Really?

4 thoughts on “Really?”

1. Michael Coxon

   May 15, 2015 at 4:56 pm

   I started announcing to my afternoon classes this Friday that I am leaving and taking a new position at another school next year. They all thought I was joking with them at first. They started to ask why would I ever want to leave? I kind of did the shoulder shrug thing and was initially vague. When kids really wanted to know I told them.. I said, “I teach with stories and Señor Wooly songs and by having fun with students and that is not popular here with other teachers.” They understood but were frustrated and angry.
   I went back and forth on if I should really say these things to a bunch of teenagers. I wondered if they would understand the difference in how they learn in my classroom and how their classmates learn with other teachers. I wondered if I was being unprofessional by stating this truths about how our department pushes for a one size fits all curriculum. I am glad I did…
   After class a student said, “Señor, I am really glad you are going to place where you can teach with stories, I just wish the people here understood that this is how WE want to learn.”

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   1. Nathaniel

      May 15, 2015 at 5:45 pm

      I am glad you told them, too. They should know. It is their education. You have been bullied long enough. You are not attacking their person. You are allowing them to do higher level thinking about consequences of the road more heavily traveled and the the road less traveled. You are helping them understand that it is not because you are necessarily better than the rest nor that you are a better teacher. You have chosen a better path and they can look back and desire the better path for their own children and perhaps influence their parents to petition for teachers who teachers on the better path.

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      1. Sean Lawler

         May 15, 2015 at 7:43 pm

         So true, Nathaniel. Michael was not evaluative or judgmental in responding to his students, he talked about how he teaches. I think your students, all our students, should know that they can learn a foreign language when they are taught through conversation and stories. Your departure is like a scene in a movie, Michael… like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society.

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2. Ben Slavic

   May 15, 2015 at 6:34 pm

   I agree that you should have told them. They’re not stupid. They get it.
   What that student said after class is huge. There is a PhD topic in these words:
   …I just wish the people here understood that this is how WE want to learn….
   People don’t.
   It’s tricky. Most kids, it is true, are in our classes because they have to be and very few, dependent on our student population, “get” the subtleties of our work even though we explain it to them and model it for them every day. I wouldn’t ask them their opinions.
   But what about those few who really get it? They are being taught, through the workings of the system, that their ideas in the community don’t count. Even though they “observe” our classes every day, as it were, they are not asked anything about what is best for them.
   Bracey’s principal (I use Bracey so as not to confuse him with John Piazza, both sterling Latin teachers) knows nothing but has a say in evaluating John where his students don’t. Their data is looked at, but what they think, what they can articulate about what they experience as Latin learners, how they feel when learning, somehow doesn’t count for beans.
   How many segments of our population are we going to discount before our nation wakes up?

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