been my catharsis, my coping mechanism, and ultimately, a way to challenge myself in an arena in which I feel I have complete control.

 

As I slowed to a walk past the finish line, I felt my throbbing calves and considered the feat of finishing my second half. It was different from the first. Harder. For the first, my goal was simply to finish, and because I knew that I would never give up, it was merely an exercise in ignoring agony and humorously pulling up from stumbles as best I could. For the second, I wanted to push myself. To do the best I could. To summon all of my strength, my will, my humor, to aid me, and help others along with me. We were sent off with a Sunday-morning prayer and the Star Spangled Banner to spur us forward at dawn. Looking back at the end, with Southern accents congratulating me and my muscles knotting in aching soreness, surrounded by a strangeness of culture that I will soon be trading for my own familiar one, I feel the deepest gratitude for God and country, and the strangers-become-friends who cheered along the way.

Moral Development

The last question on my students’ final exams was this: what have you learned in psychology class that you can use to control your own behavior? What have you learned that you can use to influence others?

Many students talked about compliance techniques and conformity. Others mentioned being there for others who have psychological disorders, and using developmental psychology to understand their children. But I was amazed at how many students referred way back in the year, to when we talked about Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. Students wrote about identifying their motivations and operating based on that knowledge.

Psychology is an elective. There’s no pressureful standardized test, or “value added” nonsense connected to my evaluation. And so, if I can inspire my students’ intellectual curiosity, enhance their reading and writing skills, and teach them the basics about how their minds and bodies work together, I’m pretty happy. But, as I told a class earlier this year, there’s no point in learning psychology if you don’t use it to make yourself a better person.

And my students have. They wrote about knowing the difference between fear of punishment and accepting the social contract of the law. They mentioned moments when they buckled to their need to belong with their peers, and moments when they stood up for a higher moral imperative. In a world which will constantly pressure them to compromise, they have one more defense in their moral bulwark.

Lately, moral understanding has seemed more important than ever. In end-of-semester grading, it’s key. Today, three of my favorite students sat in my room, heckling me gently. One was there to make up his absence from Monday, without which he couldn’t pass the class. The other two were desperately trying to finish their makeup work for the semester and bring their grades up to a D. All three of them are pure delight—the kind of hilarious-on-the-surface, compassionate-underneath shovavim that make a classroom so fun.

“It was review time after an exam, I didn’t even know it counted,” my senior wheedled.

“If I do this project, it’s big, so can you count it as two assignments?” another asked.

The third said nothing, just eloquently slid the corner of a dollar bill out of his pocket so that it was clearly visible.

“I’m a senior… you could just erase the absence. Why not?” the senior tried again.

For a second, I considered it. He got a high A on his exam, and making him stay just to make up “seat time” per the CMS rule seemed ridiculous. But the other two had to put in the work. And if I let this go, what would be next?

“I can’t,” I looked up at them with a grin that kept coming back despite my best efforts, but deeply serious tones. “It wouldn’t be right, or fair to all the other students who worked so hard, and whom I marked absent also. Those grades mean something. You have to earn them.”

“Oh. It’s, what’s that word,” offered the senior. “That word we talked about the time you really wanted to go home early but didn’t. Integrity.”

“Exactly.” (I really wanted to go home, and I’m not sure that integrity was the answer to why I didn’t—it was probably more of Kohlberg’s preconventional level—but it was a good opportunity to teach him the word ‘integrity’).

They set to work, and by the end of the day, all three had achieved their goal—they’re all passing psychology this year. But more importantly, I pondered over how they help keep me straight. It’s so tempting sometimes to fudge the numbers, especially with students who you know are trying like the dickens, but just can’t make it to school because they’re homeless and the bus doesn’t keep up with all their address changes, or who fall asleep in class after working the night shift so they can help their parents pay the bills, or whose absences are inevitable—if I was having a baby, I’d miss some school, too. And yet, the knowledge that these students would know, that precisely the children I am trying to help, would be the ones learning the wrong lesson, keeps me straight.

Other teachers also help keep me straight. When my colleague called me back to get the copy paper I’d left in the copier drawer (a commodity more precious than gold, as anyone who works in a Title I school knows) and my next-door neighbor discoursed on the ethics of plagiarism and my fellow TFAer reminded me that I really shouldn’t leave early regardless of it being my planning period, they were also reminding me of the standards that I try to live by. And yet, there’s something so much bigger that they do.

The teachers in my school win an incredible moral victory every time they go into a classroom faced with forty kids who don’t care, and manage to walk out still caring themselves. The rockstar Spanish teacher who is always dancing around in the mailroom with weird new ideas to get her level-one speakers engaged no matter how many times she’s cursed out, the world history teacher who dresses up like historic characters despite his freshmen’s apathy, the ESL teacher who firmly yet kindly corrals students into class from their hallway hangouts when it would be much easier to leave the recalcitrant children there for security to pick up, the fellow TFAer who looked at us in serious refusal when he heard someone suggest just giving up on a difficult class… these teachers present a moral victory of the quiet, uncounted kind. They are the reason that I am so proud to teach at my school.

In many other schools, students come in, put their backpacks down, and wait out their state-mandated six hours of education without anything more strenuous than their regulatory morning argument with their parents. In my school, students and teachers together make difficult decisions to never give up, never compromise. Their daily grind shows a moral determination that is astounding. They have climbed to the apex of moral integrity in pursuit of an equal education and the potential to effect good, and camped out there. As I look up at them from my arduous hike, my moral muscles straining and complaining, they remind me of the goal towards which I am climbing.  

Stafford, The Way It Is

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
Things that change. But it doesn't change. 
People wonder about what you are pursuing. 
You have to explain about the thread. 
But it is hard for others to see. 
While you hold it you can't get lost. 
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
Or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing can stop time's unfolding. 
You don't ever let go of the thread.