In Reply to a Former Student

Dear Ethan,

Sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you-- your letter has been sitting by my laptop for several weeks, but I have been waiting for a time when I had the time to compose (and revise!) a thoughtful reply.

First, I’m really pleased to hear that you are writing in your spare time, and it’s even better news that you feel passionate about it. You were reluctant to write much last year, but when you did, it was always interesting and creative. I’m curious about what made you start writing more in your spare time. What kind of things are you writing? I hope you’ll elaborate more on that in future letters.

You asked me about my thoughts on improvement, and so I decided to apply the question to something we have in common-- school. Our roles here are different, but to me, teaching and learning can never be mutually exclusive. No matter what I may be doing in my classroom, if my students are not learning, can I call my actions "teaching"? Even if I'm trying really, really, really hard to teach, without that learning thing, I'm not quite hitting the target, am I?

There’s an old joke that kind of explains what I mean:

Two guys are walking their dogs down the street and one guy says to the other, “Hey, did I tell you I taught my dog to whistle?”

“That’s amazing!” says his friend. “Let’s hear him do it!”

“I said I taught him,” the first man replied. “I didn’t say he learned.”

So what is teaching then? Where's the metaphor that best describes it? A proverb that is often mentioned is Teaching is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire. I kind of like the image of igniting that passion for learning in the hope that it will continue burning after you’re gone. It seems to put all the responsibility on the teacher, though. What’s the student’s role?

After some serious thought, the adage that I currently favor to explain my philosophy of teaching is this one: When the student is ready, the master will appear.

Public school teachers, though, can’t choose our students, and we can’t change them, either, so what do we do if they are not ready? With apologies to Batman, how can we be both the master they need and the master they deserve?

One way is to recognize that a master takes many forms. It may be a book or a poem, another student, a project, or an after-school activity. Even if we are not personally the masters they are ready for, we can help our students to find the masters they need by giving them lots of opportunities to think.

So, what about you, Ethan? Where do you fit in? You asked me how I thought you could improve, and here’s what I think: Start by being aware of all those opportunities; don’t dismiss anything as boring or irrelevant before you’ve given it a chance.

My advice to you is to be ready for the master in as many situations as you can.
                                                                                   
Take Care,

Ms. S.

How 'bout That?

Each Monday my students take a skills quiz to assess the nuts and bolts of their writing, and to, well, practice test-taking in a formative, low stakes kind of a way. (But let's not get into that right now.)

This week they were asked to edit a short piece of writing for misused homonyms. The errors were underlined and students were supposed to substitute the write, er, right word. Most kids did fine, but there were some creative replies. For example, one part of the passage read, "Lets plant beans since they sprout quickly," and the little test-takers were tasked with replacing that lets with the correct contraction.

One student crossed out the lets all together and replaced it with How about we all grow beans...

Tails You Lose

"How was Philadelphia?" a co-worker asked me today while she was picking up her copies from the printer in my room, and before I could open my mouth to gush, she continued, "Because I HATE that city!"

My eyebrows were at attention, and I'm sure my surprise was evident.

"Oh, I know," she waved her hand, "there's gentrification, but I Market Street is sooo depressing! All those boarded up department stores? And, a homeless man actually whipped it out and peed on me... in. front. of. INDEPENDENCE HALL!"

I nodded and tried to say something. "We have friends who live over by Penn," she shrugged, "and, sure, it's nice..." she looked at me skeptically, "but not nice enough!"

"What about Reading Market?" I asked, thinking that no one could possibly complain about all that wonderful food.

"Oh my God, no!" she spat, "I hate the way it smells!" Then she laughed and walked toward the door with her printing. "I just don't like Philly," she finished.

Fall in Philadelphia

It was fun walking around Philadelphia today.  We went by several places I remember from my childhood-- the department stores we visited at Christmastime for their holiday windows, my dad's office building, and Independence Hall. As a city Philly is very agreeable: historic, compact, and flat, and it's narrow streets and old buildings gave it a welcoming warmth even in the November chill. 

City of Brotherly Love

And in the perfect ending to my stroll down memory lane, I find myself in Philadelphia for the weekend. I haven't visited this city for almost 40 years, but when I was a kid, we lived just across the Delaware River. Philly was a top field trip destination for all my school years from first to eighth grade, when we moved away.

When we put this trip on the calendar last spring, Heidi wanted to go to the highly rated vegan restaurant, Vedge, and I had one desire, to walk through the giant heart at The Franklin Institute. Today we did both, and neither one of us was disappointed.

Tomorrow? Reading Market, Independence Hall, Blackbird Pizza, Cesar Millan, and maybe even Jack's Bar are on the itinerary.

It's good to be back!

FBF

As I mentioned earlier in the week, my students are writing letters to their future selves. One of the choices they have to make is how far in the future they want to write. Almost all are within 10 years, and most don't go beyond high school. That makes sense to me-- they can't really imagine themselves much older than that.

One student is a bit of an outlier in more areas than this, and he chose to write to himself 40 years from now. "I hope you have a mansion," he said, "and that you still like video games, and I really, really, really hope you're not married."

His honesty was as poignant as it was amusing, but as he revised I suggested that he add more details about the person he is now. "Forty years is a long time," I said, "you probably won't remember much at all." As I spoke, I looked at the date on the blackboard and thought back 40 years myself.

The air practically shimmered like a flashback sequence on an old TV show as I recollected the details of those long-ago days. I was in 7th grade then. I can still name several of my teachers and describe my bedroom. I know who my friends were, which pets we had, and what our gym uniforms looked like. This last detail is seared into my mind, because it was that year that I broke my arm in PE just a day after winter break. Our uniforms were one piece, zip-up garments that were sewn to look like striped shirts over solid shorts. When I fell and broke my arm, the nurse splinted it making it impossible to remove my uniform. I was forced to pull on plaid pants over it, and my mother took me to the emergency room in that embarrassing outfit.

I shared the story of my fractured ulna with the class, and they were a very appreciative audience. "Wow!" said one little girl. "How do you remember all that? I can't even remember what happened last week!"

Winter Come Early

The temperature drops sharply, and at the grocery store we move from the apple and pear part of the year to the clementines and bananas. Thankfully the rack is full of firewood and the closet full of down.