Parker Palmer has been my guide in many things, especialy in the importance of relationship in teaching. In his seminal work, The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life, he describes teaching as a series of overlapping relationships - between teacher and students, among the students, everyone with the subject being studied.
With that in mind, one key responsibility for a teacher is to get students to go outside their comfort zone, to get them to try things they may not fully understand.
For that to happen the students must trust the teacher that they are not going to be harmed in any way - not in the all important grade point average, not emotionally by being embarrassed, not intellectually in being made to feel stupid.
At a time when unfortunately the emphasis on performance on tests has continued to increase, getting the students to operate on the basis of trusting the teaching is harder than before, and it is especially hard when the teacher is an unknown quantity, seen as culturally different. As I returned to teaching this year in a new school very different culturally than where I taught before, one issue for me has been in getting students to trust me. It is not that they do not trust my knowledge of the subjects I teach. Nor do they necessarily doubt that I am supposed to be a good teacher. But neither of those are sufficient by themselves for many to take the intellectual and emotional risks they need to in order to develop as students, and of greater importance, as individual human beings.
But in fairness, if they do not believe I trust them, why should they trust me?
That is the context of what happened in my classes the past two days - remember, I teach on an A Day - B Day schedule, where I see my students for 90 minutes on alternate days, so it takes two days for me to see them all - or in this case, almost all, since a few apparently got an early start to the winter break which we all now enjoy.
I have tried a number of things in the past to make clear I trust them, including what I describe in Teaching - Giving Thanks to students, back on November 27, my writing individual thank you notes to each students. For some I could see that made a difference, but it was not enough.
The problem was of particular importance for the students in my three sections of AP US Government. So I decided i would do something different.
The basic outline of what I did in each of those classes was to start with two You Tube performances of music relevant to the season, and very important to me, and to ask them to humor me, and do nothing else but listen and if they wanted to, to watch.
The first was this
and the second was this (although I did not always use this performance):
I would then spend some time talking to them. Among the things I would mention is Palmer's notion of teaching as relationship. I would tell them that no matter how much they view me as primarily verbal, or at least word oriented given my writing and my emphasis on proper use of language, I am by instinct, training and passion musical and not verbal. That I chose to share this music not just because it was beautiful, but because it would let them understand me a bit better.
I explained the importance of trust, that if I wanted them to take risks and trust me, I had to demonstrate that I trusted them first.
I reminded them that I had committed to them that I would accept what they told me unless they were to demonstrate that they were not being forthcoming with me.
My room has movable tables with wheels, each about 5 by just under two feet, with two students at each. For a while I had them arranged in two arcs facing the front. About 6 weeks ago I moved them into pairs, with four students at each now rectangle. I noted how easy it would be to pull them apart, put the students at the end of the tables when we tested, but that would imply that I do not trust them, so i am not going to do that.
I then tried to make clear that not only do I trust them, but I have some understanding of the pains of being a teenager. I share the worst year of my life, my sophomore year (all except three of my AP students are tenth graders, so this is particularly relevant), when my parents alcoholism lead to weekly screaming matches. I told them about the following year when my parents no longer trusted one another about drinking, so their solution was to give 15 year old Ken the keys to the liquor cabinet - I was in effect asked to be their parent. Only the reason the liquor was disappearing so fast is that I had figured out how to pick the lock on the cabinet - if their solution to all problems was to drink who was I to argue with that model. However, that scared me enough that I did not then become an alcoholic, although there were several times later in my life when drinking was a problem. It came within a whisker of getting me expelled from Haverford my freshman year.
I told some them how I was enrolled for prep school for my senior year, but called up my father from summer camp to tell him I didn't want to go, because no one would know me at the new school, and as bad as things were at home, at least I knew where i stood - the known hell was therefore preferred over the unknown, which potentially could be worse.
I explained that despite being very bright, I was not in the top third of my high school class, largely because of the family problems, but also because I felt socially awkward and I was painfully shy - I did not have a single date between the start of tenth grade and April of my senior year, when I decided I would go to my senior prom, so went out on dates with two girls in grades lower than me that I knew liked me - I took one, Robin S, to the prom after the one exploratory date. 18 months later when she was a freshman in college we went out for a cup of coffee, the only other "date" we had.
My students were rapt, and paying attention.
What happened then varied.
I gave each class an opportunity to ask any question they wanted. My A day 1st period was not so inclined, so I wound up putting them in groups with specific things to do as self-explorations. T My 2nd period A Day class was full of questions, even seeking to get me to tell them how I perceived them. I explained why I am reluctant to do that with all students in front of their classes, but in a couple of cases where I knew the student would not be threatened I did so, which was in a way an affirmation that I cared about them enough to get to know them.
In my 2B class yesterday, there was some dialog, but it was also the last day before break, the periods were a bit shorter, a few students were out, but it was clear from the number who wished me happy holidays on the way out at the end that I had succeeded in some level of connection with at least a few.
I had not planned to do this with my STEM classes. But one of my best students, in my STEM Policy class, about whom I had written in the piece on thank you notes, had given me a card where she had thanked me not only for being her teacher but for being a mentor. It turned out that her boyfriend, who goes to another school, follows me on twitter, had seen that diary and of course quickly recognized the reference to her and informed her.
I have been wrestling with whether i will return for another year at this school. I have not felt as effective as I should be. I had not been able to build the level of trust necessary for me teach as I should.
After the music, I explained to my Policy students why I had decided to do the sharing with them. It was not because they had not trusted me, because they surely had. On Monday and Wednesday, each day 4 groups did presentations of their policy briefs. All were at least very good, several were outstanding. That is not just my assessment, it was the assessment of those from outside the class who sat in - the woman who arranges the STEM internships, our STEM Coordinator, our principal, and our most famous student, a junior like these students, who won the INTEL science Fair when he was a freshman.
I wanted them to know how much I appreciated the risks they had been willing to take.
There were only a few questions, it was already afternoon of the last day before break, so I turned them loose to do what they wanted.
That led to a different kind of trust, with several of them coming up to me to urge, even beg, me to come back. One of my better students, who is in the environmental thread, said that she really wanted to have me again as a teacher in Environmental Media.
So I ask myself now that I am on break whether I am really trusting them enough? If I am not willing to commit to being there, will they feel that I am worth trusting?
I read the note from the one student again, I remember the conversations, I think of the times when I can see lights go on, or see students grow. . . .
Another student from that class does not think of herself as a leader. I wrote about her in that previous diary. When one of the faculty requested nominations for an opportunity for a student who demonstrates leadership, I nominated her. I do not know if anyone else nominated her, but she came up to me to tell me that she had gotten the opportunity and was told that I had nominated her - I affirmed again that it is not just that I see her as a leader, but several of her classmates had told me. She wanted to know who, but I told her "who" was not the issue, that she should accept about herself what that indicated.
This will be a difficult time of year for me.
I go twelve days without students.
I will think of things I want or even need to do for them, and cannot.
I have a few recommendations to write.
I have a few papers to read and upon which to comment - these are not for grades.
I have some test corrections to go through and then credit the students with going back and unlearning their errors.
But I will not see their faces except by chance until Thursday January 2.
I think what makes me effective as a teacher is because I go outside my own comfort zone, which is limited by my shyness and social awkwardness. I try to model that for my students.
One student of Asian background admitted to me that it is very difficult for her to say something of which she is not sure because in her family they are not supposed to make mistakes. I have other bright students whose self-image is so defined by being the excellent student that it is difficult for them to take risks. And yet if they are going to grow to their potential, they have to learn how to fail successfully.
I told them that when I attended that high-powered conference on innovation in education at the National Academy of Engineering, one thing I heard constantly is that how we educate - especially in engineering and technology related fields - must encourage students to learn how to take risks, to learn how to fail and learn from their failures.
This is part of how I see myself as a teacher.
It is why relationship is essential, so that I can help them work through when they fail at at endeavor to understand that they have not failed as persons, or even as students, but may have just had the most important lesson they can encounter.
Teaching is relationship.
If I want my students to trust me enough to take the risks they need to take to grow as students and as people, then I must first and then consistently demonstrate first my trust in them.
That is how I chose to finish my "instruction" before Winter Break.
And I think in the process I also learned more about myself, about the risks I have to be willing to take.
Peace.