Part of my preparation for becoming a teacher, at my MAT program at Johns Hopkins, was to take time to reflect on what I was doing. Further, since my mid-teens, I have rarely been without a small pocket notebook in which to jot down observations and reflections. In addition, I used to regularly take time here at DKos to reflect upon both what happened in my classroom and the intersection between being a teacher and being an active citizen, one involved in various ways in what was happening in our society.
As one whose primary instructional responsibility over more than two and a half decades in the classroom (in 10 schools that were public, charter, private, and now religious) in two states and the District of Columbia has been American government, but who has taught a variety of other subjects as well, to classrooms ranging from 7th grade through 12th, with students ranging from special education to extremely gifted, I often wrestle with the way of how I instruct — and the content I include — and connecting that to the lives of the students (and their families) I teach, both in the immediate presence and the rapidly oncoming future which will extend far beyond my time on this earth. After all, I am now 74 and the students I will teach this year could be as young as 15.
That cant be a very “ scary” proposition: I can never forget the challenging words of Henry Adams, that “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
It has been a while since I offered such a reflection here. At present I am at a crossroads between school years, between one where without much preparation we suddenly had to convert to all virtual instruction with the seniors I taught losing almost all the expected culminating activities of their high school careers (and many lost their final athletic seasons), to a year where regardless of how the school officially operates (still not known for the start of the year with any certainty) i will at least for the first semester be instructing only virtually, with students whom I do not yet really know. I am doing so because both my spouse and I are considered to be at high risk from the virus.
And all of this is occurring at a very challenging time for American society.
So let me share some thoughts and reflections.
The shape of American society is very much in flux. We are seeing the norms of American government very much challenged by the actions not only of the man currently in the Oval Office, but by his enablers in the Executive Branch, the US Senate (especially by the Majority Leader), and unfortunately by members of the Judicial Branch up to the nation’s highest court.
This makes it difficult to teach Government. What is it that I am expecting my students to learn? Almost all of the seniors I taught last school year will be old enough to vote in the forthcoming election, although not all will. Some are not citizens. Some don’t care, despite my best efforts to motivate them. And some may unfortunately not be able to because of family circumstances, where they will have become homeless or had to relocate and their families (and they themselves) have not done what is necessary to change their voter registrations.
Almost none of the students I teach this year will be voting. That may make it harder to motivate their interest, although hopefully I will be able to find connections that might at least get them to interact with others in their families who will be eligible to vote.
When I taught in public schools in Prince George’s County, a majority African-American community, as I did for 17.5 years, I knew that most of my students were from families that identified as Democrats, and most of them were liberal. Teaching as I now do at a Catholic school, the student body and their families are far more conservative. Perhaps 1/3 of my students this past year were supporters of Trump, even though most of them lived in Prince George’s County, where the school itself has been located for all 74 years of its existence. The challenges of instructing about US government have become more contentious by far than they were at the start of last year. After all, we not only have the challenges of the pandemic (which are many), but we also have the challenges that have arisen as a result first of the police murder of George Floyd, and then of related events both before (Armaud Arbery) and since (Breonna Taylor).
Further, this year I will also be teaching US History to juniors. In light of many of the recent events, I have to seriously rethink what and how I should be teaching — on issues of economic and racial inequality, for example.
This summer I have chosen to engage in 5 different courses. Two of these explicitly deal with racial issues, one additional did so through the lens of immigration history, one more touched on it and economics through examining many important Supreme Court decision, and the last — taught by a teacher at our school - has been an intense examination of war through literature and movies (including on TV), primarily through the century plus of war beginning with the Great War.
Some of the material I knew, in all of these courses. After all, I am 74, and I have read widely over the years. I have seen much film . Others were new to me. I have also been exposed to material I did not know, some of which has challenged my previous positions. I have been given a chance to explore pedagogical approaches I had never considered.
That brings me back to a reflection on the Henry Adams quote — in part because the teacher never knows where his influence may end, he is obligated to keep open his own mind, as well as to listen to what the students before him bring to the instructional setting. Now I have the further challenge that I am deprived of some of the tools/skills on which I have relied in the past: it is a very different thing even with 30 or more students in the room to perceive what may be happening, what the reactions are, and do so in the context of having taken the time to get to know the students and to observe them informally in interactions outside the instructional setting, and to try to monitor through a computer. After all, I can quickly look around a room, and use peripheral vision, in ways not possible through a Zoom session.
But making the forthcoming year more challenging goes far beyond the impact of the virus upon all of us. There are real questions as to what should be my focus in approaching both Government and History.
Let’s start with Government. It is not just that the functioning of both Government and of politics have had to change because of the pandemic. We will not have traditional campaigns and already primary elections have seen some changes, and we may see more for the general election. Rather, it is the continuing dismantling of governmental norms that precede Trump being elected and sworn it. We saw it start when Republicans took control of the House after the election in 2010, and it clearly accelerated with Republican control of the Senate after the election of 2014. It is not merely McConnell’s refusal to allow consideration of the nomination of Merrick Garland to SCOTUS (which almost certainly would have resulted in his confirmation). It is also the keeping open of more than 100 judgeships to lower federal courts so that they were there for Trump to fill. It was getting rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, which is the only way Kavanaugh could have been confirmed. It is the refusal to bring up well more than 100 pieces of legislation passed by the House. It is the confirmation of patently unqualified people to executive branch and judicial branch positions. It was the refusal to consider any testimony in the impeachment trial of the President. How am I going to address all of these issues — and many more as well — with students I do not know as well as I would in a classroom setting, when these will undoubtedly create some severe conflict? I need to challenge thinking, but also have to be aware of the political sensibilities I am going to encounter.
Too much of the history I was taught through 12th grade had serious problems. The “Lost Cause” ideology that led to the placement of Confederate statues and monuments not only in the South but in some places in the North, the way Reconstruction history was realistically distorted, the racial and ethnic prejudices that too much infused the texts we used are part of my own experience. We did not learn of many embarrassing parts of the American experience, whether it was the slaughter of Native Americans, things like what happened to the Black Wall Street, the discrimination against Blacks and Jews in Northern communities, the racism involved in our immigration policy, our totally wrong treatment of American citizens of Japanese heritage after Pearl Harbor, etc, etc, etc, Some of this we learned in other ways. My own Senior Prom had to be at a Jewish Club because the other clubs did not want that many Jews (my high school class was over ¼ Jewish), It is ironic that we have held our reunions from tenth through 50th at a Club that had very few Jewish members when we graduated in 1963.
Some of us nevertheless learned some of the history not officially taught. My sister’s closest friend growing up was Japanese American, so we were not only aware of the concentration camps, but also the heroism of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team /100th Regiment. As the grandchild of two immigrants from E Europe, one of whom fled after a pogrom, I was quite aware of the historic discrimination against Jews. On a winter vacation to Miami Beach in 1956-57 I first saw segregated facilities, and then became increasingly aware starting with Central High School in Little Rock the following Fall, leading ultimately to my own involvement Civil Rights starting in the Summer of 1963.
But we have all learned about much more. I did not know about Sundown Towns, but I knew that a nearby community would stop any Black male they saw on the street and ask whose “boy” he was, because at that time there were only two Black males living in that very rich community.
When I expressed a possible interest in the Naval Academy, my mother explained to me the problems of both Anti-Semitism (despite Admiral Rickover) and racism in that branch of service. My father turned down a very lucrative job with Nieman Marcus (a company founded by Jews) because he felt Dallas was no place to try to raise Jewish kids.
Our history is complicated. We need to be honest about it. At the same time we had made much process — although much of that progress in now under serious threat. Clearly we have seen a relegitimization of racism, of homophobia, of anti-Semitism, of nativism, of misogyny, of homophobia… Any exploration I do with students of US history has to equip them to be able to deal with these issues, both historically and in our current times.
I am 74. We chose not to have children, and try to be loving aunt and uncle to numerous nieces and nephews, which in our extended family includes people of Latinx, Black, and Native American background. That kinds of diversity is increasingly common both among the students I teach and the society as a whole, which is one reason I think appeals to racial and religious prejudice will not carry the weight they did in the past. Even in the Catholic school at which I teach we have students who are clearly gay, and it does not seem to be an issue among the students. As a teacher I can help them understand the legal issues involved and how they have changed during my lifetime, but I am equally able both to point them at the official teaching of the Church (I do have a masters from a Catholic Seminary) while simultaneously pointing at statements by the current Pope that express a sense of love towards those who are gay.
This will be a challenging school year for me in many ways, I know that. I will have to reflect a lot not only on how to teach but what to teach. It is why besides being reflective, I am also life-long learner,
And hopefully in the process I can, as I have always tried, model for my students what it means to be an active citizen, because without people being willing to be active citizens, the 232 year history of our constitutional liberal democracy will soon turn into nothing more than a footnote in history.
Peace.