Extreme Teaching

It's Spring Break, finally, and I am looking forward to the break. Not that I don't love my students. My placement at ABPS is wonderful. All the adults in the room work really well together, which is huge, since there's 5 of us. It's a joy and a pleasure and I learn so much watching Mr. Lee. But it is a workout: my husband calls it Extreme Teaching. New sport on ESPN 2.

Seriously: just for starters, you have a few students who need a lot of language to stay engaged, and you have a few who get about two words out of every sentence or phrase you utter. Everyone else is in between, so you have 30-45 seconds to focus their attention on something visual, and about 6 minutes before you lose them- pretty small window for a lesson. Then you have students who are really only engaged with movement or processes; others who hate such things and prefer to draw or look at visuals. I have a reading group that is four kids: two get easily discouraged, two who have noticeably fewer oral-language skills than the other two, and one who absolutely cannot sit still for longer than it takes him to read the text. It's tough. I have a math group of three students and they are in the same group because they don't have place value yet, but there the similarities end.

Individually they're unique, engaging, funny and wonderful. Some of them come from less than ideal circumstances, a few stories that will really break your heart in there as well. Most of them are mercurial in their moods- something small that you didn't catch can throw them into a black, unproductive mood for a long time. They cry a lot. They hit sometimes- too many times. They aren't as nice to each other as I'd like them to be. They're pretty darn hard on themselves, too.

So while I am already missing the morning hugs I get from many of them, I am also ready for a break.

Although I have to say, the moments that they are kind, and the displays of mature, calm behavior, (which are not at all infrequent) shine like stars in contrast to the many, many conversations we have as a group about mindfulness, about conflict and being conflict-solvers, about wasting time and saving time.

It's quite something to watch how they respond to these ideas. Even the students without a great deal of language can understand from the many, many examples we discuss. I think, on balance, these kids try harder for more of the day than your average students: there's fewer of them, nowhere to hide and Mr. Lee does not give them a pass. But it never seems to get easier to see how many things are so hard for them. I know they will miss school, too, although they may not miss me specifically. I hope they have some fun this week.

Water and conversation

I have been thinking a great deal lately about language and its work as the main medium of teaching. The Japanese have a saying: “Water and conversation are free.” This was an obstacle in my previous career in consulting, as there is a predisposition in Japanese business culture not to pay for “conversation,” which is often what our services boiled down to. My job was to make the conversation interesting and valuable enough to pay for.

In teaching, it’s even harder than that. Language seems so ephemeral- do students hear the words we say to them? Do they understand? Out of 25 kids, how many are hearing me at any given moment? Did that fire truck mean I should start over? We don’t have the luxury of meandering conversations: if nothing else, we’re limited by the attention span of the least attentive child. We have to write koans and haiku. Every word has to be packed with meaning, we have to know how to say the most in the least amount of words and time, and the lesson has to be more than the sum of its parts: its substance has to stay in their minds somehow. Right now, I waste words, and time, casting around for just the right lever to pull, to tip their minds in the direction I want them to go. I feel like I don’t know where we’re all going—mainly because I’ve never been there before. I am not reliably leading them, yet, where I want them to go. If they do wind up there, it feels like a happy accident, and I need to also find a way to know if it happened at all. It’s all still water and conversation.

。。。水とお喋り

Parenting in Public, or My Toughest Parenting Experience to Date

7:45 am on a Manhattan-bound Q train. It's crowded, and M and I are standing. Four or five young men board the train, about 15 or 16 years old. They are talking amongst themselves about something no doubt completely innocuous, but loudly, and it is f__ this and sh__ that and, especially, a more or less constant stream of the n-word.

I stand there trying to tune it out and hoping M is, too. But they get louder and louder, and finally, I turn to the one talking into my ear and say, in what I hope is a reasoned tone, "Listen. She's four. Does she really have to listen to this?"

They were genuinely apologetic: "Sorry miss," and I was prepared to let it go. After all, they really were just chatting to each other, in the way that teenagers do. It is their vernacular. I accept this- just not right in the ear of my four-year-old.

Then M looks up at me and herself utters the n-word, with a question mark at the end.

I said to her, probably much too firmly, "You must never say that word, do you understand? It's a very bad word. Never say it." She looked down and, perceiving that she had done something wrong but having no idea what, began to cry. Hard.

I picked her up in my arms to comfort her. I said to the young men, "I hope you're pleased with yourselves." All of this took less than 30 seconds.

My immediate thoughts were as follows: I should have been more compassionate with M. I should have been more articulate with those boys. Maybe, I should never have opened my mouth. But even had I not, clearly that word entered her brain.

Certainly I don't blame those boys for her distress, but I'm sure they misinterpreted what I said. I blame them for something more important than that. And maybe I shouldn't blame them- I don't know if it's appropriate to expect them to reflect on how what they are saying sounds to someone who does not speak their vernacular. Somehow I can't picture them talking to their mothers that way, but at the end of the day, I am still blinded by my cultural lens. I can't imagine what their words do or don't mean to them.

But I can only think that if ever there was empirical proof that language has an impact, this is exhibit A.  To put it in the starkest possible terms, I don't think those boys want to be the ones who taught a little white girl the n-word, regardless of what else I might teach her about the n-word. If I asked them, I bet that's what they'd say to me: I don't want to be that guy- I can imagine that.

The train was full of all kinds of people, of every hue. I have no idea what anyone thought of the exchange, if they thought anything at all. But what a relief that children are children: I was able to cheer M up on the rest of our trip to school, and by the time we got there, she was running down the hill, pretending to be a dog, and anxious to be inside and join her friends, per usual. I went to her classroom in hopes of catching her teachers so that, if she should decide to try the word out again at school, they would know the background.

Her teachers were not surprised, but I was, when I burst into tears while telling the story. And, truly, of the many moments that I wish I could have called my mom in the last six years, never more so than today. Why? I couldn't tell you, not exactly. It was just a harrowing experience.

I know that this will come up again. I only hope that next time, I can be more prepared and less reactive. I hope I can make M understand without making her cry. And most of all... I could really live without the audience. This subject is hard enough as it is.