Day 325, February 3, 2021
Mentors and Teachers
Tonight's soundtrack: Bill Evans and Robben Ford, Estival Jazz Lugano 2010 (huh, not the Bill Evans I was imagining) then Dire Straits, Wembley, London 1985
My first experiences with teaching were infused with social justice mission. As an undergraduate at the University of the South, Professor Carlos took us into the Franklin County High School to teach drawing classes. My first lesson plan was teaching contour drawing using chalk on a blackboard to a group of semi-willing students. That was my introduction to the high school where we learned they still practiced corporal punishment and did not celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. I talked with students who shared how a student KKK organization had managed to get their photo published in the yearbook. In protest of the school not celebrating Dr. King's birthday, the Black students all wore black t-shirts. The following day, the white students all wore white shirts and marched out of the school where they were greeted by representatives from the KKK.
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| Hambone looking elegant this morning. |
This started a relationship that grew into an article in The Cumberland, our little homegrown underground magazine, meetings with families and the NAACP, and eventually a Visit the University Day, where we brought all interested students from the local high school to the university to visit classes, eat lunch, and in the afternoon, one of the elective sessions was a conversation about racial justice, though I imagine we called it multicultural something or other. I'm also quite sure that my moderator skills were severely wanting, but we were trying to give the black students at the high school a sense of agency and voice, and at least to a small degree, I think we did accomplish that.
Inspired by Professor Carlos, and his desire to give access to art lessons to students who didn't have access to art classes, and his encouragement to pursue the stories the students told, my foray into teaching continued to unfold like a crumpled tissue dropped into a pond.
My senior year in college, I taught gym at the local elementary school. The students ranged from just a little over knee high, to sullen pre-middle school tweens. I have to admit, I wasn't the most inventive PE teacher, but I did manage to pull off a Field Day that rivaled the excitement of my own grade school experiences and watching even the most sullen of the sullen-preteen girls get excited and run around the kickball basses warmed my heart. The faculty at the school helped me understand that what I was doing was more than just teaching kids how to play sharks vs. dolphins, or the rules of soccer. I was teaching them how to be friends, how to care for one another, and how to have empathy. The other teachers would point out to me the students who seemed to be changing, growing, and it was amazing to be a part of that process.
Years later, I heard an interview with a middle school principal where the interviewer asked why the principal chose to work with such a challenging age of kids, and the principal laughed and agreed that, yes, the students were challenging, but that this was also the years of greatest brain development and that as teachers, they had the privilege of seeing, and possibly influencing, some of the most important years of a young child's development. That dedication and understanding of her role in the lifelong development of a human being seemed incredibly inspiring. She was so sure of her role and her place in life.
In graduate school, I started teaching in the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts and one of my most powerful teaching experiences was through what was called the Community Education branch, which housed the evening classes for adults. I had an incredible group of students who faced an entirely different array of challenges and assets than my traditional undergraduate students. These were working parents who experienced car trouble, tragedies, lost and gained jobs, got caught in immigration crackdowns, and all kinds of other challenges. But they also raised children, drove school busses, baked for restaurants, and had traveled further than I ever had. I was just a twenty-two year old fresh out of college, and I was teaching people more than twice my age. And the surprising thing was, it felt good. There was something exciting about working with these students, and the students were eager to learn.
Summers, during graduate school, I traveled with the family back down to Tennesee and co-taught high school English with a veteran teacher, Mrs. Core at St. Andrew's Sewanee, the local private high school. This program brought students from Theodore Roosevelt High School in the Bronx, NY to Sewanee, TN for an intensive residential summer experience of science and English. Mrs. Core was an incredible mentor and teacher to, not only the students, but to me as well. She instilled a work ethic that has been unrivaled in my years since. We were basically on call 24 hours a day for the profession. There was at least one night each summer session where we pulled an all nighter to complete all the grading needed for the subsequent day's class. We were cramming an entire semester's worth of English into one month. We started with Mrs. Core's tried and true high school curriculum, and I added spoken word poetry, creative writing, nature hikes, and Peter Elbow's method of essay writing. She loved what I brought to the class, and we fed off of each other until, by the end of the session we were both tired beyond repair, but utterly exhilarated. It was amazing working with those students and seeing them get excited by literature and writing.
I'm trying to fit too much in here. I forgot about teaching creative writing during spring break at St. Mark's, a middle school for kids who had gotten kicked out of the regular public school system in New Orleans. While we were there, an 11 year old fired a pistol into the air in the gym that doubled as a cafeteria and science classroom.
There was teaching at Westfield, and of course Greenfield Community College.
Early in my teaching career at GCC I was introduced to Learning Communities by Prof. Abbie Jenks, who became a mentor of sorts to teaching in the community college world. She taught a class on Conflict and Conflict Resolution, and I blended that with a literature and creative writing class. It was like those old commercials where one person is walking around with an open container of peanut butter and another person is walking around carrying an unwrapped bar of chocolate, and they collide and create something even greater than what existed before.
I have been lucky to have had such incredible mentors. When I returned to graduate school for my Ph.D., I was a TA for Prof. Julie Graham, and like each of the people I taught with before, she was an incredible veteran teacher and I was excited to just be in her orbit. Julie also encouraged experimentation and had a vision of opening up possibilities of what the classroom could look like. I helped integrate her curriculum with student created videos and interviews, had students develop a course wiki, and helped Julie adapt to the University's new LMS. We invented a hybrid class years before I would know what a hybrid class meant... before I had even conceived that we might one day be teaching entire classes online.
At the end of class one day, where we were teaching about alternative economic practices, a student asked, what would make the most difference? Should she focus on becoming an activist? Should she undermine capitalism through politics? Julie had a quick reply, as if it were a prepared question. Become a teacher, she said. In your career you will make a bigger change in more people than you ever will carrying signs and singing slogans. She said that, as if it was as simple as telling someone she wanted cream in her coffee. Julie then went back to whatever she was doing, bent over a student paper or a grade book, something like that. The student stepped back like she had been touched on the forehead by a healer, and I wonder what happened to her... if she retained that offhand comment as much as I did.
I miss all these teachers. They were all so influential to my development as an educator, and as a human being. I've left out a few other important figures along the way, Dick Wilkie and Peter Elbow in particular, and will have to write more about them another time. As a few colleagues and I meditate on becoming social justice focused educators, I can't help but believe, it has its roots in the people who taught me. The people who gave me an opportunity, and pushed me to inspire others with possibility.
I hope we are all so lucky to do such things with our lives,
Leo
From Our Friends:
From Inside Higher Ed:
| Top 2020 Blogs/Podcasts/Websites Greenfield Community College Computer Arts -- This is an image-heavy website of computer-generated art work of students at Greenfield Community ... |
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From Teaching Tolerance:
Why We Need Black History Month—Especially This Year
Black History Month is here! And while we know anti-racist educators teach Black history year-round, we hope these resources will help you consider how you're framing the month this particular year. Learn more about the need for—and history behind—Black History Month, and get support for teaching Black history in a way that moves beyond trauma and embraces liberation and resistance.From Jenzabar:
What Did 2020 Teach Higher Education About the State of Learning?
By Jenzabar, February 3, 2021
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The first year of the new decade brought with it more changes and transformations than anyone expected; it upended the higher education space, along with countless other industries. Conventional ideas and operational models present in the higher education domain for decades experienced paradigm shifts in 2020. The year brought turmoil and disruption on an unprecedented scale, which forced institutions to adapt and transform. To ensure future success and countermeasures, institutions need to look back at these changes and learn from them.
From The REBLS Network:
Mentors Needed - Short Survey
Like working with students? The Industry Mentorship Program is looking for mentors. The goal of this program is to create an engaging partnership between underrepresented community college/university students interested in STEM and industry mentors to enable students to build bridges and to thrive. Mentors in Chemical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering as well as in Mathematics and Computer Science are needed.
See more information on the program here. Questions: contact Rupal Trivedi.
If you are able to provide mentorship to one or more students please take a few minutes to fill out this survey.
Pass the word and this survey link to people who may be interested in the rewarding experience of mentoring!
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