Those who care teach

This is the title of a little book my beloved great-uncle gave me recently - just a little collection of quotes about teachers and students, about teaching and learning, but that title really got me thinking. And, of course, when I get thinking, I usually end up talking to someone about it. So it really got my housemates talking, as well.

For those not in the teaching profession, perhaps you do not know the stigma that can plague us: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." My whole life it has frustrated me that either someone tells me that they have all these grand plans for their lives, but if nothing works out they'll "just teach" or I have shared my plans to become a teacher and one responds "Oh, you're much to good for that! You could do so much more..." What do they think teaching is?!

Alas, the profession of teaching has slowly subjected itself to an identity crisis recently - although one might argue it has always been in an identity crisis. What should I be teaching? What do my students need? What are my administrators telling me to do? When can I just get a break to think? What does it mean that I get paid for "planning", but not for "reflection"? ... (sorry, I had to add that last one in there, I don't think many people have thought of that before)

For one of my courses at the university - it's a course in the Foundations of Curriculum and Instruction, fairly broad, but with avenues for closer critical work - I am in a book group. It has proven to be a great addendum to the regular course work, because there are 4 different groups, each reading a different book, according to our interests. The one I chose is Angela Valenzuela's Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. Now, I have about zippo experience with U.S.-Mexican high schoolers, but it was the second part of the title that got me. The politics of caring? What is that?

(This is where I get to share how one of my favorite parts about staying here for Spring Break was that I got to peruse the University Bookstore textbooks for Spring Quarter pretty much all by myself, free of the chaos that is the first week of the new quarter, and alone with all of those neatly stacked tomes of wisdom, just waiting for me to open and peruse them, striving to be bought and loved to the point of highlighting, underlining, or - in extreme cases - being thrown against the wall to the exclamation of "What a great book!" ... )

So, I opened it up and skimmed the chapter titles a bit, then skimmed the heading titles in the chapters, and then started "dipping" as one of my professors calls it, reading a paragraph here and there to get some of the gist of it all. It was Chapter Three: Teacher-Student Relations and the Politics of Caring that I spent the most time "dipping" into. And it was what convinced me I wanted to join this book club. The first paragraph sums up well Valenzuela's survey of the situation of minority youth underachievement in this school :


"This chapter examines competing definitions of caring at Seguín [High School - her research site]. The predominantly non-Latino teaching staff sees students as not sufficiently caring about school, while students see teachers as not sufficiently caring for them. Teachers expect student to demonstrate caring about schooling with an abstract, or aesthetic commitment to ideas or practices that purportedly lead to achievement. Immigrant and U.S.-born youth, on the other hand, are committed to an authentic form of caring that emphasizes relations of reciprocity between teachers and students."

Valenzuela goes on throughout the book to argue that teachers need to take the first step toward an authentic caring pedagogy, that puts teacher-student relations before content teaching, before they can expect students to begin caring about their own achievement. In other words, what you teach is not as important as who you teach.

(Oh, and this is where I get to share some of my own developing pedagogy...)
This idea of teachers caring first, caring more for their students than for the content, resonates deeply with a notion I have long carried with me in my own teaching. I first recognized it while teaching English in Germany, where I felt I was observing a school phenomenon similar to what Valenzuela describes. The way I saw it, teachers and students were looking at each other as if looking in a mirror, looking to the other not to see the other, but to see what the other saw in them. (Is this not at the root of all communication? Do we not all look to others to understand ourselves better?) There's a whole page of stick figures and speech bubbles in my diary from that time that illustrate how neither teachers nor students felt acknowledged by each other and therefore did not seek to acknowledge the other in return, in traditional chicken and egg style. What I would argue - and what I think Valenzuela would agree with - is that teachers need to step up and understand that they can see through their mirror, but students cannot. The mirror of teaching is one-sided: students still look at teachers as if they are looking at themselves, but teachers need to look through their mirror at what a student's behavior says about the student, not the teacher. I feel like teachers can and should be mature enough to realize that.

Is that what caring is, then? Does caring mean we take the mirror out in front of us and look, for once, directly at the person we are caring for and about, without paying any attention to how we are personally affected by that person?

What does caring mean to you, whatever profession or community service you engage in?

There will be more to come on this idea, especially to the specific case of Valenzuela's study, which pulls in the political issues of Mexican immigration in the U.S. As our book group finishes reading, and begins to plan for our final presentation of the book to the rest of the class, I'll keep you filled in.

Sample lessons as of late ...

Often, when I learn something exciting, or am working on a project that excites me, I become most excited to share more about it with others. It occurred to me that this blog would be a great venue to share my academic papers, informal classes, and other little lessons along the way.

For example, my latest project: CHEESE!! A housemate of mine and I are taking a two-class cheese-making course, learning to make both soft and hard cheeses. I've already begun experimenting ... click on the photo below to find your way to my photos ...

In the meantime, I am working on figuring out how to make it possible for folks to access a few papers I've written for my classes. I find them very interesting, though it is frustrating to put so much effort and interest into something with only a judgment at the end, rather than feedback that could turn into an actual conversation. I suppose I can only consider them exercises for the real thing one day.

"What are your interests?"

In the world of academia, people don't break the ice by asking you where you're from, they ask you what your interests are, that is, what you are interested in researching and knowing more about. The way one of my professors explained it, "We all dig ourselves very deeply into one hole, but often enough, we come out and meet with each other to find out what each of us has found in our holes." The metaphor may be apt, but I'm finding that this hole-digging is a lot more public - and not as isolate - as I originally thought. "Publish or perish", they say - nobody's going to pay you to go so far down a hole you never come out.

Being back in the world of academia now, I'm wondering if there's a hole for me to dig somewhere. Not that I feel necessarily drawn to the ivory tower stigma, and don't hear muffled questions of "When are you going to get a real job?" from certain members of my family. I don't know what they think I'm doing here; I feel pretty exhausted at the end of the day.

But I'll tell you something: I love it.

I really do. I'm realizing that - stigma schmigma - this world of reading, thinking, writing, synthesizing, sharing, criticizing, revising, revisiting, developing, theorizing, *publishing* ... all of this may, at first glance, have nothing to do with how I understand myself as a teacher, but it has everything to do with how I understand myself as a learner.

This presents a certain predicament that I've been mulling over, namely, the question of how a teacher balances her calling to be a teacher with her history and fervor of being a learner? "No matter what profession you pursue," my mother has always said, "you will always be a teacher." It seems that, in following the call to explore how I am a teacher, I am constantly exploring how I am a learner, as well. There are two sides to the coin. Whoever I am as a teacher must be informed by, or at least complement, who I am as a learner; otherwise, I will never be completely satisfied in my work, and I will not do it well.

So, what are my interests? Well, that's a very good question. The easy answer is that I have a lot of interests, as most young learners do. But I am enjoying, still, walking around, looking at all the holes people are digging, peering in to see what I see, and moving on to see what others are up to. As I walk, these are the questions (and the fields of study) I'm pondering:

- How did education get to be the way it is now? (History of education)

- What are we doing in education anyway? (Philosophy of education)

- What does it and its effects look like on the ground? (Dual focus: Sociology of education (outward effects) and developmental psychology (inward effects))

- What light does knowledge about education in different cultures shed on our understanding of education? (Anthropology of education)

So, there's about four or five lifetimes worth of scholarship right there, but, like I said, I enjoy walking around between them at the moment. I think they are becoming like landmarks, like the numbers on the clock that I keep rotating between as I consider what I see and understand of education today. They are my table legs, so to speak, as I consider what I will do with this table top, what to create upon it, what to carve into it, what works to line along the edge, what papers to write upon it.

It is a powerful experience to feel as if on the threshold of something important, even if it will only ever be important to me. I know I have always been a learner, and always will be, but I have never felt this piece of me so strongly assert itself. It is confusing, and it is changing the way I think about my future, changing what I see of the path ahead of me. But I can tell it is a more honest path, so I'm not afraid in my confusion and questioning. I'm trying to stick to my landmarks, my questions, my interests, if you will.

... That is, if only to have something to say when they ask.

Miss Avery goes to school, too!

Apologies for the hiatus. I was a bit perplexed at how to keep this blog going, but after composing the following statement for a scholarship application, I realized that, though student teaching has ended, the learning continues! Enjoy the next chapter. You know I'll be having a grand old time ...

In front of my new "school": The College of Education at the University of Washington. Yeah, Seattle!

A friend of mine asked me once, “When did you know you wanted to be a teacher?” I was perplexed by this question. The more I thought about it, the more I knew: there was no moment when I “just knew”; I have always known that education is the profession, to which I have been called. My training has not been a journey of becoming an educator, but of understanding the educator that I am and want to be.

"The Quad": Surrounded by students, it's amazing how anonymous you can feel.

Before enrolling at UW, I was a Fulbright Language Teaching Assistant abroad in German public schools, worked and studied as an environmental educator at IslandWood on Bainbridge Island, and completed my student teaching for licensure. Amidst each of these experiences, I volunteered in local Kindergarten programs, participated in professional development opportunities that related to each position, and independently educated myself further on issues pertinent to my reflection on these practices. These valuable opportunities to build my practice as an educator inspired me to reflect deeply on the phenomenon that all educational institutions represent: the experience of learning intentionally. Now that I have enrolled in the College of Education, I have shifted my focus to more theoretical reflection on the meaning of such educational institutions for both students and the communities, to which they already and will continue to contribute as citizens.

It is here, at the College of Education, that I have met professors, fellow students, and scholars of all sorts that have all contributed to a significant realization in my journey as an educator. Having originally thought I would have to decide between being an education practitioner and an education scholar, I have since learned here that I can be both. Indeed, I am both and it will be an integral element of my career to balance both sides of the coin. Building on the insights I have gained from my prior experiences, I will devote my career in education to understanding the power of educational experiences, as they occur in both formal institutions and the plethora of alternatives utilized by schools and families. I want to know how educational experiences presently contribute to students’ attitudes toward learning and how these attitudes align with trends in student motivation and investment in life-long learning. Ultimately, my question is: What do children learn from their early learning experiences about learning and how do these experiences influence the attitudes they develop toward academic achievement, life-long learning, and their individual ownership of the learning they desire to pursue?

There is much to learn, both as scholar and practitioner, as I continue to tackle this area of interest. It is too early to say where I would like to go with it, but I am confident that my enthusiasm, commitment, and pure passion for reflecting and advancing on this topic will lead me in the right direction.

The C.o.E. is housed in Miller Hall. I'm beginning to move in, too.

My goal is always to achieve a deeper self-realization of who I am as an educator, and how I am serving both my students and my immediate and greater communities. However, this is not a goal that I can work toward independently. Therefore, as I continue my studies at the College of Education, it is my objective to contribute to the greater public discourse on the meaning of education as an experience, bringing with me serious reflections on and a deep desire to expand upon my growing scholarship and emerging repertoire of practice.

Miss Avery's portfolio is accepted!

After submitting my portfolio for review by my Teacher Education professors, I recently received the exciting news that it has been accepted! This means that I may now go ahead with the certification process, which entails a few more steps.

In the interim, I have taken the Praxis exam (think SAT for incoming teachers), and am waiting for those results. Let's just say I'm not expecting any disappointments on that end.

The decision I'm faced with now is where - in what state - I will pursue my certification. I completed my student teaching program in Vermont ... and am now in a graduate program in Washington State ... without any clear feeling as to where I will go from here.

Luckily, I'm not under any pressure to decide immediately. As I finish my studies, I can hone in gradually on my future, and make the move to apply for certification once I'm more confident as to where that will be.

As for now, though, I can add to the resume: CERTIFIABLE !!

StoryWalk for our school!

While I am type-type-typing away at my electronic teaching portfolio, I wanted to share the good news that a grant I wrote has been accepted! Before "Leaves" came to us by loan from the StoryWalk(TM) project, my cooperating teacher mentioned how nice it would be to have a few books of our own in StoryWalk(TM) format for the school to use. It just so happened that a local district fund that awards educational grants annually had sent out a call for proposals, due in October, so I got right to it and applied.

Who would have known - it was accepted! Shortly after I received notice, I attended a nice reception, where I learned of the several other projects that were funded. They ranged from Pre-K cooking to a High School Wii Club. It was a wonderful opportunity to experience colleagueship at a level greater than what I was accustomed to. The circles of community are like ripples in the water, and so beautiful to travel between, observing how one kerplunk influences the rest.

I will not be constructing the books (I have the funds to make three or four) until my portfolio is finished and presented on December 10, but I will be sure to include photos. I've already employed one of my brothers as my personal elf, to make sure I have completed them before the holiday vacation begins. So stay tuned for photos!

In the meantime, check out my developing portfolio:
https://seguecommunity.middlebury.edu/sites/ahill-portfolio

Warning: Due to extensive photos of my students, the public is not allowed access to certain pages. If you would like to see more pages of the site than your "outsider" status allows, register as a visitor (upper right corner) and send me an email about it. I will be happy to allow you access under the condition that the identity of my students remains absolutely confidential.

Max time: Check! Portfolio: err...

This past week brought the end of my max time, just as I was beginning to feel really in the swing of things. I had great days both Monday and Tuesday, pulling my unit on the five senses together and feeling very comfortable in the groove of things having to do with management.

It occurred to me I hadn't shared much at all of my unit activities, so that's what this entry will be devoted to. As I begin to work on putting my electronic portfolio together, I'm excited by the diversity of activities that made up the unit, as well as by the extensions to other pieces of the Kindergarten curriculum that emerged. Looking back, I'm very happy with the balance:

Sense of hearing:
- The children each received a plastic easter egg with different materials inside, so as to create different sounds. Their challenge was to find someone else in the group with the same sound.
- We made coffee can drums to play together and to explore patterns, an integral component of the Kindergarten math curriculum, with sounds and hand strikes.

Sense of sight:

In a large group, we read the book Look! Look! Look!, which consists of full-page photos with peek-a-boo windows on the pages preceding each of the photos. It was a great exercise in basing predictions on observations, and provided the foundation for creating our own Look! book with magazine pictures.

We also made our binoculars and went on a walk, observing the environs of our school. When we returned inside, we drew pictures of what we saw and created sentences based on the prompt "I see..."

Sense of smell:
On this day, we moved to our more conspicuous senses. We each took turns smelling four different everyday products (cinnamon, lemon juice, soap, and tea) and voted on our favorite with a graph mat: I placed each product at the head of the graph and the children came up one by one to put a card with their name on it in the squares underneath their favorite. Later, I guided them as they made their own copy of the graph and recorded their comments for display.

Sense of taste:
In combination with our sense of smell, we went on a field trip to the nearby Co-op grocery store, where some employees took us on a special tour of the various storage places, and on a scavenger hunt for locally grown products. And how could I forget: yummy apple slices and cheese awaited us at the end!
I chose to return to something we learned about at the Co-op the following week: I brought in vanilla beans and cut one open to show the children what the seeds look like inside. They had smelled the beans on our field trip and didn't like the smell at all, but they were greatly intrigued by the seeds inside and by the story I told of how the seeds are boiled in alcohol to create vanilla extract. We all tasted the extract next and realized it didn't taste much better than the beans smelled. We cupped our hands together to remember that often, plants and extracts keep flavors locked up tight until a little sugar is added and both are added to something without a whole lot of taste by itself ... and then, our hands burst open, just as the vanilla flavor bursts into the cakes and ice cream we flavor with it. To make up for tasting the vanilla extract raw, I brought in home-made "hot vanilla" (as opposed to hot chocolate), which got rave reviews. "Isn't it interesting," I questioned aloud, "that people have figured out over time how to use a plant to create a taste so different from what the plant started out as?"

Sense of touch:
We learned basic vocabulary for the things we touch - soft, bumpy, smooth, and rough - by feeling a sample mystery object from each category. Later, we used different materials to create our own books of these different textures.
The children loved the Feeling Finding game, in which they drew a card with a black shape on it and then reached inside a bag to find the 3-D version of that shape.

These brief summaries hardly do justice to the great fun we've had. For more detail, check out the link to my teaching portfolio - many of these activities are documented there, and some of them are featured in the entries necessary for VT licensure programs.

It has been a swift transition since my cooperating teacher returned to the classroom on Wednesday from full responsibility to marginal leadership. My last hurrah is tomorrow - Monday - when I will facilitate a culminating Five Senses Fair. Parents will come in and their children will guide through five sense stations. The activities featured are all things we've done together, so that the children can be the experts!

After that, I will greatly decrease my time spent at school, devoting most of my days to finalizing my portfolio. The thought of it does not exactly excite me. I mean, I am always eager to share, but, given the choice, I will always choose the kids. They are the source of my eagerness to share, after all, because they are inspirations in and of themselves. I would have no reason to share if not for my interactions with them.

That may just be the carrot I dangle in front of me: the sooner I get this done, the sooner I am ready to be back with the kids.