 |
| Open Space Next to the Swampscott Public Library |
The grandmotherly woman's initial instructional words to the boy made me cringe.
"What's a noun? An object, a thing, right? What's an adjective? A word that describes something, right? So 'a little boy.' What's the noun--'boy,' right? And what's the adjective--'little,' right?"Already I was feeling so bad for the boy that I determined to move far away from this session. His tutor's questions bored me, and I didn't know why she was answering them herself. And I didn't know why she was asking them and then moving suddenly to the reading part of their time together.
But the Swampscott Public Library's first floor* doesn't have too many tables, and I needed to work at a table. So I settled in, tried to ignore their conversation, and kept working.
 |
After a little more candy conversation, they got back to reading, taking turns reading paragraphs and sometimes whole pages from the book of the day--I couldn't tell if it was a book for school or not--and pausing now and then to talk. Now both of them were asking questions and offering comments. In connection to something the two of them had just read about, he brought up something he'd learned from a book he was reading at home and really liking; she asked him if he could bring it along with him to the next time they met.
Still, the example of "the little boy" was pretty tame and dull. How about "half-time show" or "hockey rink" or "video game"? Though I felt really kindly toward the grandmotherly woman, the truth of the matter was that she was no instructional superstar, no one who should be giving workshops about innovative practices for supporting developing readers or grammarians.
But really, that didn't matter at all: she cared about this boy and his progress; and clearly he felt her affection and care, felt capable, felt special and genuinely liked. He wasn't going to mind having to meet her the next time, and what she was doing was working: he was reading more, reading better, reading even for enjoyment at home on his own.
Of course, it's great for teachers and tutors to add to their pedagogical repertoires. But the latest, hottest pedagogical strategies cannot, will not abolish the need for authentic connecting with students--be those students anxious, newly struggling learners hoping to meet a learning challenge before it becomes an ongoing problem, or hardened "non-achievers" who need us to help them believe in themselves--at first, when they have no evidence that they can learn what we're teaching, and later on, when their initial successes force them into the difficult but positive position of needing to re-imagine themselves as students who can and do learn.
So happy Valentine's Day*** to all those teachers and tutors whose blend of heart, skill, and knowledge does right by kids again and again. May they enjoy these visual bonbons for all the "bon" they do!
* Screen shot of image at top of Swampscott Library web site's home page: http://www.swampscottlibrary.org/services/book-groups/images-2/
** Screen shot of Valentine's Candy images search page: https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0LEVj8d9b1W4jYAnk0nnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=Valentine%27s+Candy+Images&fr=yhs-mozilla-001&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-001
*** Photograph of a Hallmark Valentine's Day card that I bought.
Joan,
ReplyDeleteI often think that I do not excel in the specific usefulness of my responses to students, but at least I do generally demonstrate that I am interested in their ideas. Increasingly, I think that my own students struggle so much because they do not spend much time talking to interested adults. In my affluent district, I find that my students' vocabularies are astonishingly narrow, as are their frames of reference, as is their ease in expressing their ideas. Where there are exceptions, these are either unusual kids or, more often, kids from families where talking inter-generationally is a given. And I don't necessarily mean that they sit around talking about Plato.
By contrast, in Italy, it was hard to shut my students up, even when they didn't really have all that much to say. They were accustomed to Sunday dinner with the family, at which everyone talked, everyone was an expert, everyone was expected to weigh in. At my school here, the more accomplished students are often sadly self-conscious, thinking there is a "right" answer, or, more to the point, thinking there is "wrong" answer that, if voiced, will produce opprobrium by peers and teacher alike. When I think back to my own high school days, when my friends and I flung ourselves rather indiscriminately into discourse, or my mother's experience in the 1930s in Flatbush, at Erasmus, where life was a protracted political debate, with my mother's voice probably drowning out most others, I wonder about my own rather decorous classroom.
"Good enough" is not an un-useful phrase for teaching and for family life. It's a great deal better than distant or alienated or far worse.
I also think of the experience Tobias had at Radnor High School in the four-year sequence of "integrated" classes, which were co-taught by an English and a History teacher each year. There, the conversational strands were always more complex because of having two adults in the room and a cohort of students who knew each other well, and only came to know each other better over the years. This is what he and his friends remember from high school, though they don't necessarily remember much in terms of content. Interesting, no?
So here's to that grandmotherly woman and her young charge. May he learn to trust his ideas as valuable. If he does, his learning will continue in all sorts of unpredictable and valuable ways.
Tamzen
Hi, Tamzen --
ReplyDeleteFirst, thanks so much for your response, which gave me much to think about. At first as I read about your local students, I wondered what roles technology and the tendency to rush through life--including meals--might be playing in their tendencies to say little or less, but your talk about Italy and Tobias'school experiences make me wonder whether the amount and "form" of talk is more a reflection of culture--cultures of countries, schools, or both.
A former student and colleague of mine who's a professor at Bridgewater State University has observed that some of her students apologize when they speak with excitement, make connections to things they've learned in other courses, and use language less more formally. She's become very curious about the cultural forces that are at work, and she's been making a real point of validating her students' connection-making, questions, use of discipline-appropriate vocabulary, expressions of deep thinking, and excitement about that thinking. This is the kind of talking you're supposed to do in a college class so that you and others can learn, she explains both to individual students and to whole-class groups.
The whole thing about not remembering the content that they--Tobias and his classmates--discussed, asked about, argued about, persuaded one another, etc.: really interesting. Gone forever, I wonder? Or gone in some ways but not others?
Thanks, Tamzen!
Thank you, Joan Soble for this insightful piece. You remind teachers that there are hardened "non-achievers" who need us to help them believe in themselves." Once that inner confidence settles in the learning and questions can happen. It is good thing you needed a table and was able to observe the tutor's caring approach. Natasha
ReplyDeleteI forgot to add: I love the pictures.
ReplyDelete