Bird Droppings December 12, 2024

What is the Holy Grail in education?

Teachers in Georgia High Schools on block schedules are scrambling this time of year to get ready for the semester’s End-of-course and or tests/milestones. Basically, teachers are told by administrators to prepare for the tests. Teachers are encouraged to be proactive and practice test taking, as well as practice questions such as openers, tests, and more tests. Of the past sixteen years in teaching, I recall having never felt the pressure to teach to the test. It sounds so simple, but teachers do not know what is on the test. On the one hand, we are told it covers standards, so teach to the standards. However, the tests are notorious for emphasizing certain standards and not covering others. So, teachers are scrambling. We just got last year’s scores and found out that the proficiency rating had changed from seventy percent to eighty percent. Some argue, well, that’s raising the bar. When is raising the bar absurd? If our student body is a cross-section of America and a normal standard bell-shaped curve is used, eighty percent is the top twenty percent. We can adjust the curve of the test and make fifty to eighty, but with 10,000 students, you are told to have all students in a proficient range of things that must give.

“Obsessive search for the holy grail through only that which can be measured and documented effectively diminishes the sacred and leaves us standing empty without souls.” Dr. Grant Bennett

A day or two ago, I got a bit carried away and wandered into about two thousand words on what it is about great teachers and why we can’t teach that. Well, in my discourse, I did not really solve the dilemma, but a response from a dear friend, a former professor in my graduate studies and a gifted middle school teacher, got me thinking. I recalled a scene from an Indiana Jones movie where the old knight who has guarded the Holy Grail for thousands of years has an evil Nazi officer trying to pick the Grail from hundreds of cups. Would it be political to say he reminds me of Arne Duncan, or should I throw out the current secretary of education’s name?

He chooses a gaudy and elaborate chalice and soon feels the pain of his error, and he disintegrates before our eyes. (Movie special effects, of course) Shortly after that, Indiana Jones is in the same situation and chooses a simple, plain cup to dip from the water of life in order to save his father. For hundreds of years, we held an idea of a fancy embellished chalice as the epitome of the Grail, and yet it was a simple cup that so often was not even seen. Looking back at Dr. Bennett’s thoughts on education, we have sought the Holy Grail in testing, in curriculum, in various new-fangled gimmickry full of trappings and programs, and maybe we truly missed the secret of good or great teaching and education.

I had to sit back, ponder, and think about my response a bit to Dr. Bennett’s follow-up to my note the other day. Seldom do I skip a day in my meanderings as I think about the past weekend and driving over three hundred miles shopping, and my wife and I, old folks, are always worn out when we spend the weekend in the car. Holidays are coming, and travel is in store. We will be going in all different directions, Warner Robins, Georgia. My son and his family are in North Carolina, and another son and his family are in Sylvester, Georgia, three hours away. Two birthdays have just passed, and two or three anniversaries are coming up as well. It was fourteen years ago, on a drive to Florida for our first granddaughter’s birth, my daughter-in-law gave me a book by Jonathan Kozol, Letters to a Young Teacher; I borrow from it often.

“It’s a humbling experience, but I think that it is a good one, too, for someone who writes books on education to come back into the classroom and stand up there as the teacher does day after day and be reminded in this way be reminded what it is like in the real world. I sometimes think every education writer, every would-be education expert, and every politician who pontificates as many do so condescendingly about the failings of the teachers in the front lines of our nation’s public schools ought to be obliged to come in a classroom at least once a year and find out what it is like. It might at least impart some moderation to the disrespectful tone which so many politicians speak of teachers.” Jonathan Kozol, Letters to a Young Teacher

As I started this book by Kozol, one of the first letters discusses the first day of teaching we all went through. Over the years, I have had several as I moved from Pennsylvania. My first teaching job was in a program I started in Macon, Georgia, and then at a school in Warner Robins. But the day I recall most vividly and actually forgot about it was when I started back after nearly twenty-three years away from teaching. I started on a Tuesday in September of 2001. Just by chance, it was September 11^th. For most of the year, if you had asked me what day I started teaching, I would have responded the weekend after Labor Day. However, my principal one day came in and asked what day I would start. I pulled out a calendar, and sure enough, my first day was spent in lockdown. I was replacing a teacher who had a nervous breakdown dealing with the EBD kids that I was thrust into.

So here I was. I had not taught a day in twenty-plus years and was stuck in a room, I should say, locked in a room with ten kids who had all been in jail or were still on probation. What do you do? The curriculum was out the door, and over a few minutes, we had our windows covered and all outside contact severed. Here I was with ten kids who were actually some of the worst in discipline referrals in the school in a tiny room for about five hours. I winged it, and we got to know each other. It wasn’t long till those kids came to my class and did not go to others, which did not sit well with some of the other teachers whose classes they were missing. I thought about this and still, at times, wondered why I was being successful with them, and another teacher had a nervous breakdown. I come back to the question: perhaps it is not something we can actually put a label on, but an easy word to use is relationships.

Teaching is about relationships. It is about building and maintaining them. I went out of my way to know these kids beyond the fact they were all jailbirds or into things most kids in high school would have never thought of. After my long dropping off the other day, I received another note from a high school friend who taught Literature in high school in Pennsylvania for thirty-six years, loving every minute of it. I was asked the other day who my favorite high school teacher was, and I could only recall one of them at the time. A former classmate from high school sent this email.

“Anyway…your point is well-taken.  What makes a great teacher?  I can honestly say that many teachers at Scott influenced me: Joey Inners, John Kerrigan, Dave DeFroscia, Joan Tuckloff, and, of course, Miss Cristoforo.  They made classes come alive; they went the extra mile; they touched my spirit and made me realize what I could do if I worked hard and applied the talents I had.  I think Mark Twain said: Teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theater.  I think he was right.  If the students like a teacher, they will walk through fire for them. One of my favorite activities asked students to write a quick note to a teacher who made an impression on them, thanking them for what they did.  It was the best assignment ever.  Here’s a salute to all of the teachers who have influenced me.” Beckie Backstetter Chiodo, retired teacher Pa. (2017)

My father once told me that teaching was entertainment as well as imparting knowledge. I am sure he had read Twain’s comment as much as I had. He had a vast quote library saved up, which is sitting on my bookshelf, and I borrow from it occasionally. My father taught about industrial Safety and Loss Control and was, in his day, considered the leading authority in the field. He lectured in most parts of the world and often spent months teaching, for example, in South Africa to mine safety folks or in the Philippines or Australia. I went into a lecture many years back when we had an affiliation with Georgia State University and held many of his courses on campus or nearby. This course was in, I think, the downtown Ramada Inn and I stepped in to watch the master at work.

He was lecturing about a topic, and to make a point, he got down in a football three-point stance and, said, hike and charged up the next yard or so of carpet. My father was a lineman in college, and even in his sixties, he was imposing. He lowered and raised his booming voice. He used many learning tricks we teachers still use to help his classes remember ideas. A famous one in safety is ISMEC. Identify, set standards, measure, evaluate, and correct or commend a simple acronym, and it became a mainstay of Loss Control management.

I recall another idea from my father when he visited a plant. The first place he went was the maintenance shop. He would talk to the supervisor and ask where they saw issues. I was always amused at how many safety guys would question my father about this tactic. His response was this was ground zero for knowing where the potential major loss would occur. In the maintenance shop, doing repairs, for example, repeatedly for a specific shift or piece of equipment, will indicate a potential problem waiting to be hit.

I started thinking that this could apply to a school. There are several possibilities. What teacher writes most referrals for seemingly inconsequential reasons? You cannot teach by referral. Look at remedial classes. Are there similarities with the kids who are there? Did they have the same teacher? Did they come from the same school? What is their life at home? Far too often in education, we start at the top and go down. I have found that gifted kids, even without a teacher, will do great. I am somewhat sarcastic.

As I am reading Kozol’s book and am now interested in looking at others of his, I am sure I will be borrowing ideas, but I would like to leave today with this idea. Should we start at the bottom or the top in trying to solve educational problems? I am no closer to finding the solution to how we tell a great teacher, but maybe I have some food for thought. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and always give thanks namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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