Aging Gracefully (or not): Why educators still come back

Aging Gracefully (or not): Why educators still come back: Being on time by Alex Sanchez  The cartoon on this page was created by a student. Let me give you some background. Alex was my student last ...

Why educators still come back

Being on time by Alex Sanchez

 The cartoon on this page was created by a student. Let me give you some background. Alex was my student last year in World History. He always tried to get all his work done but he did have difficulty getting to first period on time. He worked very hard to keep his grades high, and told me his parents owned an ice cream shop, his father had contracted Covid-19 and he was having to help even more in the business because of his parents being sick. 
He was always smiling. Always. He was always drawing little cartoons for his friends and he would show them to me. I loved them and when I found out I was going to be doing a newspaper again this year, asked him to come and be our editorial cartoonist. He declined because his core classes were pretty tough and felt he wouldn't have the time to dedicate to art for a class. I sadly said okay.

When this year began, I saw Alex in the hallway outside the journalism room, big smile as normal and he asked how my year was going I responded with a,  "Great. But it would be better if you were drawing for this class." 

He asked me if there was anything particular I would like him to draw and I said just something about school life and he presented me several weeks later with the above cartoon about being late to school. This may not seem like a current issue  and it was drawn as a full page so I took it and kept it in hopes I could use it in a future edition. 

Fast forward to our last edition of the year, which we are currently working on. I had decided to increase the paging to 12 with full color and glanced to the side of my desk where the cartoon had resided since Alex gave it to me. I read it again and thought of how current it was now. 

You see, the tardiness to class had been increasing since school began and had reached epic proportions. New rules like after school (1 hour) and Friday school (2 hours) had be put in motion. Alex's cartoon fit right in. So the cartoon will run in the final paper. 

This young man who seems to always smile, works hard with his family, and draws for fun, is not even in my classroom any longer. He took a situation from his own life and created a cartoon which may hit home for some students. It sure did with me. 

These are the moments which keep teachers coming back, week after week, even when things are so bad they are leaving the profession in droves. This is one of the students who inspire me to keep going; keep working with them; keep encouraging them to blossom in their own way. There are many out there who outnumber the ones we watch circling the drain. We must keep going.  

Kudos are just as important as criticism

 

As a teacher, I sometimes catch myself being my father. When I was young I could not understand why my father was so tough on me. I felt like the odd man out because although he required just as much from my brother and sister, I felt he was especially tough on me.  

Once I was grown and had a child of my own, after a heated discussion with him, I asked him that question and his response floored me. " You are the smartest of you kids. You don't have to work as hard as your brother or sister to accomplish what you want and I hate when you make stupid mistakes." 

After that, he never harped on me about getting things done quicker or better or anything like that. I think that conversation stuck with him.

I find myself, sometimes, becoming my father. I could be extremely tough on my employees at the newspaper and I can be tough on my students. I do think they benefit because they need toughness in their lives but I have to remind myself that they are still kids and still learning. I examine how I felt when my father was so tough on me. I take a step back and reevaluate.

I also learned early on in my career to not only work on bad behavior and grades, but give kudos where they were due. I think we forget sometimes, that honey does catch more flies than vinegar. 

So this week I began emailing, calling or texting parents about the good their kids are doing in my class. I picked all those who had a high A . My ELL student names were sent to one of their teachers to call their homes and speak to their parents in Spanish. Talk about inspiring. Many of these students are just learning English and work very hard to maintain their grades. I like to say they have not become Americanized yet. 

These are some of the remarks I received from some of the parents I contacted: “Thank you for reaching out to me. I appreciate you letting me know she is progressing so well in your class.”

“Thank you so much for looking after my girl. She was so excited to make Dean’s List for the first quarter and first semester this year and I am so very proud of her. If there is ever anything I can do to help or anything you need for the classroom, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

And this one, “Awww, that’s awesome. I am very proud of him because this has been very hard for him in the past. You just don’t know how much that means to me to hear you say that. Thank you so much. It is good to know we do still have teachers that really care about the students.”

For a school which is not known for its parental involvement, you might be surprised at how much these parents do care about their children. They like to hear from the teacher. They may work a lot, or have a lot of children, or simply be very busy. That doesn't mean that if you contact them, they won't care.

The students care as well. They know when you are proud of them and they know when their parents are proud of them..

So don't forget to give kudos. They are just as important as the criticism we all seem to place on our students at one time or another.

Religious freedom is just that; nothing more

 I don't talk about my religion much. I don't find the need. I am a Christian who was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition but with parents who were more progressive and allowed us as young adults to go the way we wanted. We all went to Sunday school and church as youngsters, but as we became young adults, our parents allowed us to go or not go, to both. We were not forced by this time to attend any religious service. 

When I was a young teen, probably 8th grade, I attended a church in Augusta, Georgia and many of my friends went there as well. There were a couple of guys in the neighborhood who would hang out around the basketball court when we were outside and one of them really started liking the choir director's daughter. He began coming to church, just to spend time with her and in time, brought a friend along. 

These guys were typical "bad" boys who began attending services almost every time the church was open. In the 1970s, long hair in a strong military presence did not sit well with some of the deacons of the church and on one particular Wednesday night, one of the young men came late and sat in the back. He was carrying a rose. A deacon asked him to leave making the statement that "Hippies weren't welcome in his church." When his friend found out, he quit attending also. I heard later that one of them was in prison for murder and one had committed suicide. I pretty much stopped attending organized religion after that. The Jesus that I had grown up with would have never treated those young men that way. 

I also recall see an episode of The Walton's where a new German family had moved on the mountain and a local preacher organized a book burning again the immigrants because he said they were Nazis. John Boy stopped the book burning when he pulled a German Bible out of the fire. 

This helped open my eyes as a young adult on when is religion or the free practice of such, really free? So I worship in my way to my God and try not to get involved with any of the other Bible thumping, holier than thou, my way is the only way, type of religion. 

I spoke against it when all the naysayers were saying if we allowed students to learn about Islam that we would all be practicing Sharia law. I spoke against it every time I see my Jewish friends dealing with the antisemitism which is still very prevalent in our society and I sure do it when some nutjob preacher begins burning books in Tennessee.  Educate yourself on religion. Don't be ignorant. Make up your own mind. 

Can someone please explain to these folks that religious freedom does not mean you can trample on everyone else's freedom of religion. It means you can practice yours. 

Our founding fathers did not want us to be ruled by religion because they had seen what it could and did lead to throughout much of European history. Let's try and remember that before we continue to bomb abortion centers, burn books and hide religious education from our children all in the name of Jesus. It just doesn't jibe well with the Bible. . 

How did you learn to write?

 

How did you learn to write? Do you remember? I don't. I remember practicing my handwriting but not actually learning to write. In fact, I don't think we had anything like they do now for writing. I don't remember the never ending paragraph writing trying to figure out a theme or a tone, or having to pick out if a paragraph was an argumentative or informative one. I cannot imagine how bored our students are when they are required to do this. 

Can they write? Not given the parameters that are expected of them. I have no idea where these ideas came from, but our students are struggling. Can they write? Of course. Give them some parameters which make sense to them. 

The photo at the top of the page is of some little fairy tale books which were written by my 7th and 8th grade reading students a couple of years ago. They all begin with "Once Upon a Time" and end with "Happily Ever After". I wrote a grant to have them printed, 5x5 size on slick paper. The students thought up all the concepts and were going to take them to the elementary school to read to the little students. 

From enchanted crystals to an ogre who loves chicken nuggets, they were creative and thoughtful and I was so very proud of them. We got the idea from a novel we were reading at the time where the main character used fairy tales in describing her life. This was not from a computer program they were on several days a week which did not help them in my opinion. 

This photo was used in class one day when I asked the students to tell this child's story. Where was she at and why was she lugging the teddy bear. You would not believe how creative the students were and the stories they came up with. No one had ever allowed them to think for themselves and tell the story. 

I watched a whole class of budding journalists try and figure out how to put this on a page to use as a background on our school newspaper. The articles were written by a senior and the designer wanted to highlight the page, since it is color but was struggling because no one had ever let them decide what they wanted to do. When I invited the rest of the class over to help her out, explaining it was their newspaper and they each had an opinion for style, they were so surprised and then discussed for the whole class period how to best make these stories pop. The student designer told me at the end of class she would take this class for her whole high school career because she had never been allowed to express herself and not be told what she could and could not do or invite other students to discuss what worked or did not work. 

The writing that had the most impact on me and convinced me that telling the story was the most important thing you could do was a poem I was exposed to during my senior year of high school with Mrs. Thelma McCann. She had us chose a poem or reading from a select group of authors and then illustrate the work the best way we knew how. The poem was Merry-Go-Round by Langston Hughes and the class was Black Literature. 

Where is the Jim Crow section
On this merry-go-round,
Mister, cause I want to ride?
Down South where I come from
White and colored
Can't sit side by side.
Down South on the train
There's a Jim Crow car.
On the bus we're put in the back—
But there ain't no back
To a merry-go-round!
Where's the horse
For a kid that's black?

If you do a search on this poem, someone will explain the theme and break the whole poem down for you. How the merry go round goes from injustice to justice, perhaps the complexity of racism and the simplicity of equality? To me, it told a sad story that should not happen. Thank goodness I didn't have to explain it the way students must today. I also received an A and have never forgotten the poem. 

Reading stories that students can understand and relate to, even stories written decades ago helps create writers. Developing vocabulary which students struggle with develops writers. Allowing students to use their minds to develop their own ideas and creations helps develop writers. Reading out loud develops readers. Computer programs and never ending paragraphs don't. 

Do not censor our material; we actually do know what we are doing

 

I am a teacher of young minds. Most of the time, I cannot figure out what those young minds might be thinking of or whether I am actually reaching them as a teacher. 

I am also a mother of a child who remained challenging up until the time he grew up, which was probably when he was in his late 20s. Although I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on and was never told a book was not good for me to read or that I was not allowed to read it, I could never convey that to my kid. He can read and does. He has an excellent vocabulary and when he has a conversation, you would think he was college educated. He isn't, although he makes almost as much money as I do at his job. He did, however, love music. Especially the kind that I disdained as noise, the new (to me) groups that rapped. He was fascinated with them and when one of them, 2 Live Crew was set to perform in Hollywood, he still remembers them cancelling the show because the group was vulgar. He also remembers his stepfather saying at the time, "Sure, make them even more popular by not allowing the kids to listen. That makes sense." How right John was. This story is from 2010 on the 20th Anniversary.

The book at the top of the page is on several banned book lists because it is the story of a young, immigrant girl whose mother ends up in a detention center. She is Haitian. I guess some people do not like the way the government is portrayed. I had a wonderful student who is an immigrant from Haiti, begin this book today. Her reading scores on these infernal tests are low. I bet if I can get her reading and improving her vocabulary, her scores will go up. 

I enjoyed this book tremendously and had to read the articles several times before I could figure out what the heck these parents were talking about for banning this book. Teens love this book. The story is universal except it takes place on an Indian reservation and the character is gay, although I never really got that from the story. I could not keep enough copies of this book in my classroom and even today, had to order another one for a student who asked to read it.

 

One of my favorite books, although I saw the movie before reading it. I have disagreed every time this book is in the news for an inappropriate book. The story is a great story and students love the story. They understand it was written in a time period when language was accepted, not that it was right. They understand the accused charge of rape and realize this also happened. They truly don't see Atticus as a white savior, but as Scout's father. They are much more interested in Boo Radley than the language used. 

The above book, has never been banned but has been challenged due to the content of an angry young man who fights against the status quo. It was ridiculous then and it never happened again. It still made the way to my classroom and several years of students along with several other books by the same author. At the beginning of the book, Mr. Villsenor chastises teachers he had along the way and the treatment he received as a Mexican immigrant student. Although he was born in the United States, he stuttered, so he was bullied twice. It is an excellent story and my only regret is I could never raise enough money to have him come and speak to my kids. 

This book could have been banned in several school systems due to content, but I have never heard of someone challenging it. That is a very good thing. The book has gangs, murder, poor people, medical treatment inequities due to race and money, and street kids. It is a true story and one of my students recommended it to me. I read it and have had several of my classes read it. I always keep at least 2 copies in my room for my students. Mr. Moore is now running for governor of Maryland. It is an excellent book. 

I have always had a rule for my life. If it is in my home or in my classroom, you have permission to read it. If I don't have what you want to read, I will try and get you a copy. Any book you take, enjoy it, tell someone else about it and keep it to pass it on. My students' reading scores should go up. At least if the Florida legislature will STOP trying to limit what I can and cannot do or say in my classroom.