Over the first few weeks of school I've been engaging in so many rich conversations with teachers about instruction and building relationships with students, I'm reminded of how important writing can be in the relationship-building process. As I enter my 16th year of teaching, I think back to the lessons I learned in my first months of teaching.
Ready to Listen
My 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Dianne McLaughlin, was a middle-aged woman with short sun-colored hair and tanned skin that I’m sure spent many days glistening on the beaches of the South Shore. We began each morning with finger warm-ups to get ready for work, followed by morning greetings in at least three languages other than English. Guten Morgen, wie geht es dir is still the only German I know. Our vocabulary journals were filled with “adult” words I was so proud to be learning--debris, superior, reluctant, impermeable. We memorized and recited poems, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,” enjoyed intriguing read alouds, and wrote our own stories to which Mrs. McLaughlin responded with enthusiasm. When I threw away my retainer on ham and cheese day in the cafe, she turned a disaster into a class dumpster diving expedition. She set high expectations and demanded we reach them. She instilled in me of a love and language and learning. She nurtured without ever patronizing us. Before 4th grade, I had ideas of becoming a hairdresser or maybe a journalist, but after my year with Mrs. McLaughlin I knew for certain the only thing I wanted to be was a teacher who might make one student feel as important and valued as she made me feel.
A decade after leaving Mrs. McLaughlin’s class, having taken a less than linear path, I was holding a preliminary teaching license. I waited tables and interviewed at any school that would take a chance on an English major with no education coursework or teaching experience. Finally, in mid-February 2005, I landed the interview that earned me a position as a middle school English Language Arts and Reading teacher. One week I was a full-time waitress and the next I had my own classroom full of students, yet I had little idea what to do in my new role. I met with my patient Humanities Director at the time to ask my burning questions--How do I know what to teach? How long do I spend on each book? What do I say when a student gives a wrong answer? I was all detail and no big picture. She gave me some much needed advice about establishing rules and what to expect from these students who’d had no consistent teacher for months. Before my first day I bought the clothes and teacher shoes to make feel a little more like Mrs. McLaughlin and a little less like the petrified twenty-two year old I was.
Those first few months in the classroom felt like performing on the big stage without of any the rehearsal. Never before had I doubted my own ability to spell common words the way I did once I picked up that yellow chalk from a dusty chalk tray and began to write on the board in front of room full of students. To quell my fears I would chant to myself, They’re not laughing at me. They’re not laughing at me. I think. These students, my first students, seemed older than I remember looking in 7th grader and they were bold. The truth of what happened with their first teacher be damned, they wanted me to know it was they who had forced her out. They loved to talk loudly in homeroom about the many ways they had embarrassed or tortured her. Most stories ended a few weeks into my time with them after I joined the conversation and said with all the feigned confidence I could wrangle, “You should know I don’t scare that easily, I really need this job and I’m definitely not leaving.”
I listened with deference to my veteran colleagues who cautioned me against idle hands by planning “lessons” that I was sure would fill the entire class period. My skill set as a teacher was far too limited at the time to think about student engagement, cooperative learning structures, or crafting lessons with clear goals and materials that allowed all students to access the learning. Admittedly, my driving question during planning was, Will this take up enough time? Reading comprehension questions--lots of them--were a sure-fire way to achieve this goal. On the days I stayed at school grading papers well into dinner time or when a student caught me looking longingly at the clock, willing the period to end, I wondered how I’d ever become like Mrs. McLaughlin, especially with students who seem so disinterested in learning from me.
I learned fairly quickly that I would probably have to adjust my grand plans of analyzing and discussing classic literature. My students stumbled over multisyllabic words during oral reading, struggled mightily with the vocabulary in our texts and produced writing of simple sentences rife with errors. Part of this judgement came from my disillusioned account of the kind of work I had been capable of as a 7th grader. Another part, as I came to find out, came from my total ignorance of my students’ life experiences.
Just as all my cherished memories of Mrs. McLaughlin’s class have remained vivid, one particularly painful memory from the first few months of teaching has lingered in mind during long, quiet commutes to school, or any time I’m thinking about a student I haven’t connected with yet. Part of my teaching assignments was to teach the honors reading class. The honors students obediently read the stories and answered the basic comprehension question with efficiency. We ploughed through our Junior Great Books stories and corrected the reading check questions with little enthusiasm. Soon, I realized, I’d need to find more work to fill each class period so I began adding a few open-ended questions to their worksheets that required more writing.
We read Ivan Turgenev’s story, in which an old man reflects on his younger life and tells the story of himself as a young boy in Russia. As an adolescent, his desperation for his cousin’s acceptance caused him to discard, and later steal back, a treasured watch given to him by his godfather. This one event had a domino effect for the boy and became an event he continued to retell into old age. For my compliant and efficient honors students, I added this open-ended reading response question:
Alexey was just a few years older than you are now when the watch incident happened but it stayed with him far into adulthood. Write about a memorable event in your life so far that you think you will still remember when you are an old man/woman.
When I assigned the question I likely assumed my students, with their barely thirteen years life experience, wouldn’t have much to write about, but I figured it would fill the time. The next day my class returned with their work mostly complete and I offered them the chance to share what they’d written about. I’m sure a few students obliged and shared their work, but I remember only one.
Julia, a tall Mexican girl with brown hair in perfect waves cheerily raised her hand. For the few months I’d known her, I had rarely seen her without a wide, dimpled smile that shone out through her eyes. She was one of the first students to make me feel welcomed in my own classroom, even going so far as to tell me I should probably ignore some of the horror stories I was hearing from my other students. In the classroom, halls, and lunchroom, Julia was surrounded by a group of friends who were often giggling loudly. Paper in hand, Julia walked to the front of the room and I scooted into her seat.
Before she began reading, Julia inhaled and pushed an anxious breath through her lips.
“My father left Mexico and came to the United States when I was nine.” Julia began. “But I didn’t come here until I was ten. I stayed in Mexico with my mother and brother until my dad was ready for us. He sent my mom money to help us, but I missed him. One time…”
Julia paused and stared down at her paper. Until this point her voice had been strong and steady.
“One time…” she tried again. This time her voice held none of its usual confident buoyancy. Julia covered her face with one hand and the paper in her other hand shook back and forth as she sobbed, its quiet flickering the only other sound in the room.
Here it was, my moment to make a student feel valued and loved like Mrs. McLaughlin surely would have. I froze. I moved not one inch in the chair and stared at my student in obvious pain. Full of self-doubt, I wondered fearfully, Am I allowed to hug students? Do teachers comfort student like that? How serious is this story? Should I say it’s okay and tell her to sit down?
It felt like an uncomfortably long time until the scraping of chairs on tile broke the quiet. Two of Julia’s classmates rushed to the front of the room and embraced her. As she continued crying, they wiped her tears, took her paper, and clutched her hands. And then, beautifully, they read Julia’s story of family finally reuniting in the United States after years of separation and sacrifice. The class listened with a respect I hadn’t known 7th graders were capable of until that moment.
I wish I could remember what I said following the reading, but my memory has filled in the blanks over the years, Thanks girls. Woah, what a story, or some other pitifully inadequate phrase. I had been focusing on poor spelling, below grade level reading abilities and making sure my students behaved. I was so sure I had knowledge about literature that they needed if only they would take advantage. I had looked at them as below average students, instead of the complex humans they were.
Julia’s experience and her willingness to share with the class shed light on my naivete about what my students “knew” and also on the power of writing.What started for me as a simple time-filling prompt, gave Julia an opportunity to express something she’d obviously been carrying around in her head and heart. She took a classroom assignment and used it to connect with her me and her peers, and, hopefully,unburden herself of a some pain.
The two students who rescued Julia in front of the class also saved me from my inability to respond. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family where crying was either done privately or under the guise of having something in your eye. I may have had a degree in English Literature, but I was utterly ignorant about how to handle such a public display or emotion or how to wrap my mind around a family divided in this way. These two young ladies shared none of my discomfort or awkwardness. They saw a classmate in pain and responded with the compassion and empathy each of us deserves.
This early failure is one of the biggest “could have, should have” moments in my career and this is why it replays so often in my mind. If only I had had Julia a few years later, I know I would have responded more appropriately and she would know that I value her.
But of course this can’t happen. So, to Julia I say, I am sorry I failed you in that moment.
Even more so, thank you. Thank you for preparing me, for helping me have a little more courage when years later a student breaks down in class the morning he learned his mother would be deported. Or when a 6th grade student asks me fearful questions about her pregnancy. And when during a discussion responding to Maya Angelou’s belief that words “get into you,” a student wondered aloud, what makes some mothers love their kids and other mothers abandon theirs?
I’ll never have the right words all the time. But from you, Julia, I learned that making my students feel valued begins by responding to their honesty with my own vulnerability. From this humbling experience, I learned that providing students with meaningful writing topics can have a powerful impact, and I need to be ready to listen.
