When Rita and Julia both applied to teach 7th-grade English at JFK Middle School in a suburban district in Massachusetts, I felt extremely fortunate. As the curriculum director for the district’s middle and high schools, I shared responsibility for identifying, interviewing, and recommending finalists, and I had identified two young women, both of whom exhibited the maturity of old souls, both potential superstars eager to begin their teaching careers. The problem? I had only a single position available, and I hated to lose a great teaching candidate. I knew it was inevitable that sometime in the next few years another position would open, and we’d have to advertise, read through stacks of applications, and go through hours of additional interviewing, with no guarantee that another Rita or Julia would emerge. Frustrated, I sent both names to Madeline, our middle school principal, expressing my wish to hire them both. Madeline shared my excitement about these two young women, so we agreed to send both names to our superintendent and ask him to decide between them.
The good news is that the superintendent, who made it a point to spend at least an hour interviewing every finalist for a teaching position, realized the immense value of an excellent teacher. He recognized the power and significance of having these two on our staff. And so he told us, “Hire Rita and Julia. We’ll figure out something.”
Hiring a new teacher is always a risk. I believed both Rita and Julia were likely to succeed, but I had no crystal ball to confirm that hunch. How could I know, at the outset of their careers, how effective they would be? And how could I know how much I would learn from watching them work? But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The Victorian. . .
Hired in the summer of 2003, Rita and Julia, both young and unseasoned, began setting up their classrooms in late August, well before the first day of school. They approached this task with a pride common among new teachers who, after years of living in college dormitories or sharing a bedroom with a sibling, are excited to have a space of their own.
Room 1, Rita’s, was stuffed: Vases of “flower pencils” were strategically placed within the sizable rectangular classroom; a student “store” offered a supply of staplers, hole punches, eraser tops, binders, dividers, bookmarks, paper, even printer ink for students to take as needed; and Shakespearean costumes hung from the ceiling, ready for their study of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
On one wall was “Ms. Rita’s Wall of Fame and History,” where she posted students’ photos, poetry, and letters, a living time capsule that garnered much attention. Another wall included a bulletin board of hats — police, chef, construction worker, crown, Viking helmets — all suggested roles her students might imagine themselves playing now and in the future. She stuffed shelves with books, filled bins with objects for play and learning, and covered remaining surfaces with posters and signs exhibiting poetry, welcoming students, and teaching punctuation. Sprinkled throughout the room were armless beanbag chairs, a rocker, and cabinets filled with supplies. Two boxy computers and an overhead projector nestled against the back wall.
It was a jam-packed but highly organized classroom, its organizational principle apparently borrowed from the Victorian era, full of rarities and curiosities that invited a sense of wonder. Complex yet orderly, Rita’s room wooed students to think, to investigate, to play.
The dynamism of Rita’s classroom design mirrored her professional practice, which overflowed with creative strategies and games. During the day, students circled her desk fiddling with fidget toys and chatting with her about the latest young adult book she placed intentionally on her desk to trigger discussion. Rita rarely tired of friendly banter with her students.
. . . and the Quaker
Room 30, Julia’s classroom, made Rita’s room look like a flea market. Orderly and tranquil, Julia’s room was just as welcoming to students and visitors as Rita’s, despite its aesthetically spartan climate. While posters adorned the walls, Julia’s decorative instinct tended toward a chic gallery-
like austerity, each poster given room to breathe, enabling distractible preteens to absorb its message. Against the window wall, Julia created a cozy reading corner of bookcases filled with attractive displays of novels, memoirs, plays, nonfiction, short stories, and poetry — all teasing kids to open them — and soft rugs and comfy floor pillows inviting her charges to read, then write their own creations in those genres. The compelling yet spare atmosphere of Julia’s room reminded me of a Quaker meetinghouse, designed to encourage inward probing. Of her congenial, economical classroom, Julia said: “I think I was destined for this tendency. Perhaps because my family moved many times while I was growing up, I learned to cast a stern eye on possessions,” she explained, “knowing how exhausting it is to tape up every last one of them in cardboard boxes again and again, not willing to harbor any item that didn’t, in the maxim of decluttering gurus, ‘earn its keep’ by being beloved or necessary.”
Julia’s lessons mirrored her penchant for restraint. When teaching, she would strike a Socratic pose, ask well-crafted questions and wait — unperturbed by silence — for students to think their way to answers. The problem solving and dialogue occurring between Julia and her students or among the students themselves were rich, focused, and shaped by an almost distraction-free environment. As in Room 1, whenever I walked into Julia’s classroom, I saw happy, engaged students.
A study in contrasts
These two teachers’ striking differences, as exhibited through their classrooms and teaching practices, invited me to consider how Rita and Julia, consciously or unconsciously, used physical space to engage students and stimulate learning. I decided to turn my ruminating into a workplace asset by inviting teachers — beginning with Rita and Julia — to give their colleagues formal tours of their classrooms.
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Such tours both fascinate and instruct. Peering into colleagues’ teaching environments gives teachers a concrete way to consider the artistry embedded in great teaching. They ask questions about the use of doohickeys, furbelow, and physical space as dimensions of educational praxis. And, as they compare what they see with their own classrooms, these sightseers become more aware of themselves as professional educator-artists while also developing an appreciation for approaches to classroom (and instructional) design.
Both outstanding educators, Rita and Julia confirm my conviction that great teaching is indeed an art and that the way teacher-artists shape the classroom also affects how they shape the human clay within it. Rita and Julia both teach with a passion hot enough to turn their kiln-fired clay into beautiful, solid learners, but their differences demonstrate that there is more than one way to burn a love of learning into young people. Celebrating variety in teaching style is an important piece of knowledge for school leaders to recognize, and I owe that discovery, in its most penetrating form, to Rita and Julia.
Many of our state Departments of Education behave otherwise. Public outcry for teacher accountability and the measurement of school success leads to prescriptive teaching. My recently retired sister-in-law, a teacher for 35 years, put it this way, “When I was a new teacher, each of us was allowed, even expected, to take the curriculum and teach it in whatever way we thought best.” That has changed. “Now,” she continued, “the curriculum comes with directives on how exactly to teach each and every skill and concept. The art of teaching has been replaced with lockstep adherence to a script.” Many states’ guidelines now effectively eliminate the necessity for educators to use imagination in teaching.
Extraordinary teaching also resists concise definition, but we know it when we see it, and I saw it in both Rita and Julia. They knew how to gain access into 7th-grade minds and engage their natural curiosity. Their success involved imaginative teaching strategies, pedagogically inspired classroom props, and a recognition that a classroom is a home away from home for learning. Rita and Julia understood that every home radiates a distinctive character, and they each knew how to create an alluring second dwelling for their students, a home about which I believe many middle schoolers voiced inwardly, “I love it here.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Graseck
PAUL GRASECK was a classroom teacher for 29 years and a principal, curriculum director, and superintendent for 15 more. He now resides in Pomfret, CT.
