Class Consciousness 10 Things New Teachers Should Know (and Veteran Teachers Should Remember) “And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be, And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee” William Shakespeare Henry VIII (1613) ​ Preface: CAN EAT MORE I’m a damn good teacher. I’ve been doing it for almost 20 years, and I’m incredibly proud of my accomplishments in the classroom. But the idea that I have some authority to tell other people how to teach still feels odd to me. I’ve helped two student teachers through their apprenticeships, and they assure me that I have not completely ruined their minds or spirits. Still, for reasons that I will discuss below, many teachers (including myself) bristle at the idea of yet another book on How to Teach. Not that this deters the oodles of scholars who insist on pumping out such texts every year. Most of them are focused on brain-numbing minutiae or seizing on the research phenomenon of the month. I’ve read many books about How to Teach, most of them containing about 3% worthwhile information and 97% filler material best described as “Stuff we covered in 1 grad school” or “Rhetorical nonsense required to justify the existence of a text that could have easily been a pamphlet”. This book is about the deeper stuff — not so deep as Freire or Dewey, but in that ballpark. At the same time, it mixes the philosophical stuff with plenty of nuts-and-bolts advice for classroom survival. I’ve tried to boil down the most important things I’ve learned in the last two decades into a few key points. I hope they’ll be useful for young folks starting into education, as well as more experienced teachers with open minds. While obviously this book is directed specifically at teachers and administrators, everyone reading it has — presumably — spent time in school as a student. Therefore it should ring bells for everyone. Moreover, as citizens charged with the responsibility of improving our systems of education, we all have a duty to learn more about how classrooms work — and why they often don’t. I’ve mixed in some memoirish elements as necessary, but I’ve tried to keep them minimal and relevant. (Strunk and White insist that we “Omit needless words.” Rest assured that I have completely omitted all needless words from the pages you now hold in your hands.) Nothing bores me more than people (especially teachers) who talk to kill time or hear their own voices. Therefore I will be direct and succinct. And there’s another reason I summoned the chutzpah to write this book. In his last novel, ​ ​ Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut writes: ​ Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer: Many people need desperately to receive this message: “I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.” 2 I know for a fact that many teachers (and other folks) feel as I do, and I want to reach them. But I also want to reach those who feel differently. One of the most important things we can do as intelligent humans — especially as educators — is engage in dialectic conversations with open minds and a willingness to find common ground. Without trying to be immodest, I can say that I’ve got a good track record of establishing dialogue and helping people see the world in different ways. In Futurama episode 3ACV15 (“I Dated a Robot”), Fry falls in love with a robot that is ​ ​ programmed to show enthusiasm for everything he says. Thus, when he describes the physiology of his digestive system — “Then, when I feel so stuffed I can’t eat more, I just use the restroom. And then I can eat more!” — she responds with awe: “You should write a book, Fry. People ​ ​ ​ ​ need to know about the CAN EAT MORE.” This is how I always feel when writing or talking about my life and experiences. It’s hard to know which bits are totally obvious, which are fascinating only to me, and which might be interesting (and/or useful) to other people. My rambunctious ego usually makes this an academic dilemma, but it seems fair to confess it at the outset. My voice in the pages ahead flips endlessly between first and second person. I will instruct the reader to heed advice and obey commandments, but mostly I will speak about my own experiences and explain what works for me. As the saying goes: Your mileage may vary. Avoiding repetition is a prime directive of this book. I hate hearing the same stories over and over, and I’m terrified of inflicting such pain on other people. (This is a special danger in marriage, as in Chris Rock’s bit about the married person yelling: “Yeah, you told me about that 3 [bad word] time! Why don’t you go and get kidnapped? Have something new happen to you!”) My poor students are constantly subjected to jokes and stories they’ve heard before. Sometimes this happens over and over; in 2013 two unlucky souls were sentenced to a third consecutive ​ ​ ​ semester with me. I’ve only got 18 weeks’ worth of funny/interesting things to say, and this material gets old quickly. I’ve tried to keep this book fresh. I’m not like other teachers — let’s just get that out of the way. I love literature and grammar, but I also love video games and hip-hop music and zen buddhism and writing fiction and radical politics. As a result I often feel isolated in any given social situation. It’s rare enough to find another person who shares one of my passions, let alone two or three. The hip-hop heads ​ ​ get bored when I talk about literature, and the other teachers smile derisively when I rave about the latest Elder Scrolls video game. The people at the zendo shrug their shoulders when I talk ​ ​ about Emma Goldman’s anarchism. And so on. This even bleeds into my word choice. Hip-hoppers don’t trust people who say things like “The Schultz-inspired Charle Brwn EP from Dem Atlas is layered with deep thematic ​ ​ exploration and metaphor, aligning the author’s life with classic comic and cartoon tropes from the late 20th century.” On the other hand, the teachers I teach with scowl with disapproval if someone says something like “That new Arundhati Roy book is ill.” I don’t use hip-hop vernacular in an artificial way; I’ve been living that life for decades. We talk like the people we talk to. When I chat with my mates in the UK, I use their vocabulary, like saying “mates” instead of “friends”. It’s like the Langston Hughes poem “Motto”. 4 To make matters worse, the students roll their eyes with suspicious hostility whenever a teacher uses slanguage, even if it’s authentic for the teacher using it. So while I might say “This semester’s gonna be wicked, yo” to my friends, once I get into the classroom, I turn into Ned Flanders: “This is going to be an excellent semester.” Only after a month has passed can I drop in the occasional “f’real”. My goal here is to spit wisdom at every teacher willing to hear me out, especially the littluns entering the classroom for the first or second year. I’ll be rolling various interests into this conversation — hip hop, video games, The Simpsons, zen Buddhism, and others — but of ​ ​ course I will keep the overall discussion broad in scope and accessible to everyone. Much of the following discussion is centered on secondary education, but I hope there are enough universal elements to make it relevant to elementary and tertiary educators as well. I will mostly discuss my life as a classroom teacher, but many parts will also apply to paraprofessionals, classroom aides, and even some administrators. One final introductory note is aimed at young people. (I don’t know why a teenager would read a book about teaching, but if my years in the classroom have taught me anything, it’s that you never know who’s paying attention.) To anyone who feels — as I often did, in my teenage years — awkward, small, despised, and/or inadequate: It gets better. I was overjoyed to see that phrase take shape as the motto of the movement to support LGBTQ youth, because it’s true about other aspects of social relations, too. 5 I got bullied, harassed, abused, and ridiculed regularly during middle school. Some tough kids stole my chain, and I got wedgies that inflicted real horror. But I quickly realized that the worst thing I could do was act like the jerks who tormented me. These things didn’t kill me, and they definitely made me stronger. I came to own my status as an outcast, and then I realized I had taken it too far and was alienating decent people who meant me no harm. I figured out which elements were keeping me separated from the people who weren’t jerks, and I got rid of them. This is a vital step. Too many people simply turn up the volume and then wonder why nobody wants to hang out with them. Write. Draw. Paint. Play music. Do something creative to help you endure. Don’t keep it locked in, because it will explode when you’re not ready.