Ayers’s To Teach
is definitely a refreshing read, in light of some other more theory-heavy
material we’ve dealt with lately. He
provides a lot of practical advice (though he can be a little too repetitive),
and it seems that the book would come in handy during summers where you may be
dreading the return to the necessary chaos that is the school year. Ayers explains that the work of teaching is
important because every student is sacred (I feel like a lot of the writing
about education we’ve been reading lately is couched in very religious terms). Most of the book focuses on students as
individuals, with which I find no fault and I wholeheartedly agree. However, I’m a little nervous about this idea
in practice. As a student teacher, I’ve
had the opportunity to get to know several classes of students, but I’m only
completely engaged with two classes of them since I’m the full teacher. I know the other students fairly well, since
I’m there during their classes to support and cajole them into writing and
working, but it’s definitely not the same kind of relationship because the
authority aspect/main teacher part isn’t there.
I think it’s already difficult to keep up with the two classes of
students that I have, so thinking forward to having six classes seems mind
boggling, especially considering the overcrowding of classrooms that already
exists. I think that these relationships
develop over time, and you don’t have to (and can’t) fully know each student in
your classroom from the very beginning.
Still, that beginning time is really important for establishing the kind
of classroom environment that you want and for gaining trust.
I think the only solution would be for administration to
limit the numbers of students in the classrooms, which probably wouldn’t happen
unless some kind of grant was involved.
And that leads me to another issue that Ayers doesn’t really address:
what about the administrators at your school?
What if they don’t agree with or don’t want to deal with your methods of
teaching? He talks about the people
developing curriculum in a vague sense, but he doesn’t really address the
people in the same building who can definitely affect (for better or worse)
your effectiveness in the classroom.
They can “review” your work as being less than stellar, or they can
insist that you accomplish teaching in a certain way. If you disagree, they have ways of pushing
you out. So it’s not just an issue of
dealing with restrictions put into place from on high. There are restrictions looming from the next
hallway over.
On a more cheerful note, I especially like Ayers’s method of
dispelling the myths of teaching. Though
I don’t completely agree with all of his opinions, I do like that he constantly
comes back to the fact that we’re not teaching these awful human beings who are
so different than any who have gone before.
And we don’t have to be consummate performers and fun-makers! I think that this is just a personality
default for me, in that I want to be perceived as someone who is fun and likes
to engage in exciting activities, but it also causes me to feel burned out way
more quickly. When I’m racking my brain
to figure out something super exciting for my students to do, I’m sometimes
missing out on them and where they want to go and be in the classroom.
One last point that Ayers mentioned in the beginning of his
book is a professor who told his student that she was too bright and able to be
a teacher. This actually happened to me
as well. When I applied to the program,
I asked an undergraduate professor if he’d write me a letter of
recommendation. I’d asked him to do the
same on a couple of other occasions, once for my application to my first
graduate program in literature and then a year later when I thought I wanted to
pursue a PhD in literature. The response
I received for this new venture was disappointing and made me question my
decisions: "Don't sell yourself short. I'm not saying that is what you are
doing...I can't emphasize enough that I'm not saying that. But I'd like to hear
from you that this is what you want right now."
I have been inculcated in this myth that teachers aren’t as
able as others in their subject matter.
If they were, they would be pursuing higher degrees and teaching in
college. But I wholeheartedly do not
believe in this myth anymore. I have
seen that teaching at a high school level can be one of the hardest yet one of
the most rewarding jobs that a person can have.
And I am ready to go on that journey.
I appreciate that you're thinking critically about Ayers' work and not just simply saying "I love it" or some superficial thing like that. I agree with your point about administrators. From what I know about Ayers, the school he taught at in Chicago was a community school--something that wasn't necessarily tied to the constraints of the public school system. However, I could be wrong about this. Look it up.
ReplyDeleteMan I can totally get your comment about teaching as "selling yourself short." Do you know what it's like to be a white male from a privileged community who says you want to be a teacher? It's kind of embarrassing. On the one side, there is definitely the respect and the reverence for the position, because it's universally recognized as really tough. However, there's also the hidden attitude of "oh, you really want to do THAT? You could have gone to law school or gotten an MBA or worked doing something else that makes more money and is generally more respected. So I feel you on that one. Don't let it get to you. I definitely have before and it makes you doubt yourself. So I'm glad to see that you have a strong resolve now in your purpose to be a teacher. Go get em, tiger.