Tag: Teaching Hope

Things I Know 206 of 365: I’m going back to school

He who opens a school door closes a prison.

– Victor Hugo

I’m flying to Alice, TX at the moment. The good folks of Alice have invited me to speak at their back to school commencement.

This, to me, it weird.

I’ll be speaking about my work with the Freedom Writers Foundation. Specifically, I’ll be talking about what it was like to write and edit a book with 149 other teachers and what insights the process and the content of the book provided. I’m also trying to think about what I wanted to hear at the beginning of my school years.

Without fail, before heading back to the classroom, I consulted the writings of Harry Wong in The First Days of School. The first two years I read the entire book, sure what I needed to be the best possible teacher was contained within those pages.

It wasn’t.

Before my third year of teaching, I read only one section of the book. In fact, I read only two pages of the book – the section titled seven questions students have on the first day of school.

It’s only as I write this that I realize the help Wong provided was rooted in my answering of students’ questions, not his answering of mine.

In shifting my thinking toward anticipating and answering those questions for my students, Wong shifted my thinking from my summer mindset of paying attention largely to my own needs and wants to those of my students.

It started the ignition of my teacher brain.

Yes, I would need to be challenged and cared for throughout the year. I would have my own questions that needed answering. Those six questions, though, reminded me that even the toughest, most frustrating students entered my classroom trepidacious about what they were getting themselves into,and it was my job to start the year by anticipating and working to meet their most basic needs – to start our time together by assuaging as much of their fears as I could.

I’m not one for the customer service model of education. The adoption of any type of capitalist thinking into a realm that is only at it’s best when everyone is supporting everyone else, muddies the waters in a way that is counterproductive to the mission of a democratically educated citizenry.

We do not work to anticipate and meet the needs of students because of the gains it might garner down the road. We anticipate and meet the needs of students because they are people and we care for them.

I suppose that’s the larger message for tomorrow – I do not matter. More to the point, any advice I give does not matter. If I can ask the right questions and encourage the teachers of Alice to ask the right questions of how best to see and serve their students,  perhaps I will have done some good.

If you happen to be in Philly…

This has been living on the ‘Book for a while now, but I figured I might as well give it a shout here as well:

You are invited to come join six local teachers as they read from their co-authored book-Teaching Hope. (***currently #33 on the NYTimes Best-Seller List***)

Host: Philly FW Teachers

Date: Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2009

Time: 6 – 7 PM

Place: Borders Books, 1 S. Broad St. Philadelphia, PA

Books are $14.99, paperback. All proceeds benefit the Freedom Writers Foundation that continues to train teachers in innovative, tried and true learning methods as well as continuing to sponsor continuing education for worthy and deserving students.

About TEACHING HOPE:
“Think of that teacher, that one teacher—the one who made the difference, who saw you and pushed you to find out who you wanted to become. This book is written by 150 people who attempt to be that teacher in the lives of their students, every day.” Thus begins TEACHING HOPE: Stories from the Freedom Writer Teachers and Erin Gruwell; Foreword by Anna Quindlen (Broadway Books, September 2009; Trade Paperback Original). Marking the 10th anniversary of the New York Times #1 bestseller The Freedom Writers Diary, Erin Gruwell has gathered a merry, mixed band of fighters—150 teachers from across the United States and Canada trained in the Freedom Writers Method—to tell their stories of teaching students in and out of traditional classrooms and, just maybe, change the world.

www.freedomwritersfoundation.org

#33

One of the best books about teaching I’ve ever read is Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students by Gregory Michie.

I didn’t read it until three years after I’d started teaching, and I needed it. In Holler…, Michie examines his teaching career in Chicago public schools and his attempt to connect with his kids in a way that is honest and frank without losing optimism.

Michie’s updates on former students helped me the most. As he wrote about catching up with them years down the road, not all of them were successful, not all of them had made their way to a better life.

I was teaching at Phoenix Academy in Sarasota, FL when I read Holler. At Phoenix, we recruited the lowest achieving students in the district and offered them smaller class sizes and intensive non-traditional instruction with the goal of moving them toward grade level and a successful transition to a traditional high school.

As you can imagine, it was a tough fight with many losing battles. Michie’s book was helpful because it helped me to redefine what success meant in education. Here was a guy who had made many attempts similar to the ones I was making at Phoenix, finding out he hadn’t saved everyone, and still remaining optimistic about his profession.

I bring this up because August 18 another book about teaching appeared in book stores across North America. The book is entitled Teaching Hope: Stories from the Freedom Writer Teachers, and I helped write it.

The book is by 150 teachers from across North America. Every state is represented as well as several provinces in Canada and teachers from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

It’s not a how-to. In fact, it’s far from it. You’ll find no lesson plans or new pedagogical approaches within its pages.

It’s also not about teacher martyrdom or teacher messiahs. Yes, there are moments of success and moments or failure, but they sit alongside one another – as do the moments in a school year.

It’s not meant to preach or presume to have the answers. In the end of one entry, when a teacher asks a student whether he will attempt suicide again, the answer is simply, “Yes.” I don’t know what to do with that.

I hope that it is three things:

1) I hope it is a window for those outside of teaching into many facets of education that doesn’t try to be what Tom Moore or Dan Meyer hate about teaching movies, but instead offers something more complex.

2) I hope it is a conduit of connection for teachers who read it.

3) I hope it is a catalyst toward increasing community involvement in education.

As of today, Teaching Hope is #33 on the New York Times Best Sellers List for Paperback Nonfiction. I hope the people who put it there are finding what I found in Holler.