3 posts tagged “teaching”

In my mind, my classroom demeanor is akin to Furious Styles from Boyz in the Hood (upper right hand corner of the blog).  Tough and demanding, I set firm boundaries of what's expected of my students, ultimately forcing them to raise their own personal standards and face their greatest fear (that they are more powerful beyond measure).

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Butforealtho, I'm a relatively decent teacher.   My kids know that I care.  I don't miss days ("Mr. Bland, don't you ever get sick?  Cause we sick of you").  I don't do many write-ups, though I will hold after school detentions and/or phone calls home.  My assignments are generally thought provoking, if not straight off the wall ("On monday you need to bring a poster board, half an avocado, a yard of electrical wire, and a baby picture").  I get off track a lot and go into tangents about things that have nothing to related to the material.  I suffer fools.  I don't get grades back in a timely fashion.

I'm pretty sure my kids think I've come from some far off planet where black men don't have a southern drawl or a razor precise line.  The most common analogue is "Mr. Bland you like a fake Will Smith".  I struggle to relate my own experience with the world of West Jackson that my students know.  Bridging the gap between what I know of the world and what they believe is real has proven to be the greatest difficulty.

I'm slowly incorporating more technology into my lessons.  My fellow teachers think I'm a wunderkind because I know how to use powerpoint but my principal is ready to have my head on a plate because I don't check my JPS email address.

If I were to stay on for a third year,  I would shave my head, grow a Rick Ross Beard (c), and speak strictly in aphorisms. 

In retrospect, I should have thrown something across the room and walked out on the first day to set the tone for the year.

On Thursday I was in the teacher's lounge copying a quiz when I ran across Coach C, our head football coach and 12th grade science teacher.  Earlier in the day I had seen him present the expectations for the I.B. senior science project, a project that entailed going out into the community and testing the quality of Jackson's water.  I wanted to stop and give him props for having put together a well-thought out, engaging assignment.  Coach C said thanks for the kudos and said that he had been doing the project for last four years and has consistently been impressed by the level of work the seniors produce.   The conversation turned to coaching and he asked me how my experience coaching the girl's basketball season was going.

"well,  it's been up and down but I have learned a lot from the experience.  It has a lot of the same challenges of teaching."
"No doubt.  The thing people miss about sports is that it is teaching.  Most of the time, winning, while important, isn't the most important aspect of the job."
"That's real."  One of the biggest things I've noticed especially at the middle school level is how little skill development occurs in JPS."
"That's the difference between coaching and teaching."
"Could you break that down for me?"
"Well, you could have a class of ninth graders who come in, and, as you said, they may have some natural talent, but lack those basic skills, that not only will the team will need to be successful, but they will need to develop if they want to play on the next level."  They need teaching.
"True."
"At the same time, what do the parents and the community want to see?"
"wins."
"That's right.  So you don't get as much time to correct bad habits or develop guys who may lack the natural ability of their peers."  At the end of the day though, you can't sacrifice teaching for coaching.  You short change yourself and your players if you don't give them those long-term skills."

The desire to stay (in JPS/Mississippi/the teaching profession) ebbs and flows at this point.  In my heart, I want to move on.  There's a certain type of intellectual work that involves conversations I no longer have and a process of intrapersonal excavation that I lack the time and energy to seriously commit myself to.  By its nature, and both the most positive and most negative connotations,being a good teacher stretches you thin.  You invest in your students, your school, and your community.  It goes without saying that all the MTC teachers put in long hours, not only in the classroom (and all the hours that go towards planning for the classroom); we also coach sports teams, chair departments, lead clubs, go to iep meetings, get professionally developed, hold detetentions, counsel kids, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. 

In theory, I don't mind the idea of being turned into a one-dimensional man.  Jim Hill, in its most idealized form, represents Jackson's unlocked potential.  Everyone goes to school here:  The Superintendent's son sits next to the child of what would be Jackson's equivalent of Avon Barksdale.  Students who will go off to become doctors, lawyers and middle management mingle with future murderers, junkies, and 28 year old grandmothers.  Here, the high idealism and gross inadequacies of public education slapbox forever.

And then at 7:45 am, the seed of hope is gone; there are no mountaintop premonitions of the Promised Land; the choir will not be doing the 4th verse of lift every voice and sing.  It's seventeen year old ninth graders who can't read, I.B. students who reject their intellectual promise because they can't reconcile being smart with maintaining a cool pose.   It's one hundred and twenty students added to school over the weekend and nine fights in a day.  It's a crisis of leadership at every level, from your own classroom, to the administration, to the school board.

This takes nothing from the nobility of the fight.  We need talented, motivated, deeply principled people at the center of the arena.   I'm not sure if I can negotiate the committment to duty, balancing all the moving parts and being a consistent figure in the school, with the more pensive, meandering parts of my personality.  There's an intense need to retreat at times.  Trying to figure out if that's an omen.