Do you know what a rhetorical question is?
This past semester was a strange experience: I have spent two years learning pedagogical theory, three years teaching in experimental high-schools, and now I found myself once again on the other side of the classroom. Almost daily I observe both an incredible anxiety over teaching from other graduate students and a general disregard from faculty for the fact that teaching is an art. This semester, sitting in a “discussion” with 50 undergraduates, it becomes increasingly obvious that most professors have no idea how to teach.
What follows is a short treatise on the types of questions teachers ask and what can be accomplished by asking them. The people I wish would read this––namely my current professors––never will. However, this may be of value to peers as they prepare for teaching fellowships and job interviews. (Local hiring committees *claim* they care a great deal about teaching ability.) Teachers frequently ask questions of their students. Generally students do not like being asked these questions and it makes them uncomfortable. The source of this discomfort is that neither the student nor the teacher knows what purpose the question serves. There is no pedagogical theory that informs these questions––it’s simply part of our Western culture of teaching: You got asked questions when you were a student, and now you have to do it too in order to “feel like a teacher.”
In fact, there is a fairly short list of what can be accomplished by asking questions to students. I have made taxonomy of four types of questions.
Questions you don’t know the answer to:
1. Asking students for information
2. The Socratic Method.
Questions you do know the answer to:
3. Rhetorical questions to assess knowledge.
4. Rhetorical questions to force engagement.
Of these four goals, the fourth motivates the overwhelming majority of teacher’s questions. This is also the sort of question that students most hate. In fact, the goals behind 3 and 4 can be better accomplished through a variety of creative solutions instead of with rhetorical questions.
1. Asking students for information
These are simple inquiries that you might ask a peer: What is your favorite Dostoyevsky novel? Did they teach you about Vietnam in high school? Students LOVE to be asked this sort of question––partly because there is no pressure to give a “correct” answer, but also because these questions break the power dynamic of the classroom. Instead of what Paul Friere called “the banking model,” now there is a two-way exchange of knowledge and information. Now here’s what few people realize: Asking these sorts of questions is ALSO a good way to encourage engagement from the students (Item 4 in the taxonomy).
In my experience, the more students get to talk about themselves, the more they will contribute to discussion, and the more they will like the teacher. The art of teaching is funneling that energy into the course material. Finally, these sorts of questions are quite relevant to many disciplines. I study religion, so it always useful and interesting to ask questions of students with different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Students who know a foreign language are also a source of useful information. This is not “an ice-breaker,” but can actually lead a richer classroom experience.
2. The Socratic Method
One of the biggest problems in education is that teachers themselves do not appreciate the difference between the Socratic method and rhetorical questions. Although it is a gross overgeneralization, I often muse that Western education is founded on Socrates and Asian education is founded on Confucius. The Greek philosophers believed that an individual should take credit for his ideas. Furthermore, the Socratic method is founded on the idea that student and teacher can produce new knowledge by working together in a dialectic. Confucius, although he had many brilliant insights, never took credit for any of them. He attributed all the knowledge in the universe to the ancestors. A Confucian scholar, was someone who dutifully collected and memorized all of the Classics. It was impossible to make a new discovery, but you could sometimes “rediscover” something through exegesis.
Today, Chinese and Korean students consistently memorize the entire GRE. (I know people at ETS who have investigated this.) To Americans, this seems impossible. But this is only because we are descendents of Socrates and not Confucius. I am by no means a Socrates expert, but I don’t think he would have approved of the GRE. Modern Western education is simultaneously jealous of China and perpetuating a badly perverted version of the Socratic method: Bascially, we want our children to test as well as the Chinese, and we try to accomplish this with a grueling barrage of rhetorical questions. This is insane.
If you are going to use the Socratic method––or you think that you might be using the Socratic method already, there are three things you have to consider.
A. Are you using the banking model?
B. How big is the class?
C. Do the students understand what you’re trying to do?
Some professors just want to lecture and could care less what the student knows or thinks. There is nothing wrong with this. One of my favorite classes is a history lecture: he talks, I listen, and he doesn’t stop the lecture to ask questions. Teachers should ask themselves if they have anything to learn from their students––if the answer is “no,” then you are in fundamental disagreement with Socrates and have no business using his method! Emulate Socrates or emulate Confucius, but don’t aim for mediocrity.
You can only do the Socratic method properly if you have 15 students of fewer. More than 20 and it becomes impossible. There are studies proving this. I could not believe the first week of the semester when a professor told us that our class of 50 would be having “discussions” and that we would be graded on participation. Madness.
If you have 50 people and want to have a discussion, you have to break the class up into a lecture and discussion sections. That goes without saying. In lieu of a proper discussion, there are other methods to gain student input in a large class. One such technique is called “the chalk talk.” (Secondary teachers have excellent teaching methods, but they all have dumb names.) If you want fifty people to answer a question like “How is Hegel relevant to anthropology?” (Yes, I witnessed this) have lots of chalk ready at the start of class and have take 10 minutes so that everyone can write a short answer on the board. This way everyone can provide input and the professor will have plenty of fodder to chew over with the class.
The average American student has spent over a decade in an environment where the hallmark of teaching is a series of rhetorical questions. Most teachers mix both Socratic questions with rhetorical questions. The students are often confused by this and even teachers sometimes don’t know why they are asking the question. I realized how bad this was when I was teaching high school history. We were studying Socrates and I asked my students, “What is evil?” Someone said, “Like killing people and stuff.” So I asked if it was evil to kill someone in war or in self-defense. This led a girl to demand, “Why don’t you just tell us what evil is?!” I explained that the point of the exercise is that I don’t know what evil is either and we are trying to figure it out together. But these students had sat through so many hours of teachers asking rhetorical questions for no reason, that they assumed I just toying with them.
So if you are going to initiate the Socratic method, you should begin by telling students that you don’t have all the answers and that you need their insights and opinions. It also helps to remind them that Socrates’ students weren’t getting a grade and had slaves bringing them copious amounts of wine. (My high school students agreed school would be more fun if we had wine.) Furthermore, you can say things like, “This isn’t a rhetorical question, someone tell me what think about . . .”
3: Rhetorical Questions to Assess Knowledge
This is one of the most common uses of questions, and it is also a fairly useless exercise. Teachers should be constantly assessing their students knowledge, but only so that they can modify their lesson accordingly. Rhetorical questions are a poor way to assess student knowledge and there is no point in making this assessment if you are unable or unwilling to act on the knowledge you acquire.
In this anthropology class I keep harking on, I watched the professor ask a series of rhetorical questions, trying to get the students to say a particular buzzword. When several answers failed to give him the buzzword he wanted, he actually started playing hangman on the blackboard. “It starts with an ‘h’ . . . . and it is has ‘t” in it. Sheer insanity. If you use three minutes of class time on something, it ought to serve some sort of purpose. What is the purpose of getting students to say a certain buzzword? (See, now this has me asking rhetorical questions.) Asking rhetorical questions can tell you if the smartest student in the class understands something. But that really is not a very useful piece of information for a teacher to have. Frequently, the smartest students in the class understand most things. Meanwhile, you have no idea what all the silent students know or don’t know.
Once you have this assessment, you still have to do something with it. When I first started teaching US History, I was supposed to start out teaching them Reconstruction. Then I found out my class didn’t know what the Civil War was. I asked a rhetorical question: “Why was the Civil War fought?” Someone answered, “Land?” So I threw out my lesson plan for the day and told them about the Civil War. Then I reworked all my lesson plans for the entire week so that we could catch up. Now some professors have the attitude that this is not their problem and that students who cannot keep up deserve to flunk. To each their own, but professors with this attitude have no business asking rhetorical questions. If you don’t feel you ought to reassess your lesson plans, than shouldn’t waste time grilling your class.
4. Rhetorical Questions to Force Engagement
I think that this is the actual reason why teachers ask questions and why our culture has such a strong association between teaching and asking. It’s emotional: the teacher desperately wants to make some kind of connection with the students. They want to know that they are being listened to, that they are communicating to fellow beings and not being observed like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes. Asking questions is one way to do this. It is hard to understand this need for connection if you have never taught. The first class I ever taught I called “The Village of Damned.” It was an honors class and the kids all just sat up perfectly straight and stared at me. I would ask questions and they would continue to stare in silence, not being rude but also not being quite human.
But a grueling barrage of rhetorical questions is one of the worst ways to make this connection because it places pressure on the students. In a very real way, you are transferring your own performance anxiety onto the class.
Lorand Matori at Harvard had a much better way of making this connection: he simply asked the class, “Are you with me?” Matori is a professor of Afro-Atlantic religions and he may have been drawing on black preaching cultures, in which the congregation does not sit in silence but actively encourages the preacher. Students loved being asked “Are you with me?” There was no pressure and students who said, “We’re with you!” seemed to form an emotional bond with Matori. Furthermore, this gave the students the opportunity to say, “No, I’m confused.” You don’t get that opportunity from a rhetorical question.
Rhetorical questions are also used to enforce compliance with the syllabus and to shame students into doing the reading. Students should do the reading and, since most professors assign too much of it, students are always calculating what reading they can get away with skipping. I know I do. But once again, rhetorical questions are not the best way to go about this. Often students cannot answer these sorts of questions even if they have done the reading, because the questions are highly subjective or overly specific. I’ve seen questions like, “What is argument of this book?”
Kimberly Patton, who has published articles on pedagogy, had a better method of inferring compliance. At the start of class, she would simply ask each student to give an insight into the assigned reading. She would usually move in circle starting to her right. This created a sense of pressure in that you had to say something and didn’t want to appear foolish, but unlike the rhetorical question you didn’t have to be a mind-reader: any insight would do.
Alright that’s it. If you’ve read this far, you now know more about teaching then the average university professor or at the very least have some pretty banter to waggle at your next job interview. Remember: What is teaching? Hmmm. OK, but that’s not really what I’m looking for. Well it starts with an ‘A’ . . . No, not awesome, but thank you . . . It rhymes with “fart” . . . .
Obama to continue No Child Left Behind
I think Obama just fucked up on education. I knew this would happen. As soon as he got elected I saw all my friends facebook statuses all over the world light up with elation. But I couldn’t help thinking about that scene in the last Star Wars movie where Obi Won Kenobi tells Darth Vader, “You were supposed to be the chosen one! You were supposed to destroy the Sith, not join them!”
First of all, Obama is trying to “fix” No Child Left Behind––despite the fact that everyone in America hates it. I’ve taught in three states, both red and blue and I have yet to see anyone who likes No Child Left Behind. I agree with Republicans, who say it infringes on states’ rights to set their own educational priorities, and I agree with Democrats, who say it places too much emphasis on standardized testing. When all of America is united in hating a policy, you don’t “fix it,” you destroy it. Fixing No Child Left Behind is like trying to fix a policy of “kick every puppy.”
So today I look at the New York Times and I find this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/us/politics/16educ.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
Despite the fact that virtually every American has experienced American education, and many Americans have children who in American schools, I don’t think the average American can ask the right questions about this article.
“CREDENTIALS”
First of all, the article is quick to point out that Arne Duncan, the new secretary of education is a Harvard graduate. Even if he had a master’s from the Harvard School of Education, I wouldn’t be that impressed. The program isn’t all that great. But he has no graduate degree––just a B.A. in sociology. Further down, it states that he has no teaching experience at all. So at 28, I have more formal education and more teaching experience than the Secretary of Education. I say that to say this: is Arne Duncan really the best person in America for this job? Or is he just somebody who used to play basketball with Obama in Chicago? Gosh, who was that other president that just appointed his buddies from his home state?
I can’t make enough of the fact that he has no teaching experience. The whole article goes on to describe teacher’s unions, debates over how to punish and reward teachers, etc. And the man deciding all of this has never been a teacher. A corporate model wouldn’t approve of this: stockholders wouldn’t tolerate a CEO who had never been a company man before. How can you possibly think Duncan is qualified if he’s never been a teacher?
“ACHIEVEMENT”
If you’ve never been a teacher, then you don’t know to be suspicious of phrases like “raising achievement.” I mean, really, what is “achievement?” Does it mean we have created a stronger democracy? A more informed electorate? Does it mean students have a higher quality of life because their minds are able to grasp deeper issues? Does it even mean that more poor children are going to college? Of course not. “Achievement” means that they made every child in the school take some sort of test, their scores were averaged into a single number, and this number was higher than some previous number. That’s achievement.
Now let’s assume for a moment that this is a perfect standardized test and is reflective of everything the student needs to know. If you will read my previous blogs, you will see that educating students is the least efficient way to produce this sort of “achievement.” In the school where I worked, we simply kicked the dumb kids out of school. In fact, I received hit lists of students I was to pressure to leave school. Once they got the boot, the average went up and we rejoiced in our “achievement.”
Do I know for a fact that Arne Duncan is engaged in this sort of thing? No. But I have little reason to assume that he isn’t. Reading this article, it looks like he simply places tremendous pressure on administrators, forcing them to engage in dirty work or else loose their jobs and their schools. Again, you can’t see what’s really happening unless you’ve been working on the front lines as a teacher. American teachers are like soldiers being sent into Russia by Napoleon or Hitler: all of their letters that they have no supplies and the situation is hopeless are replied with, “Onward! For the Glory of the Empire!”
“TIRED EDUCATIONAL DEBATES”
“In his last major educational speech of the campaign, Mr. Obama said: “It’s been Democrat versus Republican, vouchers versus the status quo, more money versus more reform. There’s partisanship and there’s bickering, but no understanding that both sides have good ideas.””
What?! There has NEVER been a real debate about education in this country except for whether inner-city schools should be under-funded or miserably under-funded. We can’t even HAVE a real debate about education in America because no one knows what’s happening. The typical American only cares about the school their child is attending and could care less about the national picture.
What makes me angry about this Obama quote is it’s empty rhetoric. Not everything should be resolved through a compromise! Not every issue has good ideas on both sides! Bush could have easily justified the war in Afghanistan by saying, “Well, conservatives want to drop nuclear weapons on Afghanistan, and liberals want to use diplomacy. I’m tired of this partisan rhetoric and both sides have good points––you we’ll just use predator drones and cluster bombs.”
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
No complaints. If you really want to close the racial achievement gap (which, by the way, is why No Child Left Behind was started in the first place) then this is where you start. The only problem is that this will not be done with additional funding: they will be taking money from remedial programs to fund early childhood education. I still think it’s a good idea, but we could spend a little more and fund both.
Obama will surely be better for education than McCain or Bush, but the continued existence of No Child Left Behind means that American education will still be in darkness or years to come. America has an educational dilemma like nowhere else in the world: we always compare ourselves to Scandinavia or China and worry that our test scores are too low. Those countries are racially and culturally homogenous! They don’t have ESL classes. They don’t have schools two miles apart stealing funding from one another over issues of race and class. We’re destined to loose if we insist on playing their game.
America needs to somehow find a way to turn our diversity into a strength instead of a weakness. This calls for a complete overhaul of what we think of as education: and finding a “sweet spot” between two imaginary partisan positions is not the way to achieve that.
South Park is right!
Once again, South Park uses satire to reveal a serious social problem. For those who don’t know: the scenario in this episode in which Eric Cartman is praised for teaching students to cheat happens everyday all over America. In fact, under Bush our education system has rapidly become a system of testing and cheating in which almost nothing is learned. Here are some examples:
–In California, they really experimented with giving teachers bonuses if their students tested well. Not surprising, many teachers were caught simply writing the answers on the board before giving the test. However, there are many more subtle ways in which teachers and students are rewarded for teaching.
–In Georgia, teachers are not allowed to look at state tests given for core subjects. By not look, I mean we can’t even see what kind of questions are on the exam. The only way to prepare is not to go to a public school but to pay $20 for a review guide from the company that makes the test (a private corporation that lobbies to direct our text dollars towards their company in the name of education.)
The “white people” Cartman keeps referring to have no problem paying $100 on review guides (there are five core subjects in Georgia.) But my students are dependent on me, their public school teacher, and I don’t get to see what’s one the test.
So we bought a review guide, photocopied it, and started giving them out to the kids. I don’t know how the testing company found out but they did. We got a cease and desist letter because my attempt to educate inner city kids might be cutting into their profits.
–The school cheats too. Read my earlier entry, “The war: shell-games and masturbation.” Instead of educating kids, we just kick you out of school if your scores are low. That’s cheating. This isn’t a new phenomena either: this was the plot of “Pump up the Volume” with Christian Slater.
–Finally, America has lived in terror of the awesome juggernaut of China and Korea with their invincible test scores. They’re all cheaters too. I know people at ETS. They have found Korean websites were students simply memorize the entire bank of GRE questions and the answers. Students take the test, memorize as many questions as they can, then upload them to the website. ETS found that each wave of Koreans scored higher and higher as more of the question bank ended up on the website.
Of course they cheat! I worked for a university who admitted a foreign student because he had a perfect verbal on the GRE. How is someone going to get a perfect verbal if English isn’t their first language? Low and behold, when the new student showed up in the fall he barely spoke a word of English. I think that Americans want to perpetuate the idea that we are somehow threatened by good test scores in China. It’s become political boogey-man every bit as effective as Al-Qaeda. (I think Al-Qaeda is largely made up too, but this is a subject for another blog.)
America didn’t get where it is by memorizing a bunch of arbitrary facts! How could anyone think that? America achieved technocratic dominance because of Americans with vision. It really all comes down to double-think: Americans love men like Bill Gates that dropped out of college to become billionaires, and yet we simultaneously believe we will be enslaved by China because of test scores? It’s absurd.
We need to overhaul education to cultivate students’ inherent talents and passions–not use test scores to convince ourselves that we have raised a crop of ersatz Chinese. That’s how we, “reach these keeeds!”
Kevin James is an idiot
I’ve been too busy to do much blogging lately between the end of the school year, preparing to move, and a manuscript due this fall. But just LOOK at this:
First a press secretary that doesn’t know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was and now this. You can’t blame the schools for this one either. Kevin James could have easily looked up Chamberlian or “appeasement” on Wikipedia before going on air. Hell, he probably has a Blackberry or something so he could have done it in the cab-ride over.
I’m generally not one for big government but I think that abusing history to attack a political figure should be illegal. Of all the threats to Democracy, that’s a pretty serious one. And aren’t we tired of Democrats and Republicans comparing each other to Hitler? Doesn’t that desecrate the greatest generation that died fighting Hitler? Not to mention the 11 million people Hitler killed? All just to make a nasty insult for a mud-slinger to keep in his bucket.
This law would be almost impossible to prosecute and that’s probably best. I don’t really care if Kevin James goes to jail. But as a society we need to recognize that we did is not only stupid, it’s wrong.
The War: masturbation, shell-games, and poetry
This has been an interesting week at work. Every time I teach US History B, I spend a week on the civil rights movement. Considering I only have eight weeks, that’s a pretty big investment. The approach is project based because most of our students graduate having never done a research paper or knowing what the term “bibliography” means. This is the fourth time I have taught the civil rights movement, and each time my students are denied access to the library to make room for standardized testing. This week was no exception.
And what were the faculty doing while all of our students were testing? Sitting through an inane PowerPoint and being talked down to by the county brass. This particular piece of brass was the same woman who delivered a stirring lecture last year on how to write better multiple-choice questions that will more effectively foil “the non-achievers.”
This week, she began by confessing that we were all better teachers than her and that this is why she quit teaching to become county brass. She then chided us for putting on “the dog and pony show” when our classrooms are inspected. Teachers were also severely reprimanded for arriving to the meeting late. A murmur began to run through the social studies teachers:
“Is it me, or this woman pissing you off?”
“Actually, I am starting to get pissed off.”
“Ooh! There it is. I am pissed off.’
We were pissed off because we knew that this was masturbation. The teachers, the principal, the county brass, each of us knew that this PowerPoint could never change a goddamn thing at our school. But to say this would be treason.
As the county brass droned on about “school missions” my department chair––truly a great teacher––made a confession.
“I gave up on all of these missions and committees years ago. Because the county has already decided the mission of our school–––we’re a dumping ground intended to make the AYP (annual yearly progress) of other schools go up. But the county will never admit this.”
And because the county will never admit it, we continue to masturbate. Vigorously.
I had always known this about my place of employment and that the practice was evil. But unappreciated nuances of the evil seemed to emerge at that meeting. The county brass are under pressure to improve their standardized tests scores as part of No Child Left Behind and the general trend towards “data” driven education. Only actually improving those scores is not possible with the counties resources, so instead they play a shell game and dump their worst students into my school. No actual “progress” occurs, but by condemning my school to being an intellectual graveyard, the illusion of progress is created.
The only problem is that intellectual graveyards get no special treatment. We also have to achieve AYP only we have no dumping ground. So instead we just drive children out of school entirely, depriving them of their right to a public education. Each semester I get a “hit-list” of low-performing students we are trying to eliminate.
I have never fully explained the hit-list to my students. (My classroom is literally bugged by the principal via the intercom system.) Instead, I just tell the students that there are “dark forces after them.” They always seem to know what that means.
The people running the shell-game are like Darth Vader—a fallen Jedi. They once cared about children and about education. Now all they care about is keeping their job and appeasing their bureaucratic masters.
Students will pull all sort of shenanigans trying to get a grade without actually learning anything. Teachers have to impose various tortuous methods to deter shenanigans––sometimes even resorting to improved multiple choice tests. When all we really want is for them to improve.
Only the highest echelons of education in the county are guilty of the exact same behavior. The AYP tests were intended to produce improvement, but all they have inspired is shenanigans. They get away with it because the only people paying attention are people like me––the caretakers of their dumping ground.
When I think about the shell-game I want to vomit.
Today was also the Poetry Café where high-school poets could perform. I stopped by during my planning period. This was not the typical bad high-school poetry about how “no one understands me.” This poetry was honestly inspiring.
It was inspiring because unlike the poets I went to high-school with who wrote about the shallowness of their friends, their parents inability to understand them, and general ennui these poets seemed to have real problems. A saw a young man deliver an amazing poem about restoring the honor and status of the African American female.
Although, I think my favorite line of the event was:
“I’d even risk getting pistol-whipped
Just to breath the breath that has passed through your lips.”
John Corcoran
Apparently, this man taught high school for seventeen years without being able to read.
Sadly, I am only a little surprised. Last year, I explained to a special ed history teacher that Julius Caesar never invaded Russia. I had assumed he mispoke, but maybe he didn’t.
This story is the September 11th of American education––this will make the perfect propaganda piece to pass whatever type of education policy you want, either for good or for evil.
Yes, this is the sort of case that No Child Left Behind is intended to prevent. And if our next president continues those policies, I am sure that John Corcoran will be a willing pawn in promoting NCLB part II.
But does Corcoran really justify national testing? This is newsworthy because Corcoran is exceptional. Exceptional people should be accomodated, but they do not warrant a national reform. For every Corcoran there is a child prodigy who is mind-numbingly bored by high-school. But no one proposes national testing to detect child prodigies. Our country could arguably be far better served by detecting prodigies in inner city elementary schools and grooming them for careers in technology and public policy than by improving the literacy rate.
At any rate, this is a moot point: because under No Child Left Behind, Corcoran would have become a drop out, not a teacher. Having proctored NCLB tests I know there is no way Corcoran could have cheated his way through. But does that mean he would have learned to read? Probably not. And let’s not forget that Corcoran had a supportive family. When you mix illiteracy and a dysfunctional family, a standardized test is almost certain to produce a drop-out.
So what are the lessons of John Corcoran? I think the biggest lesson here is how badly teacher’s are ignored. Policy makers seem to view both good teaching and bad teaching as random factors that they have no control over. Instead of paying attention to teachers, they continue trying to make the perfect education policy that is “teacher-proof.”
Corcoran was probably allowed to slip through the cracks because his teachers lacked resources. He describes in the article playing a game of chicken with his elementary school teachers and bascially forcing them to ignore him. Under most educational models, there is very little a teacher can do if they have a underperforming student. All Corcoran needed was some individual attention for tutor–which he eventually got at age 48. If elementary teachers had been able to pull Corcoran out of class and give him a tutor, they would not have felt pressured to let him fall through the cracks. Literally anyone could have taught Corcoran to read––you, me, the guy who picks up our garbage, a bartender, anyone. But not when they are teaching 20-30 people at the same time. The money spent on printing NCLB tests and hiring test coordinators could easily hire a reading specialist.
The fact that an illiterate had a 17-year teaching career again reveals the problem of ignoring teachers. NCLB does mandate that schools must have “highly-qualified teachers” but than leaves numerous options for how a teacher can be qualified. Corcoran would have almost certainly met the NCLB standards of a highly-qualified teacher. Again, the answer is people not tests.
I bet a dozen people knew or suspected that Corcoran was illiterate and didn’t want to rock the boat. Why is this tolerated? College faculty are critiqued by students and peers and teachers, as professionals, should be under the same scrutiny. If a principal is told that a member of her faculty may be illiterate, they should have a plan in place to solve the problem. They should tolerate an illiterate teacher while vowing to set up a perfect test that will filter out future illiterates. That’s insane.
Students should also be taken seriously if they say they have in incompetent teacher. I have revised my teaching style based on student feedback. By paying attention to teachers and weeding out those that need support, we can stop creating “teacher proof” education models and begin treating teachers like professionals.
The other factor in Corcoran’s story is only now beginning to be researched: why boys hate to read. It’s the elephant in the room. I myself read hardly anything until about age 16. This is a developmental issue that is not being taken seriously. New approaches are needed if we want to improve the literacy rates of elementary school boys. That may mean revising a lot of the grade-school literary canon. I recommend comic books and newspapers.
Spittin’ hot fire
So Friday my students asked me to write a rap. They said they didn’t care what it was about, they just wanted to see me rap. I was taught never to rap in front of students because it shows insincerity. I have also seen a lot of of lesson plans involving rap and I think they are horrible and lame.
But this weekend, I found it was actually pretty easy to write rap–which I attribute to three years spent in inner-city schools hearing rap lyrics for eight hours a day. Unfortunately, the rap I produced is quite angry and probably should not be shared with my students. So instead I am sharing it with you. Enjoy.
“Welcome Mr Teacher, here’s the new keys to your trailer.
Don’t worry about the students, because we know they’re prone to failure.
And it never is a problem if the students get too bored.
As long as you have a word wall and an instructional board
Oh, and never show a movie where someone was a sword.
The only things we fear are a law suit and the Lord
And don’t tolerate a student if they have something to prove
Cause if we drive them out of school, then our test scores will improve.
Well they say you went to Harvard, so I’ll leave you to your task.
Just don’t ask for more resources, ‘cause it only makes us laugh.”
Good morning, I’m your teacher. Man, you guys all look depressed.
With your pants around your ankles and your face down on the desk
Put away that stupid cell phone, with which you are obsessed.
Now let’s have a conversation that will open up your mind
Because the future of this country has not yet been defined.
“Can I go the bathroom?”
We just came back from a break.
“But I have a yeast infection. My bladders bigger than a lake.
How many more excuses am I gonna have to make?
Fuck your class, Mr, Teacher. I know everything already
Martin Luther King freed the slaves back in 1970”
You think that you’re bad? You think this is rebellion?
You’ve been set up for failure
And you just buy what they’re selling
“I just wanna text and play on myspace.com”
This is why when you’re my age, you will still live with your mom.
“No way, I got million dollar lyrics to sell
I’m the next American Idol. I’ll play for the NFL.”
Kid, you still believe that this game is fair?
And that the corporate elite will be willing to share
They keep you distracted with the dreams that they sell
Because if you knew the truth, you’d be angry as hell.
You might do something crazy, like register to vote
Not just talk about Malcolm X, but go read what he wrote
There’d be a rebellious generation with nothing to lose
Who cared more about social justice than the price of their shoes.
The plan’s to hold you back until you drop out.
So you can sell drugs in the hood, they don’t have any doubt.
MTV shows you gangsters and you want to get dibs
On those chains and make it rain just like you saw it on Cribs
Then the Feds import cocaine for you to distribute
They’ll destroy the black community and you can contribute
Now the private prison industry has you over their lap
When you don’t know the Bill of Rights, you only know how to trap.
“Whoah there, Mr. Teacher, don’t say that to the students
If you want to keep your job, that type of talk just isn’t prudent
You’ll get called a trouble-maker and you’ll probably get fired
Keep your problems to yourself, until after you’ve retired.”
The tree of liberty must be watered with blood
Cowards die a thousand times, but the valiant only once
Why do teachers take the fall for the politician’s mess?
Their answer to education is another standard test.
And who pays for all those tests? We do. Our taxes.
No Child Left Behind serves their corporate masters.
Destroying public education and a couple of forests
The testing industry knows exactly what’s best for us.
These kids are just meat in a processing machine
That claims to be promoting the American dream
The real product is social homogenization
While students fail and go to jail until summer vacation
I’m trying to raise a generation
That will reform a nation
Still living under de facto segregation
Suburbanization and unequal separation
Promoting civilization and the mind’s emancipation—
That is the nature and purpose of education.
“Mr Teacher, our purpose here is make AYP”
And get our FAY students through the EOCT
When I left you in this trailer, I thought you understood.
You aren’t here to save the country, you aren’t here to save the hood.
Testing and standards are all that we care about
Not that hippy crap that you always want to share about
Either do what we tell you or go back to grad school
When you’re on the payroll, you do what you have to.
I can see the Ivy League, has made you into a snob
It’s obvious you’re just too idealistic for this job.”
Too idealistic to be a teacher? Have you lost your goddamn mind?
You think I came here for the money? You can kiss my white behind.
I’m sick of sitting in this trailer and making you look good.
The DOE is run by idiots who don’t do what they should.
When the last good teacher quits, this whole system will collapse.
They’ll be nothing but your lies and your little lips that flap.
All will see the price we paid for your hypocrisies.
But by then it will not matter, cause we all will speak Chinese.
Martyrdom
The path to martyrdom began this fall when I noticed our copier doesn’t work. Let me back up: by fall, I mean August 6th, which is the start of our school year. Our school has over 100 faculty and staff all using one copier, which being located in a damp, uncooled room in Atlanta in August, had a nervous break-down and refused to work.
Now my first year at this school I spent about an hour a week fixing this copier. I spent many years as a copier monkey for a large university and I learned a few tricks. But until coming to Atlanta I had never needed to create a set of tweezers out a coat-hanger to fix a copier. That’s how bad ours breaks. Everytime I do this, I leave my newly crafted tool hanging on a rusty nail in the copier room. I think of it as my copier abortion clinic. Inevitably, someone mistakes it for trash and throws it away. I then have to go to get a new coat-hanger from the career training department, who uses them to hold up a selection of thrift-store ties. I often wonder what would happen to our school if I didn’t fix that copier. By the way, since I have worked at this school, 90 awards have been given out for staff person of the month. I’m still waiting.
The next step occurred around November on the virtual teacher’s chat lounge. I have never looked at the chat lounge and I don’t understand how other teachers have time to. (I guess they do it while I’m fixing the copier.) Anyway the teachers finally began discussing something important—namely our attendance policy. Over the last two years our attendance policy has grown from a model of efficiency to a bureaucratic nightmare. I won’t poor you with the details but basically teachers spend 90 hours attempting to contact the families of absent students. Meanwhile, students feel no incentive to come to class and our attendance rate has actually gotten worse.
Amazingly, teachers actually assembled this data on the chat lounge and began suggesting that changes be made! It was a moment not unlike the arrival of the obelisk in the movie 2001. I think they arrived at his place through sheer desperation. These policies have made morale at our school incredibly low. The number of teachers taking sick days increases each month.
However, the chat lounge rebellion was soundly crushed. All of the posts relating to the attendance policy were deleted and the lounge was shut down indefinitely.
Even though I think the chat lounge was a diversion for lazy teachers I now felt obligated to defend it. Or rather avenge it. I did two things.
The first thing I did was rally teachers to meet with the administration at the next faculty meeting. I unleashed on our unsuspecting principal a cadre of middle-aged women with eleven months of angst to vent. They fired an unorganized volley of complaints and concerns until 5:30 when our principal finally retreated. I said nothing lending only moral support. There was not another faculty meeting for over two months.
The second thing I did was create a mailing list called “the Forum” to replace the fallen chat lounge. To most of my co-workers, the ability to make a mailing list is the technological equivalent of nanotechnology. For doing this I received cheers in the hallways of “my forum brother!” Rather than being used a tool of resistance, the Forum quickly began cluttering my inbox with annoying office humor about how many calories we eat over the holidays. Annoying office humor is the opiate of the people. Essentially, I achieved a standoff: no new policy were passed and no faculty meetings were held—and teachers got a place to post annoying office humor.
But even as I was congratulated on my Forum, co-workers warned me that I was on my way to becoming a martyr. That I would be branded as “a trouble-maker.” That our principal would destroy me for my defiance. I still find all of this talk to be melodramatic. Our principal made a very bad call in censoring his teachers, but he’s still human.
Then a few weeks ago that damn copier broke again. I went to the damp, uncooled copier room where a long and irate line of teachers informed me that the copier would work as long as you didn’t try to do double-sides and didn’t use staples. Using either of these features would result in a jam, removing paper from holes A through U (yes our copier goes all the way up to U) and possibly an abortion with a coat-hanger.
Single sided, my test required 270 sheets of paper instead of 135. To add insult to injury, an administrator had left the last drawer full of magenta colored paper on which pages 4 and 5 of all of my tests were printed. Also my students had to assemble and staple their own tests (some of these kids do NOT have a promising future at Ikea.) The resulting tests of alternating pink and white looked a lot like really ugly Valentines. This was the last straw.
I made the first post to the forum I had created months ago. I read, “Who wants to do something about the copier?” Several of our bolder teachers said they would support me if I made a move.
Last week I drafter a letter to our principal explaining that one broken copier cannot possibly serve 100 people and that this was hurting the quality of education provided by our school. I knew of course that our principal has never pushed one button on that copier, and could not possibly know of our suffering. The letter explained how much toner and paper were being wasted and was written in an incredibly disarming an obsequious manner. It didn’t demand anything, it just asked him to respond to it at the next faculty meeting.
I left the letter up in the Teacher’s Lounge (a physical room, not a virtual one) where it began collecting signatures. I planned to deliver the letter last Friday since––according to Office Space—there is less chance of an incident on a Friday.
But on Friday my letter was gone. It wasn’t in the trash. No one had cleaned the lounge. It was just gone. I hope that it disappeared due to natural causes and was not eliminated by the administration.
So today I we had another faculty meeting. I printed a fresh copy of the letter and began circulating it during the meeting. Afterwards I spoke with other teachers to see if they wanted to sign it. Some of my co-workers acted like I was William Wallace asking them to die for Scotland.
“I can’t sign it.” Said one teacher. “I’m just too afraid he’ll [the principal] retaliate. I’m really sorry. I used to be like you. Brave.”
Another teacher said the same thing, “Man, I’m sorry I can’t sign that. I’m too chicken.” He looked at the signatures I already had and added, “Looks like you’ve mostly got young people and people fixing to retire.”
On the other hand, I was impressed by co-worker who showed a lot of fear and signed it anyway saying, “OK, I’ll be brave.”
Our hippie art teacher suggested I deliver the letter on Valentine’s Day along with flowers and chocolate. The “love power” approach might be the best idea I’ve heard all day.
Today episode has really demonstrated everything that is wrong with this country. The problem isn’t that our principal won’t give us a copier—because so far he doesn’t even know we need one. It’s that everyone is such a damned coward. Teachers are supposed to be professionals. They should be agents of democratic values. Instead, we have built a simple act of communication into an apocalyptic battle against tyranny and then rolled over and shown our bellies to that tyranny. How can a society stand against injustice if society’s shepherds can’t even ask for a copier?
The copier, needless to say is not the point. I think we can fund it by cutting back on luxuries, but if we can’t we can do without. But not being able to express issues to our supervisor without fear of reprisal—that’s serious.
And why does this always happen to me? I suddenly feel like I’m a student again instead of a teacher. When I was in high school I was nearly expelled for being “incompatible” with the school. Now I have been warned twice in two weeks that my actions can be construed as “insubordination.” But at the same time my co-workers are warning me, they’re cheering me on.
I blame America’s steady diet of martyr/warrior mythology. I don’t want to be the Mel Gibson character. I’m sure our principal doesn’t want to be Darth Vader. I wrote a letter for the same reason I fix the copier—because it needs doing and to do not do it would be dishonorable. But why it has to be this epic battle against authority is beyond me. We’re adults aren’t we?
Fuck it. If I’m going to be fired I’m going out with style. If I get accepted to a graduate program AND get fired for asking for a copier, I swear at the next faculty meeting I am going to rip my shirt off, jump on top of the table and say, “TEACHERS! TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!!!!” They wouldn’t say anything, but they’d love it.
UPDATE: 2/11/08
Thanks to everyone who has written me in support in this situation. I read a lot about Georgia law this weekend. Apparently, it’s still perfectly legal here to fire someone because of their sexual orientation. Way to go, South. That’s REAL rebellious.
Friday I delivered the letter in person. Several teachers approached me afterschool to try to talk me out of it. When I told them you cannot have a school where teachers are afraid to ask for basic necessities one of them told me, “What was the Spartan’s said?”
“Come back with your shield or on it?” I suggested.
“Yeah. Come back with the copier or on it. We’re gonna put your body on the copier and roll it down the hallways. With, like, a black cloth over you. And we’ll say ‘Here was this promising young man who went to Harvard but he asked for a copier.’”
On reflection of this conversation, I wonder if my co-workers have discovered my blog . . .
It took me awhile to find the principal because he was working in his office with the lights off. He was also wearing one of the school hoodies he had given to every faculty member (This gesture alone could have purchased a copier.) All of the faculty received gray hoodies, except for the principal who had a black one. This arrangement reminded me of rather obnoxious dojo I used to train in where you got to where a black uniform when you had been there long enough. Anyway, the black hoody added to the drama and I could pretend I was speaking to Emperor Palpatine . . . . if Emperor Palpatine was a black man with the weight and dimensions of a refrigerator.
As I predicted, he had been expecting me. He clearly felt threatened that I was gathering signatures and began the conversation by telling me that this was no protocal and that signatures mean nothing. I did not need to tell him that half the faculty are too intimidated by him to follow protocal if they have a problem.
I said, “This is communication, not negotiation. It’s your school.” The second time I said that he switched form defensive mode to paternal mode. He shook my hand and told me he would get back to me on it.
I stepped into the hallway to the great excitement of some other teachers. “He’s alive!” exclaimed one of them. Today I was given a contract for employment next year. Who knows, I might even sign it.
The War
I like wearing my leather jacket to faculty meetings. It makes me feel safe for some reason. I guess because part of me expects to get stabbed in the back.
Yesterday my students discovered why one of their classmates has been absent—she’s in jail. Apparently, there is a website where you can see mug shots from all recent arrests in DeKalb county. My students routinely cruise this site to see if there’s anyone they know. (I have another student who just found his mother on the same site.) My student was arrested for having a weapon on campus. No one could think to inform her teachers of this? I had to find out through my students?
Most of my students who carry weapons are not dangerous. They have to ride buses and trains for up to three hours a day through dangerous neighborhoods. If I had to do that and I were a 90 lb woman—as this student was—I would consider carrying a weapon.
We had an assembly last week where our vice-principal of discipline told students not to bring weapons to school, “We are your protection” he said. This was met with guffaws by the students. We don’t escort students home so how can we possibly claim to protect them?
Our staff meeting yesterday revolved around a spirit-crushing quiz over the process of AYP. The quiz revealed that I have no idea what is required to make AYP and that I do not understand what AMO and FYS are. No teacher in the entire school did. Most of us wrote that AMO is what you put in your gun. Only administrators understand this crap because—from a pragmatic point of view—it’s all nonsense. Our school has never made AYP and if we ever do it will because the beuracrats pulled their punches and created alternate criteria for passing. Nothing we do, as teachers will affect our AYP scores. Except driving kids out of school that is.
In the middle of this quiz I was approached by the Jude rat (see Viva La Resistance). She handed me a hit list: students she wanted out of my class so they would not affect test scores. “I’m giving these to all the bleeding heart social studies teachers” she said. Wow, an inner-city schoolteacher with a bleeding heart.
The quiz was followed by a report from a school board meeting. The school board wanted us all to know that we should obey the chain of the command and not defy them in anyway. Insubordination is a fireable offense in DeKalb County.
Speaking of insubordination, I received a nasty e-mail from county that I have been conducting “unauthorized research” by communicating with other teachers. I learned that to continue sending e-mails to co-workers I am welcome to mail 50 documents (Yes, 50. I counted) to the County and they will get back to me in a month.
I discussed this letter with a colleague who has a JD. He advised me to delete any research materials from my school e-mail account and computer. The county, he told me, has a habit of remotely booting up computers and snooping for incriminating materials. In a separate conversation he also fleshed out exactly what it means to live in a “right to work state”—if we try to organize any type of collective bargaining we are not only fired, we go to jail.
So far I’ve met two types of teachers in DeKalb: teachers who hate the system and teachers who once hated the system but have since become numb. I really hope I get into a graduate program so I can get fired in a blaze of glory. . .
