First Day of School

In July, as I was mulling over the barren stretch of time between the end of my summer school courses and the start of fall classes, I wondered if it would ever be possible to enter a school at the start of the year and watch everything from a teacher's perspective.

I wanted to see the first day of school, and the days before, when the halls were quieter but the classrooms no less busy as teachers prepared.

Amazingly, I got my wish. I was offered the opportunity to be an interim teacher for the first week-and-a-half at a local elementary school. I was able to sit in on in-service sessions, data meetings, planning sessions of all stripes, and even had the chance to set up the classroom for the teacher (out on medical leave).

It was exhilarating and exhausting, in equal measures. I unpacked boxes, tried to think about systems and supplies placement as a teacher would, brainstormed math games, listened to veteran teachers make their reading intervention plans, made some new friends, listened as administrators explained and developed procedures, and saw firsthand how much effort is expended in the 72 hours before the classroom door opens.

And then, the classroom door opened.

I found myself thrown into the deep end of classroom management without swimming lessons. My training hadn’t encompassed that yet, so I was following others’ suggestions and going with my gut instincts. I failed miserably and I succeeded admirably.

The students listened to me as I taught a brilliant social studies lesson incorporating the Civil War, Annie Oakley, a lesson on measurement skills as we determined how long the hallway was (90 feet: the distance Annie could shoot a playing card edge-wise!), and even a splash of the arts as we watched a portion of Annie, Get Your Gun.

The students ignored me as I reviewed the four types of sentences.

The students interacted with me as we talked about Woodstock, the dangers of drug use and the neighborhoods they come from.

The students disobeyed me as we learned how to walk the school hallways quietly.

I was alternately competent and disastrously incompetent. I sweated for hours on a day’s lessons, only to watch it implode because of my classroom management deficiencies.

But I also had shining moments when a student showed me a pithy sentence explaining the character of Homily in The Borrowers: she’d listened and learned and thought it through.

How many teachers get to practice being a first-year teacher? Not many, I don’t think. When I do my student teaching, or internship as it’s called on the graduate level, I’ll get to observe and act within a classroom, but it’ll be in the middle of a semester.

I have been given an amazing chance to rehearse something scary that I’ll have to do later. What great preparation…and how very much I have to learn in a graduate classroom before I learn by doing in my own classroom, on my second first day of school.

The Greatest American ___ Hero ___ Traitor (choose one)

I hope someday to be able to use this in a classroom to introduce a unit on Benedict Arnold....

Finding Mrs. Warnecke

Sometimes you read a book or encounter a story that just makes you want to run out and do something. I read a book like that this week. It's Finding Mrs. Warnecke, a book by a North Carolina Teacher of the Year (2008) and National Teacher of the Year finalist (2009). 

In this memoir of sorts, Cindi Rigsbee shares her progression from a first-grade classroom in which she received warm encouragement, to her own classrooms as a teacher and the ways she developed that same encouragement for her students. 

She shares specific techniques for relating to students (and not) and tells of both successes and failures in her growth as an educator. She relates everything to the relationship she had with her first-grade teacher, Barbara Warnecke, and how that relationship helped her at every stage of her life. The book ends with the account of her meeting Warnecke as an adult and how their friendship continued on a new plane.

The relationship between a caring teacher and a willing student is probably the greatest baton-passing combination we humans have. Whether in a classroom or in a home between parent and child, this connection of love and respect produces incalculable positive results.

As my teacher training progresses, I’m struck by the gap between what I expected to learn and what I’m learning. I expected to hear about techniques, magic words that will transfer information from teacher to student. I expected matter-of-fact checklists that would equip me to lead a classroom.

But what I’m hearing repeatedly, and across disciplines, is an emphasis on person-to-person, questioning, open-ended relationships in which a seasoned traveler invites a novice to join him or her on the road.

This is encouraging. Hearing that a simple act like validating a bit of rhyme by a first-grader made the difference for a lifetime means I already possess key tools for education: the abilities to listen, observe, care, pause, encourage, guide. These qualities I already have, should I choose to use them.

As Rigsbee says, the awareness and sensitivity to students’ needs and situations trumps any kind of academic technique or procedure. When I read that she encountered students who disrupted class because a father died or a mother left the night before, I’m reminded of students who acted out in class while I was a substitute teacher this spring.

Were any of those children newly missing a parent? Were they hit or threatened or denied food or forced to leave home the night before? I need to remember to look past behavior and into heart issues before making decisions or taking action.

Rigsbee’s story shows that a moment can make all the difference; but unless the teacher is prepared in that moment, the relationship growth won’t happen. And to be prepared for that one moment, we teachers need to care in every moment.

I had a Mrs. Warnecke too...only her name was Nannie Rucker. I know now she was the first black woman to be a Tennessee delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention, but all I knew then was that my wonderful first-grade teacher came to my house for dinner. 

She loved and encouraged me, then and now. I attended her funeral years ago and despite the crowd, felt as though I knew her best. What a great legacy she and Mrs. Warnecke have left, and who knows how far the ripples go?

The Development of Superman

Eight-year-old boy, bath towel and safety pin, old stump: prescription for flight. If only I'd been born on Krypton. Superman never had to pretend; he was the guy that all of us superhero-wannabes wannabe.

But even Superman started out as Superboy, growing up and developing a sense of identity and responsibility. This week, as part of a Learning and Teaching class, my group took a look at the various stages of emotional and moral development that all children go through. Different rates, yes, but identical stages. We decided to apply these to Superman for a creative project. 

He is invulnerable and can fly, burn with his vision and freeze with his breath, lift cars and see through walls...but as it turns out, Superman is just like me. And you.

He came to a sense of himself, obeyed rules for others' sake, then chose to obey them for his own sake, then developed a moral code that he chooses to stick to. 

Oh, and hey. We both wear glasses and were journalists. All part of the process.

These are the stages of moral development as put forth by Lawrence Kohlberg. Our group also tackled the eight stages of development according to Erik Erikson:

Concept Mapping

Science used to be, for myself, a collection of facts. Facts about planets and plants and everything in between, but without connections between them. 

As I complete my first class of graduate school, Teaching Science, I'm realizing what a journey it is to be a scientist. You ask questions, seek answers, learn information, and then you're right back asking more questions. 

The physical sciences overlap with biological sciences: how do chemicals affect the human body? Astronomy overlaps with biology: global warming. These are not discrete lists of facts; they are interconnected webs that raise as many questions as they do answers. 

Science is no longer something to fear or look askance at. It is something to explore...something deep and big and unknowable; and yet, we want to know and so we keep asking questions. 

I was asked to create concept maps, bookending this course. Here they are, in all their shiny-faced, future-science-teacher glory. 

A list of unrelated topics vs. an interconnected cycle of Q&A...together representing the journey of one man learning science, as he learns how to teach it.

It Lies in the Brain

Ethics and morals form the backbone of our social institutions. The rule of law. Oaths taken by public officials and private citizens in court. Rules against plagiarism. Bank teller jobs. Police investigations. Fourth-grade test-taking procedures. 

So when people don't, or can't, tell the truth, we call them pathological liars. They lie to others and they lie to themselves. It's deception of the highest -- or lowest -- order. 

Recently, Radiolab -- a public radio exploration of intriguing issues -- aired a program called Deception. It explained how research into lying is revealing intriguing things about the human brain. 

A researcher took temp job applications from 108 people and asked them questions about their histories. She then checked into the histories and found that 12 of them had substantial discrepancies in their stories. She invited them all to come in for brain scans...and all 108 did. 

She expected to find more gray matter in the brain and less so-called "white matter." The white matter is in the prefrontal cortex...the part of the brain right behind the forehead. Surely, someone who lies constantly, regularly, creatively, and often needlessly must have fewer connections with other parts of the brain. Surely, there must be something lacking. Surely, pathological liars are, in essence, brain-damaged. 

That's not what she found. 

She found 25% more white matter. More connections. Faster thinking. More interrelation between sections of the brain and an increased ability to put things together, fast. 

She experimented and failed to find what she was after. But she found something more interesting. 

Someday, when I'm an educator, I want to help my students learn that being wrong is not just OK, it's necessary and beneficial. 

No lie.

Deliberate Misconceptions

Well, after ten days in a fast-paced Teaching Science class at MTSU, there's a lot rolling around in my head. Ideas for a future classroom...ways to encourage discussion and questions instead of rote answers...assessing prior knowledge. 

That last one's pretty interesting. We all have misconceived ideas about how things work or why they exist as they do. Some people think seasons are a result of the Earth's orbit around the sun. Some people think an unopened bottle of soda goes flat if you refrigerate it and then let it return to room temperature. Others think mushrooms are plants, or that nuts aren't fruits.

As a future educator, it will be partly my responsibility to dispel misconceptions, or alternate conceptions, as they're now referred to. I'll need to do it by guiding my students to the truth, not by simply telling them facts. 

But, you know, sometimes a good misconception is worth having around. Like the April Fool's stories broadcast on NPR. Thousands of listeners eagerly tune in on April 1 each year, ready to be happily fooled. The stories -- all capitalizing on misconceptions -- never fail to disappoint. 

Here are three of my favorite science-related misconceptions from this collection. Read or listen, and don't search for the truth. 

Exploding trees!

Eye surgery for 3-D vision!

Danger! Dihydrogen Monoxide!