This summer, I had the privilege of meeting up with a student I taught in an American school in Venezuela eleven years ago. For about forty minutes, we stood out front of Universal Studios and remembered his fourth grade year together. He told me the things he most remembered about that school year, some big experiences and some little incidents. We remembered how our small third and fourth grade class organized a school wide clothes, food and toys drive and prepared a lunch for children in a nearby orphanage. (A Venezuelan orphanage is significantly different from one here in the States.) We remembered the plays we did,the songs and dances we performed, the books we read, and the party we had at the end of the year. He told me he still had the picture taken on the last day of school of me, surrounded by all the students, all of us crying over the end of the year. (Anyone who knows me knows how sentimental I can be, and, knowing I was moving on to another school made me even more so.)
This young man, now a college student, reminded me of a day when I had worn some thick rimmed, odd looking glasses to class. When many of the students laughed, I talked with them about people having differences, and how important it was not to make fun of people for the things that made them different from us. I nearly cried when he told me how, as a teenager, he often thought about that day, and how it changed the way he looked at people and responded to their uniqueness.
Teachers, I think, start out their careers hoping to make a real difference in the world. By nature, we're idealists and optimists. We imagine students who, in our class, developed the confidence, motivation and skills to make a positive impact on the world. Sadly, somehow along the way, many lose that enthusiasm. The end goal becomes more about having student pass the grade or, even worse, pass the test.
I'm not completely naive. I know that standardized testing has its place. Because of those hated tests, we're more aware of class and racial divisions in education. We're focusing on our struggling learners and have accountability in teaching them the basic skills they need to function in an ever changing world. My students do learn what they need in order to "do well", but it comes incidentally through authentic learning experiences, not through a year long focus.
I feel blessed that I am in a teaching environment where I can hang onto the optimism, idealism and enthusiasm I had as a young teacher. This year, my students will put their hands on primary historical documents and will talk to people in their community who were involved in civil rights and who represented our country in conflicts and wars. They will learn the skills to promote peace in the world, starting at the personal level and moving into the international arena. They will participate in service learning that will enrich their understanding of the complexity of problems in our world and will empower them to take steps toward fixing those problems. They will investigate, inquire and experiment. They will work cooperatively to create meaningful products that deepen their understanding of so many relevant topics. While doing all that, they will have the chance to experiment with emerging technology, learning as I learn along side them, how to participate in our increasingly digital world. And they'll balance that digital experience with time in nature, time on the water and land, time observing beautiful birds and underwater creatures and stars. They'll personally choose literature to read, figure out how they personally connect with it, and sit with friends discussing how others connected to it. Their dig into their own memories and write their own stories, discovering that every story that we tell about ourselves forms us a little more. And they'll participate in a global partnership with a school in another place in the world...hopefully realizing that the needs of people all over are the same, and that it is an international, intercultural responsibility to protect the world and be a part of the solution to our many challenges.
Not everyone will walk out of our classroom at the end of the year realizing how important this year has been in their life. But if I've done my job right, I will have nurtured the development of habits of mind that will empower my students to be lifelong learners capable of actively participating in our world, whatever it evolves into over the next few decades. And if I have done my job REALLY well, they will remember the lessons of tolerance and appreciation for all people.
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