A once and future teacher, and a heroine of the week

So I am going through boxes and boxes of paper in my study. Boxes of paper I've had for almost 20 years, some of them. Mostly stuff related to academe, and mostly mostly stuff related to teaching.

Two things.

(1) The small, easy one: if you are an academic sort, for god's sake and your own, MAKE TIME to go through and sort your papers AT LEAST every time you move. Because the temptation--and I know you do this--is to just dump everything into a big folder or box labelled "teaching materials" or maybe "English 101" or whatever, and then shove it into a filing cabinet or a corner or something. And if you do this every semester--and who wants to cap off a week or two of marathon grading with sorting paper for another couple days??--then after a few years all that awesome material that you xeroxed or typed up--handouts about how to write conclusions, or how to assess the merit of online materials, interesting assignments, good lectures--is buried somewhere in a dusty pile that you DON'T HAVE TIME to go through because you have to prep for class!

I swear to god that my teaching started getting worse when I took my first job and stuffed all the things I'd developed in seven years of graduate teaching into boxes. The up side is that now that I'm finally going through this stuff, I'm remembering what it's like to actually be prepared for, and hence good at, and hence enjoy, teaching. Which might spur me to Get a Real Job. You never know.

(2) The big universal lesson. So I took a break from dusty paper-sorting to read blogs, and found this piece on PostBourgie, and this must-read article about Khadijah Williams.

Khadijah just graduated high school and is on her way to Harvard. She has also been homeless since she was Pseudonymous Kid's age.

If you want to learn more about her, read the linked piece; most of what I have to say about her isn't about her, specifically. It's about the educational system, and whether or not we should be doing a better job of teaching her peers.

Now, along with sorting my papers, I'm also supervising PK, who is on summer break. Which means asking him for help, occasionally, around the house (which he's not too bad about); getting mad at him for making messes/destroying things (like, oh, say, TURNING OFF THE REFRIGERATOR last week); occasionally "going out" to the beach or a movie or the garden store or the library. Mostly, though, it involves neglecting him while he plays with legos (which he's doing right now) or reads comics in the hammock or makes things out of cardboard and duct tape.

Now, PK freaking loves summer vacation. Largely because, as he puts it, he is left alone to "do what he wants" and doesn't have to go to school, where other people tell him what to do all day. This is ironic, because his school is amazingly hands-off, as schools go: the sit-down-shut-up-and-do-this-worksheet stuff is minimized almost to the point of non-existence, and he has virtually no formal "homework"--and part of why he hates it is because he feels like he's not "learning" as much as he'd like to.

I worry a little bit about how to get him to be more academically challenged. But not much, because the facts are that his academic knowledge is completely on schedule for his age and in some areas way above grade level. Because, duh, his parents are hypereducated.

What I worry about more is that his damned independent streak and hatred of doing anything in a group is (going to be) a social and professional handicap. And I just don't know, really, where the line is on that front. There's plenty of research about the academic and work achievement of the kids of the educated umc to reassure me on the schooling front; less so on the "kids who actively resist being part of a group" front. Or at least, since I know more about education than I do about non-education-related childhood development, if such research exists I'm not familiar with it.

But I am pretty up-to-speed on education, both as a (former?) professional and as a research-minded educator parent. Hence, some thoughts about the linked essays above.

Going through my files is making me realize that one of the biggest factors in my own teaching success was having prep materials readily to hand. Once I’d moved offices often enough that my files were all dusty and disorganized and finding specific things was a pain in the ass, as I said, my teaching started to go downhill. But rediscovering all this old material and realizing that oh yeah, I *do* have lots of resources to teach a, b, and c is making me feel a lot better about maybe teaching again than I have in a long time.

I'm also realizing that getting paid 6 figures would make it a SHITLOAD easier to afford to buy the materials/afford the space for a decent filing system. Or to replace my dead laptop, which has a lot of old teaching materials on it that I can’t access. Or to even hire someone to file my shit for me. Plus subscriptions to teaching journals, buying teaching books, joining professional organizations and maybe going to conferences–all the stuff that costs money but also has a lot to do with not getting stale. While I was teaching, a lot of my crappy filing was about my own enormous anxiety and my sense that I should be Doing Things, not Wasting Time Shuffling Papers. (And yes, I realize that Doing Academic Things = shuffling papers. But as all anxious academics know, Important Papers involve Research, not Teaching.) But part of it was also about not being willing (or able) to spend money on keeping filing systems up to date, whether that means boxes, cabinets and storage or computers and hard drives. In restrospect, I could have--and should have--prioritized my time and money differently; but I also realize, now, that the credit crunch and money anxiety of having a family on $45k/year was extremely unconducive to thinking clearly enough to do so.

So yeah, I'm no Khadijah Williams. Getting past distractions, setbacks, bad habits, and poor filing to focus on high achievement is something I can only do up to a point. If I were a more remarable human being, I'd have developed better habits despite all the reasons not to. But I'm not. I am, I think, fairly typical in my tendency to undercut myself when I have a choice between the easier, unremarkable path (sloppy filing) and the harder, more impressive one (laser-like focus on a goal).

Which is why arguments about education frustrate me so much. Sure, there are great natural teachers who do amazing things despite mediocre salaries, piles of administrative trivia driven by legislatures and/or fears of litigation, and the broad popular belief that teaching is easy and that therefore everyone and their dog is entitled to second-guess what happens in the classroom. And sure, there are also brilliant, driven students who can get into Harvard despite a lifetime of homelessness.

But that's the exception, not the rule. Nor, I hasten to add, is the rule that most teachers are complete idiots who teach because they can't do anything else, or that most students are lazy morons with indifferent parents who we ought not waste resources on.

The rule is that, by and large, students and teachers (like parents) do the best they can. And that, given certain facts of human psychology--like our tendency to be more motivated by people right in front of us than by abstractions--the best they can is often, perhaps usually, better than one would predict. Most people, even the best of us, make parenting up as we go along. Because of this, most kids have things going on at home that distract from (at best) or damage (at worst) healthy intellectual (and psychological) development. Because of *this*, most teachers have stuff going on in the classroom that distracts from (at best) or counteracts (at worst) good teaching: kids whose parents are going through a divorce, kids who hate working in groups, kids who are more interested in looking out the window or going outside than finishing an assignment, kids who are gay, kids who the other kids make fun of for being or "acting" gay, kids whose hair or clothes or personal mannerisms are "weird," kids whose parents just got laid off or have drinking problems or are emotionally or physically abusive, and so on and so on. That shit is NORMAL.

So. Does the current state of affairs, in some places at least, need improvement? If you think that, given social realities, having most teachers doing the best they can for most of their students most of the time, is fine--and that it's okay that, by and large, "Them thats got shall get / Them thats not shall lose / The strong gets more /
While the weak ones fade / Empty pockets dont ever make the grade," then I guess the answer is no.

If, otoh, you think that the Billie Holiday tune, gorgeous though it is, describes things that you wish would change (and that, by the way, are at odds with most people's ideals of equality and justice), then let's talk about how to improve things. And like Billie suggests, a big, big part of the problem is money.

Not for the Khadijah Williamses. Young women (and men) like her will be fine no matter what. God bless them for it, and we should all honor them as well. I, personally, don't think that even the superstars should have to go through some of the things she's undoubtedly had to deal with during her short life, but clearly she's made it regardless. And I'm sure everyone reading this can think of at least one outstanding teacher whose success suggests that good teachers are born, not made.

But, exceptions aside, good teaching is something that people can be trained to do-–or at least trained to be better at. It *is* a profession, after all, much like medicine. And good students, too, can be trained: that's the entire fucking point of education, after all.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you can treat teachers like widgets and just “train” them in lieu of providing professional salaries. Or that any old teacher in front of any old student can do the kind of excellent job that we want every student to have access to. If you want people to adhere to professional standards, you need to pay them like professionals. And one important reason for that is that maintaining professional standards actually *does* cost money. Not just at the level of "the system," either.

If the job is easy enough that people who are half burned out and/or not really paying attention can “go through the motions” and do it “well enough,” then fine; pay $40k/year. Your employees will be average, won’t be able to pay for ongoing training, won’t be able to take vacations very often to recharge, and won’t be willing or able to take their work home to a reasonably-appointed office space, since they won’t be able to afford the childcare, rent, equipment, or mortgages that make working at home possible. They won’t be able to afford the “networking” opportunities that keep them in touch with other professionals, who can alert them to new and interesting developments in various fields that can be brought into the classroom as examples, opportunities, or curricula (including field trips). They won’t be able to afford to provide students with the things that rich parents can afford to provide their children: educational games, toys and software; the ability to “try out” new, unfamiliar hobbies; the ability to experiment (which sometimes involves breaking or wasting materials) without being punished. They won't be able to afford the "down time" that lets them come back every day and juggle not only the day's curriculum, but all the emotional and psychological events that come up in any group of 20-40 (or more) young people every single day.

And yes, if they are bright, ambitious, and creative enough to be able to command six-figure salaries in other professions, they are unlikely to stick around teaching for more than a couple years because (1) teaching well actually is really hard work; and (2) we do, as a society, measure status in large part by income and lifestyle, and few bright, ambitious people really are going to feel happy for long living and being treated “lower” than their intellectual peers.

If the job actually demands ongoing attention, engagement, and interest, then the individual has to foster and develop those things. Which costs money. Which is part of *why* the children of professional parents are--not always, obviously, and not inevitably, but on average, “brighter” and far, far more likely to become professionals themselves. Their parents can afford to provide them with things that other kids don’t get, things that develop the qualities that one needs for “professional success.” A broad knowledge of lots of things, willingness to experiment, a fairly wide range of acquaintance, money to “keep up” with new technologies and information (books, magazine subscriptions), time to do “wasteful” things like sit around and read, or play with legos, or build shit out of cardboard–rather than helping around the house because mom and dad can’t afford to pick up pizza or hire a cleaner or replace shit that gets worn out or broken. Opportunities for networking and learning like summer camp, or arts programs. A stable home with space to do homework. The ability to develop relationships with teachers, so that you can get good letters of recommendation.

Poor parents who are ambitious for their kids will manage to provide a lot of this stuff for their kids anyway. And many kids, even if their parents can't manage to provide material support, will do better than you might expect if their parents provide emotional support and encouragement. Most parents, simply by virtue of human nature, will do their best to support their kids, no matter what. Sometimes, "our best" is pretty shitty. Sometimes we might not even try. Some truly outstanding kids will be world-beaters even so.

But even for your average loving middle-class parent–-hell, even for upper-middle class parents, loving or not-–this stuff costs a lot of time and money. And if we want teachers to teach all kids the way that we hope to raise our own kids, then we need to be intellectually honest enough to admit that if parenting "well" costs time and money, then teaching *other* people's children well does, too.

Update: if you're really interested in this sort of topic, PB's book of the month is Whatever it Takes. (Not out yet in pb, but there's always the kindle option, if you have one, or an iphone/pod.) I've yet to actually engage in one of the book discussions over there, but I've read some great books on account of 'em.