Transforming a Teacher that No One Aspires to Be

Sherri Baron

My silver haired seventh grade math and science teacher, Ms. Nadeau, was also my softball coach. She called me “wheels” because she couldn’t believe how fast I could run. I swear I ran faster just because she believed I could. She wore her emotions on her sleeve. She was real. She was exciting. She was the only teacher I ever witnessed jumping and hooting ‘n hollering even in the presence of school administrators. Quiet and still were two things our classroom was not. I said “our classroom” because she made us all feel liked we belonged there and that it wouldn’t be the same without us. I think I had perfect attendance that year.

Ms. Nadeau really made me feel that with enough practice I could do anything that I put my mind to. That year I hit my first home-run in a softball game with no errors on the play, out performed the strongest boy in our class in an arm wrestling competition during our snowed-out annual Winter Olympics, was invited to join the Junior High Math Team, hatched a duckling in the classroom, and made what I consider my best Science Fair entry ever.

We worked hard for Ms. Nadeau. She never gave up on us and we achieved things that we didn’t know were within our reach. She could always tell when the kids in the class weren’t getting along and she took class time to take care of our hearts. She always knew what to say. She understood us, what we were going through developmentally, what we liked and didn’t like, struggled with, hoped and dreamed about. We loved her. Furthermore, we loved school.

Over the years I would have several other teachers who made lasting impacts on me: some who came before Ms. Nadeau, and a few after, some who inspired me to teach, to travel, to go to college, and to volunteer, all of whom I felt a close personal connection to, all of whom made me believe there was something special about myself. For them, in some small way just to let them know that I appreciated them, respected them, I made sure that I did well in school. I was good at school. For that, learning became my first love. Growing up, I also found it easy and natural to play with, and later, nurture and teach children. For that, children became my second love. I’ve never stopped loving either.

I hope that it is obvious that I am a person who sincerely values relationships. It was the idea of being able to be personally connected in a meaningful way to children that inspired me to become a teacher. Little did I know how difficult this task would turn out to be or how much tension it would produce in my current teaching practices.

I have taught five years in a small urban school set in a neighborhood ridden with poverty. I am a second grade team-teacher and the subjects that I currently teach are literacy and social studies. Next year I will teach math and science. My teammate and I alternate subject areas every year so that we are able to keep up with new teaching strategies, requirements, and the like. I have taught second grade all but one of those years, during which time I taught first grade.

My school day usually begins in the car ride to school as I mentally prepare for what few things I can control in the school day. However, sometimes it begins much earlier, in my sleep, or sometimes as I lie awake in bed. Sometimes the difference between what I want for my students and what I actually am able to do for them causes such tension that I can’t sleep. Usually when this happens I am struggling with how to best help my students, especially when they are having academic, social, or emotional difficulties - there is not a day that goes by when I feel that I have accomplished all that I know is right by children. There just isn’t enough time in the day to accomplish all that is expected of me, all that I am held accountable for, and to maintain the kind of relationships with my students that I know that they need and deserve.

I believe that it is my responsibility to provide learning opportunities that are efficient, effective, and fun for all the children in my classroom. I want to maximize their participation in our classroom, their community, and the world in which they live, to help my students see themselves as lifelong learners. In order to come even remotely close to accomplishing this professional goal, a teacher must know her students, really know them, and that takes time.

I wish that my college professors had written a disclaimer so that I could have been more guarded about how the profession was likely to change me, or consume so much of me that I might forget what was at the heart of my teaching philosophy: meaningful personal relationships with children for the sake of learning…together. I know that I was best at the relationship “stuff” in my first couple years of teaching, before the system transformed me into someone I never once aspired to be - the overwhelmed teacher who is too busy trying to fit it all in to see her students as children first and achievers second.

I used to assess my own teaching in terms of the relationships that I established with children and their families. When I felt that my relationship with a child or parent was at risk, it caused me to think about what I was doing wrong, what I could and couldn’t change, what I could learn from my students and colleagues, and what I was doing right by others with similar situations. Then I’d change what I was doing until I felt I got it right. I was teaching the whole child.

In my first year of teaching I had a chubby cheeked, sandy haired boy named Alan who was the most reluctant writer with the best avoidance techniques that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. He actually suffered from migraine headaches in class. I worked hard to help him do well, giving him preferential seating that he didn’t want, getting his eyes checked by the school nurse (that led to him needing glasses that in-turn caused financial angst at home), and refusing to lower my expectations of him.

Rather than appreciate my efforts on his behalf, though, Alan began to play me against his parents. Internalizing his academic failure, and trying to avoid consequences at home for things he had done wrong at school, he would tell half-truths to his parents about his school day. His parents seemed to believe that I was singling him out and wrongfully accusing him. It didn’t take long for them to pull me into the superintendent’s office. I combated each accusing parent letter with documentation of how I was working with Alan and slowly they eased up on me.

Alan and I had many conversations about his feelings, the importance of learning to be a writer, and the fact that I believed in him. Over time, I witnessed fewer migraines and signs of frustration. Before the end of the year he was a writer who enjoyed writing and sharing his stories with others, most of the time. Although he still had some backwards letters and his spelling, grammar, and punctuation left something to be desired, Alan was writing. In getting to know him so well, I was able to help him find many authentic reasons to write. He was smiling and his chubby cheeks were tear-free. He valued what he had to say enough to put it on paper. He trusted me. I’d convinced him that once his ideas were recorded, the rest would come in due time - when he, (not myself or district, state, and national assessments) was ready.

I truly believe that Alan’s transformation was largely due to my efforts to get to know him personally, to make him understand that I believed in him and that I wouldn’t give up on him. But the transformation didn’t stop there. This student became more engaged and motivated in other areas as well. Because I had taken the time to get to know him, I was able to choose books that he was interested in, to pose math problems that were authentic to him, to understand his strategies and what they were founded on, and to identify his signs of frustration more quickly. Alan’s self-esteem and friendships grew, he gained confidence, and he even excelled the next year as a third grader.

I haven’t always taken the time to get to know my students the way that I did with Alan. During my second year of teaching, my school was put on Adequate Yearly Progress warning status by the State of Maine. If our students did not make sufficient progress, according to the state of Maine’s standards, teachers’ autonomy and even our positions were at stake. When told that we needed to finish teaching the entire math program, fit in all of the science lessons, etc. or else, I felt a great amount of pressure to do so. After all, I was a new teacher with a provisional certificate. I believed that being employed on a provisional certificate meant that the school department could terminate my employment without any reason at all. I don’t know who put more pressure on me though - the state and local government, or myself. All I knew was that I had worked hard to become a teacher, was proud to call myself a teacher, and could see myself doing nothing else in life as rewarding as being a teacher.

Since then I’ve come to rely too heavily on reading levels, spelling tests, writing pieces, and as ashamed as I am to admit it, how much I’ve been able to get through by year’s end. I’ve used these practices to tell me how well my teaching practices are working and what my next steps should be - rather than how well I have fostered relationships with my students.

Upon reflection, I have come to see that relying on curriculum rather than relationships has been contrary to what I think is best for students. For example, until recently, I have felt proud of myself to be able to say that I had finished the math journal. I have put trust into the spiraling effect of our math curriculum, convinced as I was that this is necessary by one-hundred hours of professional development in math. I have kept trudging forth, leaving many students in the proverbial dust, hoping that I wasn’t damaging them too badly. I have felt successful that I had met my district’s expectations. Given the embarrassment and fear I’d felt in the past for not having finished the program, I was destined to repeat actions that were hypocritical to my personal teaching philosophy.

Lately, however, I have come to the conclusion that it is ultimately more beneficial to my students when I go for depth more than breadth of curriculum, and for the process of constructing knowledge more than short-term recall. But this is in conflict with what I have been doing. I have been making very intentional decisions to cover the curriculum and to expose my students to what will be on the state and national assessments. Whenever my students fell behind in their math journals compared to their peers in other classrooms or whenever I was unable to get to writing workshop or reading groups nearly as often as I should, I have felt embarrassed, frustrated, and motivated to change my practices. I would ask questions of other teachers about how they were fitting it all in and look within my daily schedule to see where I could steal minutes.

One of the things that I used to do with my students every day during circle time was something we called sharing. It was our version of show and tell. The students were allowed to bring in items from home or they could just talk about whatever was on their mind. They questioned each other and made comments. We had a few minutes every day to learn something new about each other through patient and civilized discourse, to make personal connections, and become more understanding and accepting of each other’s differences.

As pressure and/or fear of failure and embarrassment built up, however, I began limiting the number of questions or comments the children could ask each other. When that proved to not be enough, I switched from three students to one student who could share. When I still had difficulties fitting everything in, I stopped sharing time altogether. I tried to explain to my students why I had to take away one of their favorite parts of the day. I tried to rationalize with them, and though they seemed to understand, they never approved. Where was the democracy in that?

Children are the voices of our tomorrow and in my classroom I try to establish a democratic atmosphere in which each child’s opinions and contributions are valued. After reflecting on this situation, I wish that I could go back and change the outcome. If I had just listened to the children explain to me why they felt that sharing time was important to them, or why they wanted to keep it in our schedule, I don’t think that I would have ever taken it away. But I didn’t listen. Under pressure, once again, I exercised “teacher power” contrary to my own belief system and, sadly, the children were silenced.

Next, I began to stray away from activities that involved coloring, cutting, and pasting and saved those “fun” days for when I might have a substitute. I felt myself listening less and talking more. I made fewer phone calls to tell parents that their children had done something wonderful in school. Even though these decisions went against everything I had ever been taught about teaching and learning, I allowed myself to believe that I had no choice. I never felt at ease with this sense of helplessness, but in trying to keep up with the demands, I continued to find an excuse that the decisions I was making were good ones - at least, ones that I could live with.

While I feel that our school department has done everything that it could to make our task easier, I have yet to stop pressuring myself, even though I now hold a professional certificate. Will I ever feel safe, established, and esteemed enough to teach in a way that I know is best for children and learners? What is worse, I think I have dealt with these changes as if the pressure wasn’t getting to me, saying things like, “I don’t mind having these standards, expectations, and assessments to do. Being a new teacher, this is all I know.” I even think that I believed myself when I said it. I finished the math program for the first time ever, an expectation that I thought I’d never meet. Aren’t you proud of me, I felt like asking. This is what you wanted. I did it for you. Aren’t I a great teacher? But who was I asking? I still don’t know. The tension had become so real to me that it had grown an imaginary persona. I don’t know who I was speaking to internally, but it wasn’t me.

I’ll never forget the day that my husband asked me if I had ever considered a career change. I became terribly defensive. He explained that he thought it might be worth consideration because he had seen a change in my attitude toward teaching. He could sense the fire in me diminishing, and the passion I once had dying. How much longer before my administrator, colleagues, students, and their parents perceive the same truth, I wondered?

Now enrolled in an educational leadership program with a newborn idea of what it means to be a professional teacher in a democratic society, feeling daunting cognitive dissonance, and knowing I had to find a way to identify and address the persona, and change my current teaching practices, I continued to teach in a way that I thought best to keep up appearances and made small attempts to close the gap between my educational platform and existing practices.

Being enrolled in an educational leadership program for the past two years has helped me to remember why I became a teacher in the first place. I have begun to question my current teaching practices much as I did when I was a first year teacher. Only then I did it out of lack of confidence and now I do it because I know the benefits out-weigh the costs of not doing it. I have come to the realization that having close personal relationships with learners is my goal, and at the same time, is a crucial means to reaching other goals.

Lately, I have begun to explore my students’ perceptions about my teaching and their learning by conducting interviews with them. It is amazing how much young children can teach us when we ask the right questions and just listen. I’ve found that just the simple act of interviewing my students, the individual attention that it gives, has helped to build relationships, in and of itself. It has helped me to get to know the somewhat “invisible” students in my class who are either reserved or self-propelled and industrious by their own natures.

While I can’t change some parts of the school schedule or even some of the expectations that I am held accountable for, one thing I can change is what I do with the time that I am given. I am a teacher because I love learning and adore and am intrigued by children. I have not yet figured out how to reach all of my goals, but it is this challenge that keeps me committed to teaching and learning. I am learning to replace guilt and vulnerability with collegial efforts that reveal the honest existence in my classroom as perceived by my students, their families, my fellow teachers, administrators, and me.

Most of all, I am learning to embrace the best gift my profession affords: the ability to start anew and try again. I strive to live up to my own ideals and be the individual that I live and work to please, because I know that what pleases me most is doing right by others and engaging in the process of democracy to improve the existence of and honor those around me.

I hope to be remembered someday as a teacher who cared about and valued her students and taught them to care about and value themselves. I hope to be remembered as a teacher who taught her students to believe in themselves and to never stop reaching for their dreams, who inspired her students to be lifelong learners who appreciate and work hard to contribute to their community and the world in which they live. As a teacher who listened and yes, as one who let them share. Just like Ms. Nadeau.

Discussion Questions

Take a few minutes to remember your favorite teacher or your favorite school experience. What was great about the people and the experience? How do you feel you as an educator exemplify these same qualities/characteristics?
In a perfect world, what would your classroom or school look like? Sound like? What types of professional development opportunities would be at your fingertips? Describe how your current teaching experiences align with your vision. How do you account for the disconnects between your vision and your current teaching experiences?
Describe a time when you felt very successful as a teacher or administrator. To what do you attribute your success? What evidence do you have to support your interpretation? Share your experience with a colleague. To what do they attribute your success? How are your interpretations the same/different?
What, if anything, do you feel is holding you back as a professional teacher or administrator in a democratic society, causing tension or frustration, or causing you to feel vulnerable or inadequate? Why? What, if anything, have you done to change this...or what's stopping you? What resources are available to you or do you wish were available to you?

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