Notes from an average teacher

Looking back through the inverted spyglass, 45 years later, I see now that I faced at least three big problems.

About a week before starting my teaching career, it hit me how unprepared I was for the assignment I had accepted as my life’s work. Exactly what was I going to do with the 26 six- and seven-year-old children who had just been placed in my emotional and pedagogical care?

Looking back through the inverted spyglass, 45 years later, I see now that I faced at least three big problems. The first had to do with my formal preparation. I had attended one of our nation’s elite institutions for a truncated program to learn the art, craft, and science of teaching. But while I learned a lot of the science, I came away with little of the art or the craft.

The second problem was me. I was only 25, too young to have accumulated much wisdom about children, their behavior, or anything else that might have helped me compensate for my lack of formal knowledge about classroom instruction.

And the third problem was us, the whole culture of teaching and learning to which I belonged. My own teachers, professors, and mentors had filled me with beliefs about the classroom — that children can handle themselves just fine, without a lot of pushing and prodding from me — that bore scant relationship what I encountered in my new school. Here, I was expected to be in charge. And to my new colleagues, instruction meant telling, and active engagement meant that students were listening hard to the adult in the room.

I remember my early classrooms as lively places, and often a lot of fun, though I suspect that my supervisors viewed my performance as less than satisfactory. Most of my students had arrived at school already “behind,” many of them far behind, in the knowledge and skills they were supposed to master. I’m glad that I filled their satchels with liveliness and fun, but I don’t know that I supplied them with the more tangible assets they so desperately needed if they were going to “catch up” with their peers.

I often wonder where those children are now, whether some trace of my fingerprints remains on their lives, and if so, what the nature of my influence has been. And yet, when I think back on those days, it’s my own ignorance that stands out most clearly. For all of my advanced education, I began my teaching career with an impoverished understanding of what it means to cultivate a student’s intelligence. I had always assumed it meant teaching them the usual school subjects — reading, writing, manipulating numbers, knowing facts, and wielding logic. I knew nothing about the intelligence of the senses or the emotions, or the physical intelligence involved in repairing a fence or a window or anything else that needed fixing in the homes and on the farms that encircled the school.

Above all, though, I was ignorant of social intelligence. I remember how surprised I was, in my first few months in the classroom, by my students’ capacity to create a sense of community, leaving nobody out. Children with very little in their own snack bags — perhaps a single candy bar — would freely share their small bounties. In my own childhood, I had not seen so much generosity among classmates.

Nor, in all my years as a student, had I ever experienced what I’ve since come to think of as pastoral care: an adult’s genuine effort to know and value my peers and me, and to respect our desire to have a stake in our own learning. That ethic lay fallow inside of me until here, in my own classroom, where I saw children who delighted in taking care of their classmates and was inspired by their example.

The joyful imagination that my students brought to school, especially, was a gift that continues to lighten my spirits even today. As an aspiring teacher, I had been taught that it was adults who nurtured children. But my students taught me that it was the reverse. Their nurturing impulse went so far as to include the dogs and cats and varmints of all varieties from the woods near our school — even snakes, somewhat frighteningly for me with my adult responsibilities. Even stuffed animals occupied exalted positions in the community, as children bestowed on them their love and affection.

Over time, I developed the wisdom to accept my students’ gifts of kindness, reshape them, and return them, knowing that willingness to give love and care so freely could illuminate the confusing pathways of life. This is a lesson I honor with my much older students and my family to this day, even when they struggle to recapture the gift they have misplaced on the road to adulthood.

From watching my young charges, I began to see a different way to teach.

From watching my young charges, I began to see a different way to teach. I had assumed my task was to help them accumulate the tools they would need to succeed in future grades and negotiate the many steps from childhood to adulthood. Indeed, though we often found it tedious, we spent a lot of time on the academic basics. Yet, I could see that merely accumulating knowledge and skills that adults handed down to them did not carry the visceral satisfaction of discovering new facts and figuring out new skills for themselves. There was a different texture and feel to their understanding when my students could guide their own learning. This was a gift that I devoured and have worked hard to infuse into my life.

I do not wish to romanticize my students here. They could be quite mean at times, guarded of their friendships, intensely competitive with each other, ferocious in their defense of community rules (I remember them yelling “no cuts in line!” at top volume), and on and on. But still, those students were the best teachers I’ve had.

Reflection can be a powerful tool. And even though time and distance blur and distort our vision, there’s something uniquely powerful about reflecting on the long ago. It can, I believe, help us better see the most essential lessons and dominant threads in life’s narratives. For me, looking back allows me to acknowledge gifts that were unknowingly given to me by six- and seven-year-old children four-and-a-half decades ago, and to thank them, wherever they may be, for doing so.