If anything was going to break me, I was sure it was being thrown into my first school in the ghetto with no training. I was replacing a teacher that had allegedly smoked pot with the eighth graders in a nearby park, and whom had given up on teaching - resorting to playing cards and jumping rope with the students everyday. The students resented me for coming and wanted an explanation. They weren't accepting my evasive answers, and resorted to cussing me out everyday. Administration walked by room, rubber necking it as if I were a roadside accident. And maybe I was - because this was a school where police, ambulance, and fire were there everyday, where my sympathy and empathy were scoffed at as naive.
But instead, I flourished there. Okay, maybe flourished is an exaggeration. I survived, with support from a lot of people around me. The student culture beat me down everyday and challenged my core beliefs - was being civil to one another a product of my privilege? Was a work ethic only part of my heritage? Are we all simply a product of our environments?
I believed we could expect more from our students. Not ignoring the obstacles they all faced (which were great indeed), but not using it as an excuse. After three years, I was recruited and transferred to a charter school whose one of many character building mottos was "No excuses." The school provided everything the students may need - breakfast, lunch, supplies, uniforms, etc. I lacked nothing as a teacher. But, I failed miserably at that school.
I came across an article yesterday about a charter school in New York - I skimmed the article that was taking a look at an incident where a model teacher belittled a student who didn't know an answer, then went on to look at how this especially successful charter school seemed to be known for somewhat abusive techniques, i.e., ripping up a student's work, shaming or belittling a student, and so on. The paper interviewed several teachers who had quit working at the school after so-many years because they didn't like the person they had become.
And for the first time, I feel a little less horrible about the person I became when I worked at an achievement school. Except it didn't take years to break down my foundation, it took about four or five months. I am still horrified at the thought of it. But I feel less of a failure when I read that others had my experience - where they didn't like the person they had become and had to quit.
I have always suspected that it was the very idea of achievement that broke me. Achievement was not my goal. I wanted my students to learn how to work hard, not give up, and find their own way. Achievement is a by-product, but not something I necessarily strove for - there were too many variables to measure "achievement". Maybe it was because my parents didn't put a lot of stock in how education marked achievement, maybe because when I "achieved" something, I just felt . . . I don't know . . . normal? Satisfied? I had worked hard and reached my goal, isn't that just how things work?
At school, achievement became the goal - it was the soul purpose - it was the measure of our students growth, and the expectation of the teacher's job. No excuses. We had everything at our disposal. No excuses. Life will always have obstacles. No excuses.
I made a very subtle shift in my focus from the student to the student's progress. No one told me to do this - I thought the two went hand-in-hand so I didn't even notice that I had done it. I was given lots of new material to work with, and I was happy to try it all - but slowly I found myself getting frustrated. Somehow, my teaching and thinking became muddled with the achievement factor. I had the low level students and they felt like failures. I felt like a failure for not motivating them. It was a vicious cycle and I was so frustrated with my inability to be successful, I became impatient and angry with my students. Ugh. I hate even remembering it.
At my prior school and my current school, my student progress was and is not evaluated - or if it was, I wasn't measured for it - my efforts were applauded, and I flourished. At the achievement oriented school, I needed to show the progress, or come up with a plan to meet their needs. Problem. Solution. Problem. Solution. No excuses.
But of course its not that easy. We have to measure our student's progress, and show what they've learned - this is what the education system has always done - but it's an endless pressure to prove yourself. Then you are recognized, sometimes rewarded, compared, and ranked. And so what is achievement? What have I achieved that I am proud of?
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