Vickie Gill

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the immensity of the sea.”  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I’ve been revising my first book over the past few days and have been struck by how much I’ve changed as a teacher (and a writer) in just ten years.  Some of the routines I used in my classes seem rather naive, and I’m squirming at how often I describe “heated arguments” with colleagues.  I don’t do that anymore.  I’ve found far smoother ways to work through roadblocks, but in my defense, for many years I taught students who struggled with reading and writing–some with serious behavior problems–and I was overly protective of these souls who made up the bottom rung of the educational system.

I’ve also been working with an inspiring group of teachers who make up the small staff of the charter school in a small public school district nearby.  Some of these teachers have little experience, others have been around for awhile, but what they share is an amazing amount of energy and worthwhile goals.  We will go through the accreditation process this year, so we’ve had to make sure that our courses match the state standards and the UC system rubrics.  I agree that there has to be a bottom line–some kind of system in place to verify that progress is being made by the students as they tackle a wide variety of skills.  However, we can become so focused on the tiny steps that we miss the big leaps forward.

In making up our course descriptions, I encouraged the teachers to keep the big picture in view by identifying the “Big Questions,” many of which cannot be definitively answered, and by pushing the students to grasp how useful the specific skills will be as they tackle the puzzle of their futures.  This year I placed six challenges before my ninth grade students: 

What and why should I read?

How do I make my writing worth reading?

What do I need to memorize?

How do I locate what I need to know?

What are the beliefs on which I base my life?

Why was I put on this Earth and what am I going to do about it?

I should think that will keep us occupied for ten months.  I also ask the teachers to stay focused on what made them fall in love with their subject in the first place so that the students will leave their classes with a clear idea of the passion behind the facts.  Or as T. S. Eliot would say, “We had the experience but missed the meaning.”

On the third day of school, I had the students in my 9th grade English class do an activity where they had to make assumptions about another student–low-risk things like favorite type of food, music, movies, etc.  The kids enjoyed the activity and for homework, wrote a journal entry about the experience.  They also described a time that assumptions had gotten them into trouble and a time when assumptions (or good instincts) had kept them out of trouble. 

Yesterday I showed them how to use the thoughts in their journals to create a thesis statement for an academic essay on assumptions–they could argue either way:  1) Although assumptions can help us avoid dangerous situations, however, we must be careful of what we assume about other people because assumptions can lead to stereotypes, prejudices, and lost opportunities, or 2) Although assumptions can lead to prejudices and stereotypes, however, we need to make some assumptions based on our instincts because reasonable assumptions can help us avoid dangerous situations.

I like that this “although, however, because” formula forces the kids to address both points of view.  I begin the lesson with one of my favorite quotes by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”  This quote becomes one of the major themes of our class as we discuss cultural, political, and religious beliefs different from our own.  I make sure to tell the kids that they do not have to agree with an opposing point of view, but they should at least be able to present it clearly.

Their homework for this Labor Day weekend is to take five topics–dress code, the election process, survival of the fittest, lab testing on animals, and video games–and create two thesis statements for each:  one “for” and one “against.”  When I presented this assignment, I wore my button that says, “How far can I open my mind before my brains fall out?”  Pretty far, my dears, pretty far.

“I love power.  But it is as an artist that I love it.  I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.”

I’ve been trying to help a public school system start up a charter school; it opens in just  a few weeks and right now the task seems overwhelming.  After almost 30 years, I had no intention of working in a high school again, but the people behind this endeavor are so enthusiastic and idealistic that I threw my hat in before I realized what I was doing.  I’m a sucker for projects that seem impossible to pull off.  If the cause is worthy, the people sincere, and the path not yet paved, I’m in.  I once heard someone say, “Just because something is impossible is not a good enough reason not to try.”  Despite the flagrant double negatives, ’tis true, ’tis true.  Or as I say to new teachers, “If this job were easy, anyone could do it.”  It’s all about the vision and the faith.

Yesterday I spent some time with a man who returned to college after many years of working outside of education to get his teaching credential.  I truly admire his energy, dedication, and creativity.  He’s going to be a great teacher, but we just need to get him through his first year.  We’ve spent time arranging and rearranging furniture, but the real focus has been on developing a classroom management program that will work for him.  I can show him what I do, but he has to find what makes sense to him.  I’m enjoying the process–watching the wheels turn as he listens to my advice and either asks questions or lights up with the great “Aha!”  That’s one of my favorite parts of teaching–watching the struggle transform into a workable idea that now belongs to the learner and not to me.

Any discussion of classroom management will always turn to the topic of power or control.  I believe that teachers who are successful in creating a classroom where real learning takes place understand the nature of true power.  Without a doubt, the teacher needs to take control of a classroom before the opening bell rings.  The students should leave their first session with the sense that the teacher is clearly in charge and has a plan.  New teachers receive all sorts of advice as to how to do this.  Most have been told to start out strict then lighten up as the year unfolds.  This can work if the teacher has convinced the students early on that s/he has the students’ best interests at heart and has created a curriculum worth learning.  However, I’ve seen this “don’t smile until Christmas” approach backfire horribly if the power being wielded by the teacher is false; most students can spot a person pretending to have power within the first few minutes of class.

False power relies on threats designed to make the students afraid to misbehave.  I’ve seen coaches who can pull this off, but often they have a deeper relationship with a number of influential students based on their shared experiences on the athletic field.  But a teacher who relies on shouts, physical intimidation, or public humiliation will maintain control of a class as long as that level of fear is maintained.  This, of course, is exhausting; this kind of control works only as long as the teacher is focused on making it work.  The reason this type of power is labeled “false” is that it disappears as soon as the teacher turns his/her back or relaxes for a minute.  True power is where the students behave because they choose to.  They feel they have a stake in what will happen in this class and are anxious to learn what is being taught.  The climate of the classroom quickly moves from teacher control to self control.  False power controls physical actions; true power changes people’s minds.  My job is to help the teachers tell the difference.  Such interesting work.

Many years ago I ran across the quote that sits in the upper right-hand corner of this page:  “Education is either to calm the disturbed or disturb the calm.”  I honestly can’t remember who said that, but it stuck with me because I had to think about it for awhile before I decided that it was the truth.  I have shared that quote with every one of my students over the past 20 years, and I often ask them to write a journal entry to let me know how they see themselves as students:  calm or disturbed.

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