Much Ado about Films

Had a pretty interesting week and tried out a slightly new technique that I’d like to share; nothing revolutionary but for a technology teaching neophyte its more about what works for the students and what they need to grasp the material and make their own connections rather than it being the most advanced technique.

I teach the Drama module of the CAPE Literatures in English program. We ‘team-teach’ at my school, meaning that for one subject there can be more than one teacher. For Lit there are three teachers – one for Drama, one for Poetry and one for Prose. Seems weighty but it works given that it is pretty advanced study (I’ll write a post explaining the structure of the education system in Trinidad and Tobago for readers overseas who may not be familiar).

One of the challenges of the Drama module is that the examiners want the students to have a grasp of the work as PERFORMANCE but with the close analysis that one would apply when analyzing a TEXT. As a result they are expected to have a knowledge of literary theory relevant to their texts, have an intimate understanding of the effects of language, methods of characterization and the impact of thematic concerns but they also need to be aware of setting, costuming, entrances and exists, stage design, stage movement and the subtle elements of theatre and performance that you can only really perceive when you are either viewing the performance or engaging in it.

Sounds fun right? Here is the challenge- most teachers have not been trained in drama, have little experience with theatre and there is only one introductory course in our local University (where most of our English teachers receive their degrees) that is required for a degree in Literatures in English. Basically, most teachers are not really trained to teach the syllabus as it is intended. I’ll leave that drama for another blog post.

Traditionally, how the Drama module is taught (at least how I was taught in school, how I observed senior teachers teaching it and how I continued to do so as a beginning teacher) is through in-class reading with frequent pauses to discuss student views, facilitate teacher clarification or for questioning. With CAPE’s new focus on performance analysis, teachers may ask students to visualize setting, observe and discuss the impact of stage movement etc. After in-class reading or after students had advanced significantly in their reading, the class would view a film or a performance of the play. This was done, as teachers feared that if students saw the film to early, they would not read the text.

This week I decided to integrate the film version of the play I am exploring with my Lower 6^th form, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, more fully into my lessons to achieve the same results but more efficiently. Instead of waiting until the end of the in-class reading to allow students to view the film version of a play (as if it was some reward for not falling asleep though boring classes, rather than a necessity) I decided to incorporate it as a regular part of the classes.

This is how it went: because of the shortage of rooms and equipment (televisions, DVD players) I just used a projector in the students’ regular classroom to show the film.  I began class setting a particular goal for the viewing, for example to look at how the film represented gardens and chronicling the scenes that took place there. Then we viewed the scenes that I selected and students would make their notes, individually or in groups as they viewed the film. At critical points I would stop and solicit their observations, ask questions or prompt their attention to some element in particular. At the end they would report on their observations and we would discuss our findings collectively.

Simple, but it made so much of a difference! The girls were so much more engaged. Since they had an element to focus on for their viewing the lesson was more purposeful and because they were already viewing the performance it allowed us to incorporate performance analysis as well as textual analysis. I asked the girls for feedback and they indicated that they really liked the method and gave me the go- ahead to continue doing it this way.

In time when I have a better grasp of Wikis and designing class activities online, I would like to have the students view embedded videos of the play and record their observations and analysis on the Wiki for further collaboration or even have them continue analysis with the same structure at home and class time can be used for more discussion and essay writing skills.

As I reflected on the lesson I realized that while technology can revolutionize the way we teach it can also sometimes just provide us with little tools to make what we already do more efficient and have the students a little more engaged. For schools like mine where we don’t always have the facilities to do grand things with technology in the classroom, it can be the little tweaks that can make all the difference.

Teaching Girls and Web 2.0

Just found these two wonderful links. One is a video by an educator named David Truss (who is everywhere btw; gives totally new meaning to connected as a digital teacher) and the other was an article on Mashable, my go-to site for social networking news.

The video, A Brave New World Wide Web looks at the benefits, more like the imperative of using the web in teaching. It outlines how the making of connections, such an important part of learning and critical thinking, is so perfectly facilitated by the use of web technology in the classroom and makes the case for the classroom becoming a digital entity without borders.

The Mashable article indicates that according to statistics compiled by Google ad planner, women outstrip men when it comes to the use of social media. Other than Digg which is still largely used by males, all other social networking sites are either equally used by both genders or females are the majority uses. Imagine that… Twitter, facebook, delicious, flickr, ning, tagged etc… all of these are dominated by female users.

This is huge. Not just for marketing professionals but for us in education as well. I teach in a girl’s school and we have long realized that girls communicate far better than boys their age and that due to gendered child-rearing girls have simply been better socialized to take advantage of the traditional classroom set up (listening, sharing in small groups, remaining quiet and focused for longer periods of time etc) Whether or not this remains the same given the shifting gender roles in our society, teachers really need to take note if there is any universal truth to the idea that females seem to be making use of and making connections, creating knowledge  through social networking in a way that far outstrips males.

Is it their innate communication styles? Are these sites marketed to females? Either we need to take further advantage of these technologies when teaching girls to reach them better or we need to encourage boys to as well lest they be left behind (even further) in the education game that is will shift over time to these methods of communication.

It’s all new again

I’m baaack! Although this blog first began as a teaching portfolio to document my experience studying for my Dip Ed I had always hoped to continue it when the smoke cleared. The idea is that this could be a way to collect interesting ideas for lessons, share developments in education and to generally add to the many resources on the net shared by teachers for other teachers.

The good news is that the Dip Ed is over so this blog can hopefully take a new dimension. The bad news is I have to learn to teach all over again. Not bad news now that I think about it really, but certainly challenging and exciting and hopefully rewarding for my students.

One of the things I am newly excited about is using technology in my classes. Where I teach, this is a whole new thing. We’ve been making slow advances in using PowerPoint presentations for more efficient content presentation, the library and computer labs have SynchronEyes to monitor students on the web and a few other things but with many teachers unfamiliar with the technology and others feeling that it’s so much easier to simply do it the old way, it’s a slow process. Not to mention the perpetual plague of inadequate funding, room allocation problems, too little space, 19th century classroom design and insufficient computers.

As an English teacher, I am much more excited about the use of blogs, wikis, video sites, bookmark sharing sites, storytelling software etc that educators have been using and developing to help teach our subject area. I love the tactile, interactive element and the fact that it allows students to be creative in the medium of their generation and since I spend most of my time on the Internet anyway (as do my students) I find it to be a whole exciting world for me to explore and try to make it work with my students.

Every time I find something new I get excited then I get a little sad because all these ideas seem to be happening in the so called ‘First World’. Here in the “Third World” our Ministry of Education has banned the use of FaceBook, You Tube and other social networking sites in all schools, while in some schools in the US teachers have students making FB profiles for historical figures as a way to learn about their lives and decisions!  What a wonderful way to discuss and experience historical processes! I feel like we are so behind and that as an educator I have so much still to learn.

So this is just to touch base. I’ll be back soon sharing some of the sites and tools that I have been exploring and I’ll be adding new lesson plans incorporating them soon. Wish me luck!

Those who CAN do, TEACH.

I used to find myself defending my choice to teach to others. The reactions of people would range from the incredulous, “Why would you want to teach?” to the veiled insult of  “At least you get plenty holidays”. Having lived in a family of teachers, I know the score but I now also know the rewards.

I came across this poem today and it sums up what I think so many teachers would like to say to those in other professions who either pity them, look at them with disdain or incredulity. I include it here as a journal entry. You can also view a video here of this poem being performed by the poet.

What Teachers Make, or
Objection Overruled, or
If things don’t work out, you can always go to law school

By Taylor Mali

He says the problem with teachers is, “What’s a kid going to learn
from someone who decided his best option in life was to become a teacher?”
He reminds the other dinner guests that it’s true what they say about
teachers:
Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.

I decide to bite my tongue instead of his
and resist the temptation to remind the other dinner guests
that it’s also true what they say about lawyers.

Because we’re eating, after all, and this is polite company.

“I mean, you¹re a teacher, Taylor,” he says.
“Be honest. What do you make?”

And I wish he hadn’t done that
(asked me to be honest)
because, you see, I have a policy
about honesty and ass-kicking:
if you ask for it, I have to let you have it.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall
in absolute silence. No, you may not work in groups.
No, you may not ask a question.
Why won’t I let you get a drink of water?
Because you’re not thirsty, you’re bored, that’s why.

I make parents tremble in fear when I call home:
I hope I haven’t called at a bad time,
I just wanted to talk to you about something Billy said today.
Billy said, “Leave the kid alone. I still cry sometimes, don’t you?”
And it was the noblest act of courage I have ever seen.

I make parents see their children for who they are
and what they can be.

You want to know what I make?

I make kids wonder,
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write, write, write.
And then I make them read.
I make them spell definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely
beautiful
over and over and over again until they will never misspell
either one of those words again.
I make them show all their work in math.
And hide it on their final drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you got this (brains)
then you follow this (heart) and if someone ever tries to judge you
by what you make, you give them this (the finger).

Let me break it down for you, so you know what I say is true:
I make a goddamn difference! What about you?

Change?

Change is never easy and permanent change is even harder. I wrote this journal entry while my Curriculum study class was finishing up their Wiki updates and I was tired and apprehensive about the process I was undertaking with this intervention.

I worried then and I still worry now about whether we can really sustain all these wonderful ideas we have learned during Dip Ed. I think my thoughts are representative of what many teachers feel while coming to the end of the process. While you are engaged in Dip Ed there is a certain amount of support by your colleagues and administration as we do all sorts of  (what may seem to them) crazy lesson ideas. But they bear with us because they know it is only for a time and then we will get back ‘down to work’ How do we keep up with the rigourous schedule of exam preparation and still engage more than the student’s cognitive abilities?

As I reflect on this journal I still do not have a clear answer. I suppose like all my other colleagues that have gone through this process, all we can do is try; to extend ourselves until it becomes a new habit to break all the other bad habits and to keep the lessons learned always in our minds.

17th March 2009

The girl’s are upgrading their group Wiki’s and discussing their plans for their final performance. After sorting through various technological problems, fielding questions and settling creative differences among group members, I am tired and cautiously thrilled at the same time.

This process is draining but rewarding. Some days I have no idea whether they are enjoying this process or not, whether to them I am just this crazy lady who talks about ‘process’ and ‘reflecting’ and ‘becoming the character’ whom they humour because they seem to like me lol. I look at my checklist and they seem engaged, they seem to be having fun but maybe they are humouring me.

Other days I feel discouraged because I have no idea how much of this method I may be able to employ in my regular practice when Dip Ed is over. It makes me feel like a fraud, like a student putting on a good show ‘for marks’ when I am quite aware of the challenges of getting a syllabus completed, preparing a class for an exam while still making sure that they actually have fun and have a worthwhile experience.

But then again, like any experience, once we engage it wholeheartedly and with good intentions, we can never be the same once it is through. Even if the challenges of the term prevent me from being able to duplicate this process exactly in the future (provided it is successful) hopefully they will not be the same students when the term is over and they’ve taken off their stage makeup and shed their characters.

I know I won’t be the same teacher.

Student Updates her Group Wiki Page

Students Collaborate on Wiki Update

Students after Merchant of Venice Performance

Challenge

This journal is about my first Field Day. It also happens to be the favourite lesson that I taught throughout the Dip Ed Field Days and Teaching Practice days. I felt confident and I knew the class responding to me although I had to work for their involvement at first. That made it all the more rewarding.

I truly enjoyed exposing children to one of the richer elements of our Caribbean culture and expression – oral poetry. This is an area that is simply not given enough attention on the CXC or CAPE syllabi perhaps because of our traditional bias toward the scribal rather than the oral.
It was wonderful to hear students drumming on their desks, finding rhythms in the poems and performing for their peers. I don’t think I will ever forget hearing Spoiler brought to life in a classroom, in a way that even he may have never imagined .

February 1st 2009

I recently had my first teaching practice at Mucurapo West Secondary School. I missed my first teaching practice due to illness so I was the only one in the group who had not yet done one.
Planning this lesson was nerve wrecking. Having only taught in a so called prestige girl’s school where I had come to expect a particular academic level I had no idea what to expect with these learners. Every lesson idea I had pitched to their teacher, another member of my curriculum group had been rejected ‘ They cant do that Ayanna, these are not your children’ she kept saying. Up to the day before the lesson I had no idea what to do.
Finally while doing household errands, a song came into my head that I had heard at an oral poetry session in St. Lucia performed by poet Ras Isely: “write poetry wit riddim, Read poetry wit riddim, Play poetry wit riddim, Dance poetry wit riddim…” I had it! I decided to do a lesson introducing the learners to West Indian Oral Poetry, where they would look at the characteristics of the genre and then perform selected poetry in groups.

Overall the lesson went quite well. The children were shy at first, probably on their best behavior (as most children are when they are told that their class will have a visitor), so when I expected them to be singing and drumming with abandon, they were tentative and uncertain. After a while they warmed to the lesson and some of the groups produced really wonderful presentations at the end.

While I was going through the lesson, it occurred to me that despite their teacher’s estimation of their ability, I found them to be not so different from my own learners in some respect. They wanted a chance to show what they could do, they wanted to make their own meanings from the lesson and they had their own experiences to share that they could bring to bear on the material. It made me wonder whether we as teachers often underestimate the ability of our students. Often I have heard reports of classes in my own school from their former teachers which when I came to teach the class I found to be completely unfounded; almost as thought we had experienced two different groups of children.

After the lesson I realized things I could have done differently- additional vocabulary I could have introduced but did not for fear that it might have been above them, given handouts after the class instead of insisting they write the notes during the lesson for example. Also, having never taught boys before, I assumed that it would be better to mix the few boys in the class with the girls when I was selecting groups. It was only after ward that one of my colleagues advised me that boys could often feel intimidated and overshadowed by the girls who are often stronger but leaving them in a group together allows them to use their own unique strengths. My own assumptions and lack of experience may have hampered additional learning that could have taken place.

While as teachers we talk often about how the student’s environments and experiences affect their learning but maybe we need to look a bit more on how our experiences and environments as teachers also affect our teaching. I wish I had challenged them more and as a result challenged myself more as a teacher to make them stretch if needs be to learn something new.

Is Your School Culture Toxic or Positive?

I think I learned more from doing this assignment then I expected to learn. So often assignments are just that – works assigned that never really penetrated who we are. This journal entry reflects the ideas that I learned from completing my dissertation.

I had never really reflected in what makes a good teaching environment as so often I thought about what makes a good learning environment for students. Teachers, however are learners too, and we also need positive environments to function within and to grow as professionals. This journal entry reflects my ideas on staff room culture.

10th January, 2009
I am so glad it’s over! I handed in my dissertation this week! So it’s three down and two more to go!  Doing that study made me think so much about my school, not just because I was looking at denominational/parochial/prestige schools, but because of the extensive reading I had to do on school culture. I wonder if we ever think of really rationalizing what kind of school we teach at beyond the ‘prestige’, ‘new sector’, ‘secondary’ labels.  Culture in a school is made up of so many intangible and tangible things like school assemblies, awards functions, sports days, how we reward excellence, how we see excellence and the subtle ways students and teachers interact.

One of the articles I read was this short one that sums up some of the ideas about healthy and toxic school cultures. In “Is your School Toxic or Positive?” The author identifies toxic school cultures as ones that:

1. Blame students for lack of progress,
2.discourage collaboration and
3.breed hostility among staff

While positive school cultures:

1. Celebrate successes
2. Emphasize accomplishment and collaboration
3. Foster a commitment to staff and student learning

While reading I began to think about staff room cultures. Are they different from the overall school culture? Can a school be a supportive learning environment overall for students if the staff room is not a supportive, warm working environment for staff? Does it spill over? How well do we really hide our staff room conflicts and ideological differences that may exist or do our students see right through our facades? If staff members don’t support and come out and get involved in students extra curricular activities will they eventually die or can students just sustain them on their own? Can a vibrant extra curricular activity culture survive without the support of its staff? Can we demand academic excellence from students if the staff members do not engage in academic endeavors of their own?

So many questions…

Personally I suspect not. A school is like an organism. If one part of the organism is not healthy the entire body suffers but it may be a slower death in schools with more entrenched traditions like denominational schools which have longer histories and can rely on their perceived prestige to hide internal problems.

It is important to reflect not only on our practice in the classroom but how our practice contributes to the whole school organism and school culture. Without this it is quite easy to move from a positive one to a toxic one.

Mercenary, Missionary, Visionary or Other?

So often these terms are bandied about to justify all sorts of agendas- why teacher’s don’t make more money, why ‘young’ teachers are ‘not dedicated’ to the service and choose to move on after a few years of service and a host of others. Frankly it makes me mad.

My staff room is a minefield of deadly proportions and often issues come up that show the poor attitudes some teachers may have – the main one for me is that some simply do not LISTEN to students or even colleagues. I think it is because we don’t think of ourselves as constantly learning not just teaching.

We must reflect on these attitudes we hold in order to become better teachers and generally, better people. It was only when I interrogated these terms that I was able to come up with a path for myself – ‘the teacher as learner’.

5th January, 2009

I have been thinking about a concept raised in our Professional Identity Module some time ago. Much of the discussions in this module are about ethical issues in the profession, what is the nature of professionalism with regard to dress code and how we envision our selves as professionals or what is the underlying idea that guides our professional practice. Mr. Raymond Hackett, one of the lecturers, indicated that there were different types of teachers: Mercenaries, Missionaries and Visionaries. He asked us to consider which category we fell into. After much reflection I wonder into which category I fall and find the concepts to be oversimplifications.

Missionaries, he said are those teachers who see this work as a ‘calling’, a task set to them by god and saw it as their duty to save the students and place them on the right path. A Mercenary is the teacher who is concerned about compensation and earning money but has very little interest in doing more than the basics of their job. A Visionary is the teacher who sees the potential of students and the profession. This person can be an agent of change.

I have heard this idea often, that teaching is ‘missionary work’ but I totally reject this concept. The historical connotations of missionary activity for Africans and Indian indigenous people is problematic at best and at worst an arrogant and invasive activity under the guise of spreading a religion which resulted in cultural enslavement and self hatred. The term Missionary when applied to teachers assumes that the teacher is the repository of knowledge and the student is the empty jug waiting to be filled. It also assumes that students need to be ‘saved’ that they have nothing to offer the teacher.  For me, this term can contribute to the fraught relationships between student and teacher where the teacher is the chief purveyor of knowledge and discipline.

The Mercenary is another simplification. Whenever teachers engage in industrial activity for better wages or conditions, we are often lambasted and said to be in love with money. People wax nostalgic about the old days when ‘teachers really cared’ and refer to the first category by saying that teaching is missionary work and we should be concerned about our students welfare. This simplification leads to illogical idea that caring about your students and doing your job is incompatible with demanding appropriate compensation for work that every other professional can demand.

The Visionary teacher for me holds fewer complaints although it too assumes that the teacher has the knowledge, integrity and character to lead, to inspire and transform.  If a visionary teacher can be an agent of change; then what change might this be and who decides what is good change- the teacher or the students?

Like all categories I know these are oversimplifications and that teachers often may hold elements of each category. However, as I go through this process, several metaphors for teachers come to mind that sit better in my mind. One is the teacher as a reflective practitioner – one who is always reflecting on her methods and practices and engages in a community of like minds to continually shape identity. This does not position the teacher as static expert but as an evolving learner. Teacher as researcher is another metaphor I also find valuable where teachers must also be academics always staying abreast of their field and finding new ways to do things. Being engaged in constant research also improves practice and can make students more central to their own learning as our methods must not only evolve to suit them but also contribute to a community of practitioners.

As I think on these metaphors as well as the categories spoken about in our PI Module, I think the category that may best suit me is Teacher as Learner. I don’t think I am above my students; I’ve just been reading and living longer so I may have more information in some areas. But information is not character and knowledge is not integrity. I much prefer to be the ‘guide on the side’ rather than the ‘sage on the stage’

First Teaching Practice and Student Support

This journal entry is about my first Teaching Practice day at my school. I learned that I have good raw material but fell into the very trap that Dip Ed cautions us about – lecturing instead of teaching.

When I was a student, at various stages of my academic career, classes were about ‘lectures’ to me – the teacher spoke and we took notes. Although I never thought  I would have been that kind of teacher- there I was…

My Supervisor indicated that I needed to allow the students to work on their own a bit more, to give them a chance to come up with their own answers instead of engaging totally in guided discussion. I hope this is something I have been able to correct in future lessons.

23rd October, 2008

I had my first teaching practice today having missed my first field day teaching session due to illness. I am really happy with how things went. Although my curriculum supervisor made a few corrections, overall I think all went well and I even had a few surprises along the way and new lessons of my own along the way.

When my first teaching practice (the one I missed) was rolling around, I was very apprehensive. I kept trying to think of the best lesson I could create, trying to put everything we had learned in classes in one lesson. Needless to say I was very frustrated. Even after I had planned the class I was not settled and did not feel comfortable with it. Ironically I contracted tonsillitis and missed it altogether along with several days of school.

For today’s lesson I used my Upper 6 Unit 2 Literature class. This time, I elected to simply follow the line along which we had already been proceeding rather than go off the track and plan a whole new class for the benefit of my tutor.  After my near panic of the first lesson I realized that this Dip Ed teaching practice was not an exam for which I should fake and put my best foot forward for the benefit of the tutor while disorienting the class because I went off schedule. I realized that I should see it as an opportunity, much like school-based clinical supervisions for an experienced practitioner to observe my natural methods and allow me to find better ways to approach the classes or reinforce what I may already do well.

My students are studying Shakespeare’s The Tempest and my class was designed to have students find and analyze similarities between the historical English courts masque and the theatrical masque employed my Shakespeare in the closing scenes of the Tempest.

My class that tended to reticence at times seemed to come alive! Students who never spoke were responsive, the ideas flowed and the discourse was lively and insightful. Maybe my students realized they were on show and decided to put their own best feet forward as though it was their evaluation!
After my class, my supervisor left to view another teacher’s class at my school. My students were all abuzz. How did they do? Did they impress her? Did she enjoy my teaching? It seems that they had made an effort to make my class a good one because they knew I was being examined. Somehow we had gone from teacher and students to student and students where they banded together with me against the ‘enemy’ examiner. It was a touching moment but raised questions and thoughts on the ‘us’ and ‘them’ phenomenon that exists in schools between teachers and students.

After class, I received two criticisms: one was that my set induction, which was an article that students were asked to prepare on the elements of the English court masque, was too closely related to my lesson and the other that I should have allowed the students to write on their own and practice their analytical skills instead of guiding them through the whole process collectively on the board. Both were useful and I understand now that I tend toward lecturing interspersed by questions, followed by discussion with my older students while not giving them much in class practice until I assign an essay. This is a habit I will aim to correct.

I learned that my teaching is not an unfixable disaster but that there are a few techniques I needed to brush up on and I experienced a moment of camaraderie with my students where they worked to help me have a god class.

Overall, not a bad day at all…

It is our experiences that make the difference…

This was a special journal entry for me. Not only was it one of the first times I really got to talk with teachers from other schools about their experiences coming into teaching and as beginning teachers, but I was able to make the acquaintance of a teacher whom my mother taught at her school many years ago. He is the teacher in the journal entry who brought his own adolescent experiences and background that many would have seen as negative and turned it into something positive – a connection with his students of similar backgrounds.

It was wonderful to hear him speak of the influence my mother had on him when he was a student but it also really brought home the fact that we cannot really hide from our students and no mater how hard we may like to hide behind the barrier of authority, we are often quite transparent to them and as a result must interrogate our own experiences and attitudes in order to really connect with students.

July 31st 2008

Alafia,

I had an interesting experience today in my Foundations tutorial that really revealed what at first appeared in some ways to be a clash between educational theory and lived reality as teachers.

The tutorial began with each teacher sharing his or her experience of ‘ending up’ in teaching. I use the words ‘ending up’ deliberately as most of us had no deliberate intention of actually becoming teachers. Each person had one interesting story or other of how the universe seemed to conspire to bring them into the profession. The session continued with us sharing stories of our experiences as beginning teachers. While various teachers shared, two in particular stood out to me for very different reasons.

One female teacher who teaches at Arima Senior Comprehensive School shared her experience of feeling despondent about going to school every day; of feeling scared and worried about being attacked by her students, of feeling totally unmotivated by their lack of interest in learning and feeling unsupported by the school’s administration. She was quite candid and even shared an incident where male students cornered her in her classroom. I could hear the fear in her voice as she spoke and I could tell that she really feared and felt disgusted by her students and had no idea how to reach or build a relationship with them. She found it difficult to like or relate to students whose environments and attitudes she felt were so different from her own.

It was one of those moments where theory and reality just totally clashed. Regardless of all the psychology and philosophy that we were learning in our first week of foundations, what theory could prepare a new teacher for that? What theory exists to make a teacher love and sympathize with and even attempt to discipline students whom she really feared?

While reflecting on this another teacher who was male shared a totally opposite experience of working in a similar school. While his students were also challenging, in some cases violent and came from low income, low academic achievement backgrounds, his own background allowed him to connect with them in ways that the other teacher’s background did not. He shared that he attended South East Port of Spain Secondary School in a time where the school resembled in many ways the school at which he now taught. As he said, “I grew up in the ghetto, went to school in the ghetto and am now teaching children who are just like me”. So while for him it is a challenge it is one he welcomed and one that he was more prepared to meet. As a result he was able to reach and build relationships with his students. He even suggested that often students can tell when we as teachers fear them, are disdainful of them and have little expectations of them and they then respond in the only way they know how to – with violence, disdain and truculence.

This led me to reflect on the main difference between these two circumstances. There were similar school environments, on the surface similar students, but teachers with totally different lived experiences that they then brought to the classroom. It was the lived experience that made the difference. We cannot divorce who we are from the person that stands in front of a classroom to deliver a lecture- the children see right through us to who we are at our very cores. As a result they saw the first teacher’s fear of them and acted in rebellion and they saw the second teacher’s lack of fear, understanding and respect and responded accordingly.

I guess as much as our experiences are as diverse as our students’, we are the ones who are in the position of power in the classroom and often it is our prejudices or our understanding that can make the difference. Funny enough, as I think on what at first appeared to be a clash between theory and reality, I come back to the discussions we had in the sociology module of our Foundations course- that teacher development is also about self-understanding.   So much of the public discourse about education is about what is wrong with the students and not enough about what is ‘wrong’ with teacher attitudes.

It begins with us.

Ashe!