A Place at the Table

Our neighborhood will celebrate Memorial Day with a picnic in my yard this afternoon. We will remember those who served and died in service to our country in our armed forces. With no intention of minimizing military service, I would like to remember some individuals who gave their lives, not by dying, but by serving their country consistently over the years.

Today on Memorial Day I can't help but think of all those who invested a lifetime in service to their fellow citizens in classrooms across our nation. They have served quietly and without fanfare, but they have certainly helped shape our nation. They are teachers and I would like to tell you about three who will always be with me.

Miss Stevens: My first grade teacher who recognized and dealt with learning disabilities that didn’t have names in 1956. I am mildly dyslectic—right and left are, to this day, a problem for me. Miss Stevens realized this when I often put the wrong hand over my heart for the morning Pledge of Allegiance. “Susie, pick up your pencil as if you were going to write. That’s your right hand.” To this day, when someone gives directions for right and left, that #2 pencil is virtually in my right hand.

I also had a pretty bad speech impediment--I dropped my “Rs”. I went to the speech therapist once a week, and I was sure it was because she was prepping me to be the announcer at the first grade assembly program. I began my teaching career at my double desk in Miss Stevens’ room. Becky was so impressed with my forays to the “speech lady” that she wanted me to teach her how to say “giwaffe” and “wabbit” so that she could go too. I did not master “Mothers and Fathers” in time for the program. Miss Stevens made me Rhythm Band Director instead. She still remembered my first efforts at instruction when Becky and I were in our forties.

Thanks to Miss Stevens, the traditionalist, I never knew I had learning limitations. I knew I was special.

Mrs. Burnett: My sixth grade history and language arts teacher who understood cognition before we called it that and who taught me to love language and “set high expectations” before high expectations were buzz words. She wore beautiful and expensive shoes that came from Leon’s, the best shop in town, and although she was a tiny woman, students quaked when she gave them her "teacher look" over the top of her half glasses. We wrote reports on mythology, important historical sites, and the Seven Wonders of the World. My first experience with research began with my World Book Encyclopedias. I was suppose to write about the Acropolis. I began at aardvark and worked my way back. Knowing just to know was fun.

Each week we had two prefixes and two suffixes to learn and two vocabulary words for each one we had to learn. On Fridays we had cumulative vocabulary tests—no true-false or matching—a blank piece of paper and either recall the word or write the definition. By the time we finished the last 400-word test I had a mastery of etymology. When I was recognized as a Teacher of the Year forty years later, she wrote to congratulate me, saying that she knew when I was eleven that I had potential as an educator. When I wrote her back I made sure I double checked my spelling, punctuation, and handwriting.

Thanks to Mrs. Burnett, the classicist, who I realize now was a true scholar, who gave me the gifts of intellectual curiosity and academic rigor and made me a darned good Jeopardy player.

Mrs. McMillan: My junior Honors English teacher, who understood the importance of critical thinking skills and value of project-based learning even though it marked her as “unconventional” and “subversive” in 1967. One Friday a month our homework was a reading from Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy. It opened up a whole new world of organized thought and I started asking questions that pushed against my preconceived answers. It had never occurred to me that "truth" had a bigger meaning than "not telling a lie."

Once we had begun to think, she expected us to apply those skills. The last month of our junior year she divided us into four groups of six and assigned us one of Shakespeare’s comedies. She told us that at the end of the month we would perform a one-hour version. We could not paraphrase, we could not rewrite, but we could use the editor’s red pen with complete freedom and then she put each group in a separate room and checked up on us every day or so. We thought we had total freedom and control! She knew that she was forcing us to deconstruct the plot and identify critical text while not losing touch with the playfulness of words nor the universal stories. We were taking responsibility for our own learning.

We were ruthless and probably profane. We identified subplots and cut them. We even edited Jacque’s “All the world’s a stage” soliloquy from As You Like It, but we also memorized more than we cut. Mrs. McMillan probably remembers us as the beginning of the end. She didn't return to the classroom the year after we graduated. The administration was concerned because it was felt she was encouraging too much "free thinking."

Thanks to Mrs. McMillan the constructivist and rebel, who demonstrated that people learn best when allowed to take control and responsibility for their own learning and who taught me, at sixteen, to think with my head as well as my heart.

What teacher do you remember?

What student will remember you?

Posted by Susan Graham at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."
— Bob Dylan

On Thursday, May 9th, in the early morning hours, a tornado ripped through 160 homes here in Stafford County, Virginia. At least 40 homes were destroyed. The damage is about two blocks from my school. Some of the devastated houses, of course, were our students’ homes.

We can see these houses from our playing fields. The roof was gone from some, others were missing the whole second story. Still others looked almost like doll houses, the rooms open and exposed with the furniture sitting oddly in order.

I got my first phone call before 7 a.m. Our gym and auxiliary gym would be called into service as provided for in our Shelter In Place Emergency Plan. This required an adjustment in the PE schedule and meant that school breakfast would not be served. Otherwise, Thursday would be Business As Usual at Gayle Middle School.

Business as usual, although administrators had been called in at two in the morning. As usual, except for the 125 people in the gym, many with nothing but the clothes on their backs, trying to get a little rest on the exercise mats spread out on the gym floor. As usual, except for the fire trucks, ambulances and Red Cross vehicles jamming our parking lot as the buses rolled in. As usual, except for the TV news teams landing helicopters on the football field. As usual, except for the representatives of major homeowner insurance companies arriving to meet with homeowners. As usual, except for the hundreds of phone calls being answered by our school secretaries. As usual, except for the loading dock outside the cafeteria, which became an emergency animal shelter for pets.

As usual, except that some of our students were homeless.

Morning announcements simply stated that, “We will be adjusting the schedule a little today. We have guests in our gym. Some of our neighbors had to leave their homes when the tornado hit. We’re going to be trying to help them out, so do your best to give them and the workers space and let’s have a good day.”

Our faculty and staff tried to use the tornado and its aftermath as a learning experience. The sixth grade curriculum is Earth Science. Seventh grade Civics and Economics could discuss the role of government in emergency situations. Eighth grade Physical Science classes could explore potential and kinetic energy. My seventh graders were completing their last cooking activity. Earlier we had talked about how food met social and emotional needs as well as addressing nutrition and appetite. They decided their chocolate chips cookies were comfort food, so they would each keep one and donate the rest to the children in the gym.

Afternoon announcements came on: “Thanks to all of our students and staff for their cooperation during some unusual circumstances. Let's all keep up the good work because we have our SOL tests coming up in another week. Be careful going home and stay away from the firetrucks on the way to the buses. We’ll see you in the morning.” It was close to five when I left, and administrators were still double checking to make sure all the classrooms were secured. Arrangements had been made for all but a few of the visitors in our shelter, and it looked like no one would be spending the night at school. Friday would be school as usual.

By Saturday morning I had watched the news, checked the Internet, and read coverage in the three area newspapers. This is what I noticed: There were lots of pictures of torn up houses and blue tarps. There were quotes from Stafford County’s public information officer, representatives of the Red Cross, and the Fire and Rescue Department. There was mention of the fire and rescue assistance from neighboring communities and even the assistance given by the ASPCA which provided crates for the pets of displaced residents. A local Congressman was photographed meeting with victims, assuring them that “We can put the houses back together, but what is more important is to be able to help put people’s lives back together.”

And our school? Well, Gayle Middle School was mentioned as the location of the emergency shelter where families who lost their homes were sent -- and the site for a victims’ information meeting. No one seemed to notice that school personnel were called out in the middle of the night. It didn’t strike anyone as impressive that we housed 125 tornado victims, provided resources for emergency workers, public officials and insurance representatives -- or corralled media teams while carrying on a normal school day for over 800 eleven to fourteen year olds. Of course, that wasn't the most important part of the story.

The thing is, those 800+ students needed normality, and school is the center that holds together when the rest of their lives are in chaos. We provided a "shelter" for tornado victims, but we also took care of our primary responsibility -- sheltering our students. We had school because our kids needed to be able to come to school.

It’s not that our efforts were not appreciated. I know they were. But over the weekend, I wondered why most of what we did didn’t seem worthy of special notice. It was on Sunday, Mother’s Day, that I had an epiphany. Schools are our community homes and like our homes, we expect a great deal of them. Mary Jean LeTendre, long-time national director of the Title I program, has said that “America’s future walks through the doors of our schools every day.” We presume the door will be open, and support will be provided for cultural programs, athletic events, community service projects, elections, and even emergencies.

Public schools are sort of a mother figure in our communities. When schools, like moms, are at their best, we hardly notice how much they do and how efficiently they do it. When schools do not meet the perceived needs of their community, they, like negligent mothers, are judged harshly.

On Mother’s Day we celebrate and honor our mothers who do so much, so willingly, with so little recognition. So here’s to our public education systems, which so often fill the same role for American society. As Charlie Brown put it, “A good education is the next best thing to a pushy mother.”

Posted by Susan Graham at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Eighth graders cluster around the world map, peeling off their little sticky tags and moving them.

Ashley: China—Again???

Amritpal: Oh yeah! I’m Belarus! Nobody’s ever been Belarus!

LeMaj: Yeah, but now you have to find it!

Ryan: I’m Greenland!

Kristen: Not! No way you are Greenland, Ryan! You made that up!

Geography? No, this is my eighth grade Family and Consumer Science class. For the last week, they’ve been checking the permanent-care labels in their clothes and "claiming" their shirts' country of origin. It's an eye-opening activity. While China may have produced the majority of today's clothes, students huddled around the map are complaining that Honduras and El Salvador are so crowded with markers that some are oozing over into Nicaragua and Guatemala.

"No wonder China make so much stuff," says one student. "They've got more land and more people. But Honduras is tiny and look how much comes from there."

A quick look at the stickie-infested map makes it clear that clothing construction is concentrated in China and surrounding nations and in Central America. Why? Because clothing construction is low tech, requires minimal infrastructure, and the work force is usually women and children. A quick Internet search indicates that the average wage in many of these countries is less than $5,000 a year and that, in many cases, children younger than my students are working six-day weeks to produce those clothes.

Katie is outraged. "It's not fair!" Should we boycott? What happens if we do? Do the child laborers go to school instead? Or do they starve? If a country begins with low wage jobs, will its economy grow, resulting in better jobs in the future? Or will it continue to exploit the weakest members of its society?

The social justice issues are only part of the picture. Our conversation soon begins to veer off toward practical economic concerns closer to home. Outsourcing of textile manufacturing and clothing production contributes to the national trade deficit and has been devastating to the economy in southwest Virginia, where we live. What is the real cost of the lost jobs here and the flow of money out of the country? How much more would we be willing to pay for clothing produced locally? What would that do to the retail marketplace, if the price of clothing reflected American wages?

The discussion gets fierce at times, but tomorrow we will move from the theoretical to the practical. We will begin their sweatshirt sewing projects, and they can hardly wait. Will most of these students ever sew again? Maybe not, but they may develop a greater appreciation in the future for the people who will construct the clothing they wear. They will be better consumers—more likely to look at quality of construction. But the most important thing they will learn is to manage their own time, set their own standards, assess their own work, live with their own mistakes. These are Career and Technical Education skills that will serve them for a lifetime.

Do we stitch things and stir things in my room? You bet! We also do a lot of thinking, and use learning strategies like the world map activity (which a geography teacher in our school is incorporating into his own course) to build 21st Century knowledge and know-how.

What really matters is this: In Family and Consumer Science class, we validate academic concepts by connecting them to how we meet our own basic needs and improve the quality of our own lives. Laquisha put it this way: “This is my favorite class because instead of telling us a bunch of stuff, you let us do stuff that makes us figure out why we need to know stuff.”

Just a FACS teacher? You bet.

Posted by Susan Graham at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)