Hello there!
Welcome to Dispatches from the Frontlines of Teaching. I decided to start this blog as a way to document my first year as a classroom teacher, and to share resources with other teachers out there.
One of the first questions anyone who is, or wants to be, a classroom teacher is asked is "Why did you become a teacher?" The simple answer for me is: because of the teachers I had growing up. The more detailed response is because of the worst teacher I ever had. I know this is counter intuitive, but my 7th grade English teacher is why I want to teach. Below is a personal narrative I had to write for a Teaching of Writing course I took in college. After you read it please feel free to comment and share :)
To this day, I still don’t know why
Ms. Fisher didn’t like me.
I took most of the school year to
realize that the problem was not me but her. The day that changed everything
was the day that I had proof that Ms. Fisher was losing my homework on purpose.
Up until this point in the year I was caught up in a two-way contemptuous
relationship with my seventh grade English teacher. It began on the first day
of school when I said that I had already read the assigned reading, “The Cay,”
in sixth grade at my previous school. Her green eyes narrowed as I recited the
alliterative opening lines that I’m sure every teacher that teaches from that
book puts emphasis on. “Like silent, hungry sharks that swim in the darkness
of the sea, the German submarines arrived in the middle of the night.” I
was intelligent and I knew it. Even though I was in Gifted & Talented, I
was above grade level in the Humanities thanks to the constant supply of books
in my house.
It also didn’t help that I caused a
distraction the first day of class. When my name was called during the roll, it
was met with gasps and shock. Most of my classmates in the room, hadn’t seen me
in two years and thought that I still lived in Africa. I was six inches taller,
fives shades darker, and now had an afro instead of a ponytail. I purposely
didn’t speak to anyone that day, because I knew that no one expected me to be
there. This was pre-Facebook so there was no way to say that I temporarily back
in Baton Rouge and would be in school with them. At that point, my middle-aged
teacher had lost control of the 30 students cramped into a classroom the size
of a living room. The reactions ranged from disbelief to awe. Everyone wanted
to know what Africa was like and was I back for good? Were my parents still
there? Did I live in a tree? Did I ride elephants to school? Was my school in a
hut? I kept trying to deflect the questions because I am an easily embarrassed
person when I am shoved into the spotlight without my own volition. I knew it
wasn't the time or the place to talk about what I had been up to for the past
two years. But excitable seventh graders are a tough crowd and they want what
they want now, not later.
My assigned seat was front-row center, and I
was taller than everyone behind me. I had to
slouch in my seat as to not block the chalkboard for ninety minutes
every other day. My long legs and feet reached all the way to the wall that the
chalkboard was on. The front row was so close to the front wall that I had to
turn my head in order to read from one side to another. Throughout the class
period, the corpulent Ms. Fisher had to take care not to trip over or step on
my legs. Sometimes her body would hit the edge of my desk at she passed by,
causing her to knock things off my desk without regard.
None of this was my fault.
But I was made to feel like it was.
When report cards came out, I had a
D in English! The comments section read that I never turned in homework
assignments. Sure, I like most twelve-year-olds I missed one or two
assignments, or turned them in late. In
the beginning of the semester I had to readjust to being in an American school
system. We didn't have much homework at the British school I had previously
attended. Most work was done in class. But I most definitely had not missed all
sixteen weekly homework assignments.
What was going here? It was her word against mine. She was an adult
and I was a kid. Who would believe me? One of my friends concocted the
genius plan that I stop handing in my homework altogether. Let someone else
hand it in so that I would have an alibi next time she said that I had missed
an assignment.
D-Day came about a month into the
spring semester. When Ms. Fisher was collecting homework, she mentioned in
front of the entire class that I hadn’t turned in any of the previous
assignments and that I would receive a zero if I didn’t at least attempt to
make them up. Her voice was an audible smirk and I could feel her eyes blazing
into the side of my face. I felt bile raise in the back of my throat and my
stomach churn. Not only was my homework "missing" again but this time
she was telling the whole class that I was in jeopardy of failing English. My
adolescent emotional stability was treacherously close to unleashing a
Tasmanian Devil on her. Would my friends come to my defense as they promised
they would?
My designated homework handler spoke up and
vouched for my homework. “Ms. Fisher, she turned in her homework because it was
handed in with mine.” The crimson color started at her colar and worked its way
up to her scalp while her mouth gaping like a fish on the dock. She was caught.
I can’t recall what happened next but I do remember the aftermath. A
parent-teacher conference happened after I finally told my mother what was
going on. I was afraid that she would judge me the same way Ms. Fisher did.
Even though she is my mother she still was a member of the adult world. I
wasn’t present for the meeting but I know how my mother is when her only child
is threatened, full mama bear mode. And Ms. Fisher was the hunter you
approached the wrong bear cub. I was allowed to resubmit all my homework
assignments that weren’t recovered. I managed to finish the year with a high B.
I was in jeopardy of failing three out the
four core subject areas that year. Some of it was due to me readjusting to an
American school system, and most of it was due to me needing glasses. The
shadow of that years still haunts me to this day. Ms. Fisher wasn't the only
bad teacher that I had in seventh grade but she is the most memorable. She
caused me to feel powerless and question my own intelligence. For the first
time in my life I felt stupid. Like I didn't belong in Gifted & Talented.
If I truly wanted to be histrionic I could blame all my self-esteem issues on
here but I don't want to give her that much credit. School was a haven for me
until she was the menace that made me want to find any possible way to get out
of going to school. She probably never realized that she was my most terrifying
bully.
This story isn't a sad one. I went
back to being on the honor roll in eighth grade, I graduated from high school
with a 3.6 GPA, and graduated Louisiana State University with a degree in
Interdisciplinary Studies. But I'll always remember that seventh grade year as
the year that I gave up on myself. In my work with youth, I always notice the
other students that are in the situation I was in. Kids who had never been told
they were smart, and made to feel as if they are incapable of learning. In a
way, Ms. Fisher is partly responsible for me wanting to become a teacher. A lot
of my peers and friends who are experienced teachers were model students. They
were students who had a thirst for knowledge and whose names were a mainstay on
the honor roll. It is hard for them to sympathize with their current and future
students who struggle through school. Yes, they know what to do from a research
and best practices standpoint. But do they understand what it feels like to be
the student who feels and knows that they are being left behind? I hope I'll
never be a student's Ms. Fisher.
