In this season of university graduations, I thought about the advice I'd give to new teachers embarking on their careers:

1) Nothing you learned in education school will prepare you for this. No matter where you did your M. Ed. (or your B.A. if you had an education major at your college), the only experience that will truly prepare you for standing in front of a classroom of kids is...standing in front of a classroom of kids. Doing academic course-work alone isn't sufficient to make a good teacher, and alas, most education programs are too heavy on theory and too light on practice. Completing your degree isn't the end of your education--it's the beginning.

2) Find yourself a mentor teacher. One of the favorite ideas of anti-teacher rhetoric is that somehow all the "old teachers" are burnt out losers who just come to school to collect a paycheck. Wrong. Experienced teachers are the best people to know. They can help you figure out why your lesson isn't working, maybe even give you their tried-and-true lessons if you're really gracious, and run interference for you when administrators are out for blood--or when some kid isn't cooperating. (They've probably taught that kid before, and they know his mom's secret cell phone number. Or better yet, his football coach's cell phone number.)

3) Find yourself a friend. You need a friend in school: someone to be sympathetic when you come crying because your entire lesson went up in flames during some administrator's visit to your class (you will have days like that--trust me), to go out for drinks with on the last day before a break, or to text late at night if it suddenly dawned on you that you have professional development the next morning and you can't remember what time it starts. Some might argue that you shouldn't socialize with your co-workers, and everyone has their own boundaries, but I've found having a network of supportive work-friends to be invaluable in terms of keeping up my morale up and making work enjoyable.

4) Get organized. Something I've noticed is that the best teachers tend also to be the most organized. They plan lessons ahead of time, have clear processes and routines in place for their students, and keep up to date on grading so that they can give students updates on their progress. Your life will be easier if you can keep ahead of the curve, and the kids will appreciate it. No matter what, they'll tell you that you're giving them too much work, or that it's boring--but then the one day you DON'T give them "scaffolded notes" to fill in (because the Xerox was broken!), or forget to pass out their work folders at the beginning of class, they'll say urgently, "Miss! What is wrong with you today? Did you forget that we need our portfolios?" They'll never admit it, but they love structure and routines.

5) Be yourself. At the beginning of my career, I was told never to smile at the kids until the 3rd week of school. I took this advice to heart, and tried not to smile--and lasted about a minute. Perhaps I'd have been scarier (and a better disciplinarian) if I were able to not smile, but that simply wasn't me. The kids can sense disingenuousness a mile away, and do not appreciate it. They do appreciate nerdy hilarity: Every morning they come in and make a point of showing me some sort of bright-red processed cheese snacks, I tell them that this color doesn't occur in nature, they tell me I'm too "obsessed with vegetables," and I tell them their chips are from the Fisher Price pretend food factory. And they crack up laughing. Every day. Be unapologetically yourself, and find a way to make that work as your "classroom personality."

6) Don't listen to haters. Right now, being a teacher is difficult--it seems everyone from the politicians in Washington to the filmmakers in Los Angeles wants to tell us we're "doing it wrong." And really, Davis Guggenheim isn't in your classroom. The kids are. So if you can tell that--by whatever measure you use--they're meeting learning objectives, and if you're managing to inject a sense of fun into your class, you're probably doing just fine.

Posted by Ilana Garon at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last week, before I was unceremoniously struck down by our school's current "epidemic" (an upper-respiratory infection that all the teachers and none of the kids seem to be getting--fodder for a conspiracy theory if ever there was one!), a bunch of the students were milling around in my room during my tutoring period, snacking, working on make-up assignments, and complaining about why school is "wack." For the most part their litany of complaints wasn't too shocking: too much homework, too many strict rules, boring dress code (which most of them aren't following anyway, so I don't see how they're complaining about that), not enough girls (or not enough boys), etc. A couple of them said we needed to have more field trips. One guy, a quiet one, had something interesting to say: "I came to this school because they used to have more electives," he said mournfully. "But now they've cancelled music, we share art teachers with other schools in the building, and there's nothing else available. It makes school boring to take away all the fun courses."

I really feel for this little guy, and think his point is well taken. It's not news that all across America music and art programs have been cut or trimmed in order for schools to scrape by with ever-tightening budgets. This issue is compounded in New York City, wherein almost all the formerly large public high schools have been closed down, and small high schools have cropped up to take their place; sometimes too many small schools are crammed into the same building, all vying (at times acrimoniously) for space and resources, let alone access to art studios, computer rooms, or science labs when available. The result is a lack of elective opportunities for kids, which is extremely disappointing and unfair to kids who love these subjects and come to high school with the expectation of being able to avail themselves of a broader range of educational options than they had in middle school.

I thought of this when I was laid up earlier this week and read this article about high school kids in the DC area who are dropping out to pursue GEDs in large numbers. Experts are worried that students are "missing out on the high school experience," and as a result, discussing making changes in the requirements to taking these exams so as to leave high school early. While I see the concerns about too many kids leaving school with a degree that is commonly viewed as "less valuable" than a normal diploma, I wonder if instead we should be asking this: Why are so many kids pursuing this option? In what way is school not serving these kids' needs? Given that the GED-pursuing crew is separate from the kids who simply drop out, it seems all the more important to ask what needs aren't being met by your average public high school curriculum, and how we it can be better aligned with more kids' professional and post-secondary goals.

This also brings me back to my other favorite soapbox issue, the lack of trade school or career-tech education options. College simply isn't what every kid wants or needs--and even if they do ultimately decide to attend college, some may wish to work first. But with the increasingly prevalent (and short-sighted) "college-for-all" philosophy, the opportunities to pursue vocational training dwindle ever more. When the kids are deciding, in high numbers, to cut their high school "experience" short by taking the GED test, then instead of focusing on loopholes to put the GED further out of reach, it's time to look at what they're not getting by following the traditional path--and figure out what types of educational options might persuade them to stay put.

Posted by Ilana Garon at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last week, I talked about character education, and whether or not it's possible to teach kids self-control and patience in a school setting. I discussed a charter school in Washington, DC, wherein teaching "responsible behaviors" is part of the daily curriculum, and wondered aloud whether such instruction was a school's job, or the parents' job at home.

A lot of readers replied that I needed to engage my students better or provide more opportunities to connect meaningfully to everything from English instruction to the running of the school. While all of these are good ideas, they're not connected to the question I'm exploring here. What I'm trying to ask is whether character education--the umbrella term for self-control, responsible behaviors, tolerance of delayed gratification, patience, hard work, etc.--can be taught in schools, and secondly, is it the role of schools to do so?

As far as the first question: Judging from the charter school in DC, it certainly seems possible to teach character education. The students there appear to be thriving in such a heavily structured environment. However, it is important to note that the parents of charter school students tend, inherently, to be involved and savvy (as demonstrated by the fact that they've entered the charter school lottery to begin with, and bought into the requirements of the school's charter)--thus, perhaps part of the reason for this charter school's success is that these parents are giving "home training" (to use my students' parlance) to their children before they even enter school.

Moreover, the students at this charter school are younger than the ones I teach, suggesting that perhaps such character education--either at home, or at school--has to begin earlier than the high school years in order to "take." It is a dispiriting thought that, in high school, kids are already too old to have their thinking and work habits augmented, and I don't think it's a statement I'd make categorically; nevertheless, I do think that the earlier in life one learns patience and self-control, the better one's educational outcome should statistically be.

Lastly, to those who discount the importance of character education: You may believe that students in my class (or any class) are improperly engaged, or are not having their interests met, or do not feel connected enough to school as a whole. Be that as it may, it is impossible to deny the causal relationship between basic self-control (in the form of patience, ability to handle delayed gratification, willingness to work hard) and success in every area of life--education, work, relationships, and family. Kids need to learn to deal constructively with difficult tasks--even ones that are subjectively boring or frustrating--as these will appear in even the most charmed life. Thus, these "life skills" must be taught somewhere, and simply coddling our kids by ignoring the problem, or by placating their need for constant stimulus, provides them a disservice in the long run.

Posted by Ilana Garon at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This week, high school teachers across the NYC Department of Education computed marking period grades. For me, this meant "failing" more kids than I'd like (not uncommon in the 2nd marking period.) This will inevitably result in some of these kids being furious at me when they receive their grades, despite having been given ample opportunities to make up missed work or come ask questions during study hall. One of the problems I've noticed with some of our struggling students is a total lack of consideration about how their actions today will adversely affect the goals of tomorrow; the same kids who pleaded loudest with me at the beginning of the term that they had to pass English this time, and get this credit, are notably the ones who shirk their assignments, behave disruptively in class, or (depending on the time of day) cut completely.

Now, an increasing number of (mostly) charter schools have an answer to this question, in the form of "character education"--teaching everything from manners to citizenship to self-control in the classroom. One school in DC, profiled in the Washington Post education section a couple of weeks ago, insists that kids follow strict behavior rules, including walking silently to class and not moving around in their seats. Failure to follow these rules results in social ostracism, in the form of being forbidden to talk to anyone and being made to wear a mesh pinny over one's clothes. The theory is that, by teaching self-control during childhood, schools can help their students avoid serious problems such as jail-time later in life.

In a sense, I do think many of my high school students' problems do stem from lack of control. The types of minor but consistent disruptions that some kids cause during class due to a complete inability to sit still or wait their turn to talk, or their chronic skipping of assignments (only to clamor to re-receive them at the end of term, at which point they complete only some of them as make-up work), are all technically problems with self-discipline. Much like the little kids in the 1960s Marshmallow Study at Stanford University who could not wait the few minutes to receive the extra marshmallow, many of my students are unable to wait the extra 40 minutes it takes to receive the lesson in full, even knowing the material will be on a quiz. They are similarly unable to take the time on a beautiful day to complete their school-work, even knowing how important it is to pass the class.

But can schools teach self-control? Can economic and environmental factors outside the classroom be overcome with instruction, and moreover, is it a school's job to teach these types of social behaviors? A group of girls in my Honors class has a particular way of explaining a gamut of negative behaviors on the part of their peers, including rudeness, cursing loudly, being disruptive in class, fighting in the halls, showing a lack of concern for school-work, etc. When one of their classmates does something particularly egregious, they'll look from the offender to each other, sigh, and announce, "No home training!" To me, the kids' assertion that this is a "home" problem raises an interesting question about the limits of a school's intervention in a child's social upbringing. My students, and potentially a lot of other people (judging from some of the comments on the article about the DC charter school), definitely believe that character building belongs not at school but at home.

Posted by Ilana Garon at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last week, third through eighth graders across the Empire State nervously sat down to take their New York State Education Department (NYSED) Language Arts exams; this week, they'll be following up with the test for math. I teach high school, so my students have almost a month and a half reprieve before they face judgment in the form of Regents exams--eight days of tests in all different subjects. Still, I feel sympathetic for the little guys and their teachers, and for their parents (several of whom are my colleagues) who are being awakened in the dead of night when their middle-schoolers are unable to sleep due to nervousness. This unease has perhaps never been expressed so poetically as by this poor kid at M.S. 223, who became so upset by the length and difficulty of his exam that he unceremoniously threw up all over it.

If you've read this blog before, you know I've never been a big advocate of standardized testing as a measure of teacher efficacy, student achievement, or really, of anything useful at all. Now, this becomes ever more the case as tests become aligned with Common Core State Standards, which--unfortunately--neither teachers nor students are well equipped to meet.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS), for the uninitiated, were introduced in 2009 as a component of Obama's Race to the Top contest; they present extensive list of learning goals and skills that students are to have mastered by each grade level, and that teachers must target in their instruction. All but a few states adopted them (in part, to receive special grants), and instruction must now be tailored to these standards.

Now, having rigorous standards is great. I have no problem with this. However, teachers received minimal instruction about how to better implement these standards in their lessons; most were sent to a workshop for a few days, and then expected to immediately change years of instruction in order to fit with the newly designed (and often extremely dense) tables and charts that make up the CCSS. These same teachers were also expected (after a grand total of five days of CCSS instruction) to "roll out" the standards to the other teachers at their respective schools. I know, because I was one of these teachers. Had this been a minor change in protocol, I could have seen the wisdom of this; however, for a complete instructional overhaul, such minimal training did not seem sufficient. Subsequent training workshops were neither uniform nor consistent, nor did enough teachers receive the training to begin with. Despite hints that this would be done, to my knowledge no common database of CCSS-aligned instructional materials has ever been made available. And, perhaps most problematically, no one ever sent the students a memo about these changes.

Here's an example: One of the standards for reading (as opposed to writing or math) at the 9th and 10th grade level is this gem: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.9 Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work (e.g., how Shakespeare treats a theme or topic from Ovid or the Bible or how a later author draws on a play by Shakespeare). Now, I think this is a lofty goal for 10th grade, but a worthy one, and while we were reading Larry Watson's Montana 1948 a couple of months ago, we did in fact have a lengthy discussion of how the biblical story of Cain and Abel is rehashed in Watson's novella. However, that was the Honors class, not my standard or Special Education classes. And it was not an idea that occurred to them without my prompting ("Does this remind anyone of any Old Testament stories they might have heard? Say, involving rival brothers?"), and ultimately retelling the Biblical story for those who simply did not know it. Once I did these things, it proved to be a terrific discussion. But it had to be so heavily "scaffolded" (in edu-speak) that I could not honestly say, yes, students were able to meet this standard. We approached it, certainly, but that is not a skill-set they possessed without my help. They did not have the background knowledge or the analytical skills to make that leap on their own.

And therein lies the problem with the standards. They are good goals, and to view them that way is fine. But to presume that all students come into the class being able to perform these tasks is naïve. The vast majority of our students do not, and we have to work with them at their respective levels--often several grades behind where CCSS would place them--in the hopes of moving them a bit. (The reasons for their being behind relate to so many circumstances, most outside of the classroom, that I can't even begin talking about here.) The kids cannot leap over years' worth of skills they do not possess, and simply saying "They WILL have this skill by 3rd, or 5th, or 10th grade" does not make it so. You can talk endlessly about fitting a square peg into a round hole, but it still isn't going to--and it takes a while to trim it to the correct shape and size.

So, I'm sure Albany will continue testing kids using CCSS-aligned exams, and the poor kids will continue throwing up all over them. And I can't really see any way around this, because CCSS is a system that--in its current incarnation--does not have the right supports in place, for teachers or for students, to promote the desired outcomes.

Posted by Ilana Garon at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

For the past couple of weeks my 10th grade students have been learning about the Holocaust in my class, by survivor accounts including Dr. Elie Wiesel's pivotal memoir, NIGHT. So, I was interested to hear that another teacher in Albany, NY was also teaching 10th graders about the Holocaust--albeit, using radically different methods than I would. The Albany students were asked to pretend that their teacher was a Nazi, and write a letter in which they demonstrated their "loyalty" to the Nazi party by using examples from Nazi propaganda to show that "Jews are the source of our problems."

Students were understandably upset, many of them refusing to do the assignment outright, and the superintendent of Albany schools has spent the week apologizing to Jewish community leaders. The teacher in question is now facing disciplinary action, which may involve being removed from the classroom, according to the NYTimes article. My feeling about this incident (as a 10th grade English instructor currently in the middle of teaching a Holocaust unit, and as a practicing Jew in my personal life) is that this teacher showed incredibly poor taste and, objectively, gave an egregiously stupid assignment. However, I think I "get" what this teacher was trying to do, despite my belief that there were infinite numbers of better ways to go about it.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS)--guidelines for what learning milestones students need to meet in certain grades--stress the importance of argumentative writing, and incorporation of information from nonfiction documents into essays; teachers are constantly encouraged in professional development workshops to "promote engagement" by having students write from a certain point-of-view, adding a creative element to otherwise repetitive rhetorical essays. The Albany teacher's assignment was, I believe, intended to do these things--not trying to promote anti-Semitism. When I was teaching Julius Caesar, I once gave an assignment wherein students had to pretend they were senators and argue for or against the assassination of the eponymous emperor, using examples from the writings of Suetonius and the play itself to explain Caesar's benefit or detriment to the Roman Republic. Was I advocating homicide? Regicide? Of course not. I was trying to give the kids an interesting assignment relating to their book, and following the CCSS. Back when I taught Animal Farm, I remember giving the kids group-work in which they had to create their own political parties, designed to oppose Ms. Garon's oppressive rule in the classroom--the "workers" had to use Orwellian propaganda techniques to push forward their agendas such as less homework, more movie time, no teacher rule, and a return of personal snacks to the classroom (which was never going to happen, due to school rules, though they sure tried.)

Furthermore, I do think there is a benefit to examining the propaganda utilized by the Nazis or other totalitarian regimes, as was presumably intended in the Albany teacher's assignment, in order to spur meaningful discussion amongst the kids. Many times, my own students have asked why and how German civilians were able to be persuaded by Hitler's rhetoric to join the Nazi party, and examining propaganda of the time, along with first-hand accounts, has been part of our inquiry.

Now, there are an infinite number of things this teacher did wrong, aside from (however unintentionally) promoting anti-Semitic thinking as a legitimate rhetorical strategy: For starters, the Holocaust is, I think, both too recent and too appallingly bloody an event to be treated in such a cavalier, insensitive way--it cannot be purely "academic." Moreover, a good assignment wouldn't have demanded that students take one side of any debate, no matter how interested the teacher may have been in promoting "devil's advocate"-style rhetorical thinking; in a well-designed performance task, students would be given choices of which viewpoints they wished to argue based on a set of documents.

I also think this teacher missed a valuable opportunity to analyze and discuss the means by which propaganda derives power. Rather than simply assigning the students to reiterate racist ideas in the context of an essay, this teacher could have had the students explore what fears Nazi propaganda played on: Nationalistic insecurity? Economic uncertainty? Fear of the "other"? General paranoia about conspiracies? This would have promoted critical thinking, historical study, and probably not offended the entire city of Albany.

Whether this teacher should be fired or not, I can't say; certainly, if this teacher is allowed to remain in class, his or her lessons should be overseen for a while by supervisors. But I think for the rest of us, this entire set of events can provide an opportunity to reflect on ways we might help our students grapple with complex and controversial ideas.

Posted by Ilana Garon at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

By now, most people reading this blog have had the opportunity to be rubbed the wrong way by high school senior Suzy Lee Weiss' "satirical" (read: annoying) op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. For anyone who missed it, Weiss didn't get into any of her top choice colleges. Thus, in a litany of complaints about the injustice of the whole college application process, she implicitly blames her rejection on Affirmative Action admission, claiming that she'd have gladly worn a "headdress" if it had helped her chances, come out of any closet available to her, or spent an afternoon with "Kinto," and now assumes her problem stems from the fact that she brings "as much diversity as a saltine cracker."

When I read this article, I rolled my eyes--not only because of her insensitivity or whiny sense of entitlement, but because her implication that a minority candidate who is less deserving than she is would be given her rightful spot on that basis alone--and her assumption that such a candidate would even be vying for that spot to begin with. Let me explain: While I teach sophomores this year, in previous years I have taught seniors, and every year--this one included--I spend a fair amount of time helping these guys with their college essays and applications (and writing recommendations!) during my tutoring period three days a week. One of the issues I've noticed with the students in our inner-city public high school is that the range of schools to which they apply is fairly limited; to put it another way, most colleges (including all the ones from which Weiss was rejected) are really not on their radar.

Everyone loves the narrative of a poor minority student from an inner-city school who triumphs over all manner of obstacles and ends up at the Ivy League. But the reality is that this doesn't happen nearly as often as we'd like, and that isn't due to the kids' abilities as much as it is to the kids' reluctance to apply outside of a certain geographic range of schools. For instance, guidance counselors and teacher will suggest different SUNY schools (of which there are many good ones, particularly in upstate New York) or small private colleges only to be told by the kids that they are "too far" from the city; one teacher in our school was in contact with a dean of admissions at a good public university in the Midwest, who begged through him to have some of our students apply there in order for the school to get some geographic diversity, promising major scholarships--but no kids took him up on it.

For the most part, our kids only apply to CUNY schools--that is, ones directly in the city--and a few 2nd or 3rd tier private colleges in the city suburbs, which tend to offer them scholarships. (To be clear, there is nothing wrong with CUNY schools; we just want the kids to consider a broader range of options.) The reasons the kids give for wanting to stay close to home are understandable (if frustrating, in their missing of opportunities): family responsibilities, lack of money for dorms (though some of them could surely get this sponsored through scholarships if they applied), and a general fear of loneliness the further they get form home.

To be sure, I don't think this problem is unique to our students, nor to minorities; studies show that poor white kids from states in the South and Midwest have similar issues, both in their lack of exposure to top schools and their logistical inability to attend them, such that they are also under-represented at Ivy Leagues and peer institutions. The resulting trend is that, at top schools like the ones Weiss applied to, ethnic diversity is superficial, and economic diversity is almost non-existent. Poor kids--black, white, Latino, Native American--of all levels of academic qualification are simply not applying in large enough numbers to the top colleges, and Suzy Lee Weiss' whining about diversity from her affluent Pittsburgh-area neighborhood seems especially churlish, when considering the boundless range of educational opportunities she has at her fingertips.

Posted by Ilana Garon at 10:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

An alert reader (thanks, cousin B!) sent me this article, about the efficacy of "hybrid" educational models--specifically, a blend of computerized course-work and in-person education with a teacher. In a study involving students at six public universities, findings indicated that students who utilized the hybrid model (working on the computers and meeting with instructors one hour a week) performed the same as students who received only face-to-face instruction.

I wondered if these findings would have applications at the high school level. I admit I have some innate resistance to the hybrid model, in that--at the end of the day--it definitely makes my job less necessary. Fewer hours of in-person instruction requires fewer teachers. Moreover, at the secondary school level, some aspects of high school are social: learning to work well in groups, having class discussions about abstract issues, making friendships of both genders. I'm unclear whether these skills could be developed as strongly in advance of college if students spent less time with teachers. (Although, perhaps I'm missing the point--maybe they'd be doing hybrid-model instruction in groups, in front of a computer, with friends. I suppose that could work too.)

The main practical application I see for such technology at the high school level is for students who, because of physical or emotional issues, are unable to attend school in a regular way. Truancy issues, in inner city high schools particularly, are a huge problem: In NYC schools, there is a special grade of "45" on report cards for students who have never attended. Every term, 8-10% of the students on my roster receive this grade because I never see their faces. In some cases, this is a registration error--the kid has been transferred to another school, or moved to another state, and the proper paperwork hasn't gone through. In other cases, however, it's that for whatever reason the traditional high school environment is not "working" for this student.

Last year, I had a tremendously bright student who suffered from severe depression. He read a lot on his own, and the few times he came to school, he would show up at my desk during my free period and regale me with his encyclopedic knowledge of the manga "Death Note" (which he knew we both liked.) However, he attended so infrequently that despite his intelligence he failed all of his classes. He just missed all the work; some terms, he never even showed up once. The student in question is no longer enrolled in our school, and it is my hope that (if he has not found a more suitable high school setting) some type of hybrid education program might have been implemented for him. Especially in the case of an intellectually capable student like he is--and moreover, a kid capable of self-direction--such a model might provide a better learning outcome than he experienced in a traditional school setting.

Posted by Ilana Garon at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Last week, I recounted my discussion with my students, in which we discussed the question of blame in the Steubenville rape trial. My students, while expressing contempt for the football players who perpetrated the rape that was at the center of the trial, also expressed a lack of sympathy for the victim, implying that she "deserved it"--not because of the way in which she was dressed, or her acting in any sexually provocative way, or any other typical victim-blaming rhetoric--but simply because, by being drunk and unconscious, she had failed to protect herself. This caused me (and many readers) some alarm, and I tried--I thought, in vain--to impress upon the kids the idea that no one "deserves" to be raped.

However, talking with the kids further and reading the comments on this blog proved instructive: It helped me to realize that my students' comments about the victim's apparent inebriation were not intended to (a) mitigate the football players' actions, or (b) state that her rape was justifiable as a punishment for or a natural follow-up to drunkenness. Rather, what the kids were trying to articulate (sincerely, if a bit unsophisticatedly) was that being "blackout drunk" puts a person at risk for all kinds of things. "She could've gotten hurt too, or gotten robbed, or had a car accident," they explained to me when I approached them further about the issue, the day before break. "Anything could have happened."

I understood that, in the students' eyes, the issue of the girl being raped was seen in the broad category of "potential dangers that can happen when you are not vigilant"--a problematic mentality to be sure, as it suggests a normalization of sexual violence in their surroundings. But it is perhaps slightly less worrisome than an idea that rape, specifically, is a logical consequence of drunkenness.

Nevertheless, another thing became apparent to me, as well: It is incumbent upon me, as a teacher in whose class these subjects are brought up for discussion, to continue to talk about this with the kids. I must continuously impress upon them that, while obviously personal safety is an important consideration, sexual violence is never justified under any circumstances. To the extent that these conversations occur in my class, I must make them teachable moments. It's not a duty I can expect to farm out to anyone else, and it's one that I must consider part of my job as a teacher and a mentor, as much as helping the kids write essays or talking with them about literature.

Hope everyone's enjoying spring vacation!

Posted by Ilana Garon at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This week, the students in my Honors English class have been avidly following the news: specifically, the trial of two high school athletes for the rape of another high school student in the town of Steubenville, Ohio. The connection to our reading was circuitous, though no less thoughtful for that: In Montana 1948, the novel they've just finished reading, most of the major conflicts center around a charismatic, handsome, war-hero doctor who is molesting and raping the Native American women during routine check-ups. Because of his high social status in the town, and because of the institutionalized prejudice against Native Americans, the doctor's crimes have gone unpunished for years. My students likened this to high school and college athletes whose social status on their respective campuses renders them seemingly impervious to normal social rules--in this case, rules concerning the treatment of women as sexual objects.

It is important to note that no such "jock culture" exists on our campus. I believe this is due to a couple of factors: the division of the campus into many "small schools" (thus undermining a type of jingoistic unity on which I believe jock culture thrives), and the fact that--with the exception of the lacrosse team three years ago, which the vast majority of students looked at with perplexity--none of our sports teams are stand-outs in our league. The kids who play sports enjoy them, and even sometimes gain scholarships in the process (we have had some individual stand-out athletes); in addition, the sports teams serve as an effective means of pushing kids to keep up their grades. But there's no widespread idolization of a football team, or football players. The kids know about this phenomenon, but their knowledge comes from TV shows like Friday Night Lights and other popular media--not from experience.

So, when we discussed the trial in Steubenville, the kids expressed absolutely none of the sympathy that some of the media outlets have espoused for the now-convicted football players. However, they took an equally critical view of the victim: Their assertion was that, if she was getting "blackout drunk" at a party, well then what did she expect to happen? They maintained that it was her fault for putting herself in such a vulnerable position. I attempted to explain that, while I agreed that drinking excessively (especially in high school, as they had been quick to point out) was a terrible idea that could put a person in all kinds of danger, that didn't mean she "deserved" to be raped--no one deserved to be a victim of sexual violence. Well, the kids maintained, by drinking too much, she had put herself in that position. Tough luck.

I wanted to talk about it with them more, to try to impress upon them that one could condemn a behavior (drinking excessively, especially underage) while still not concluding that one "deserved" an outcome (the rape) that was enabled, in part, as a result of that behavior. But it was a semantic argument that, whether because of this crew's particular code of street-wise behavior, or because of their equally particular sense of high school-specific moral absolutism, they were unwilling to indulge. And then the bell rang, before I could get any further. It's an issue I would like to try and talk with them about further, though I'm not certain this is the appropriate forum (or, for that matter, where the appropriate forum is--Health class seems like the likeliest option, but not all of them take Health this semester.) This is one of those situations wherein the paltry 45 minutes a day that I see the kids never seems like enough to discuss everything important.

Posted by Ilana Garon at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend