Teacherscribe’s
Teaching Tip #57
When did you “become” a
teacher?
Here is Frank McCourt’s breakthrough moment when he really
became a teacher. This is taken from his
excellent book ’Tis.
From 'Tis:
A Memoir -
I
followed the teacher’s guides. I launched the prefabricated
questions at my classes. I hit them with surprise quizzes and tests and
destroyed them with the ponderous detailed examinations concocted by college
professors who assemble high school text books.
Everyday
I’d
teach with my guts in a knot, lurking behind my desk at the front of the room
playing the teacher game with the chalk, the eraser, the red pen, the teacher
guides, the power of the quiz, the test, the exam. I’ll call your father, I’ll call your mother. ,I’ll report you to the
governor, I’ll damage your average so badly kid you’ll be lucky to get into
a community college in Mississippi. Weapons of menace and control.
A
senior, Jonathan, bangs his forehead on his desk and wales, Why? Why? Why do we
have to suffer with this shit? We’ve been in school since kindergarten,
thirteen years, and why do we have to know what color shoes Mrs. Dalloway was
wearing at her goddam party and what are we supposed to make of Shakespeare
troubling deaf heaven with his bootless cries and what the hell is a bootless
cry anyway and when did heaven turn deaf?
Around
the room rumbles of rebellion and I’m paralyzed. They’re saying Yeah, yeah to
Jonathan, who halts his head banging to ask, Mr. McCourt, did you have this
stuff in high school? and there’s another chorus of yeah yeah and I don’t know what to say.
Should I tell them the truth, that I never set foot in a high school till I
began teaching in one or should I feed them a lie about a rigorous secondary
school education with the Christian Brothers in Limerick?
I’m saved, or doomed, by
another student who calls out, Mr. McCourt, my cousin went to McKee on Staten
Island and she said you told them you never went to high school and they said
you were an okay teacher anyway because you told stories and talked and never
bothered them with these tests.
Smiles
around the room. Teacher unmasked. Teacher never even went to high school and
look what he’s doing to us, driving us crazy with tests
and quizzes. I’m branded forever with the label, teacher who
never went to high school.
So,
Mr. McCourt, I thought you had to get a license to teach in the city.
You do.
Don’t you have to get a
college degree?
You do.
Don’t you have to graduate
high school?
You
mean graduate from high school, from high school, from from from.
Yeah,
yeah. Okay. Don’t you have to graduate from high school to
get into college?
I
suppose you do.
Tyro
lawyer grills teacher, carries the day, and word spreads to my other classes.
Wow, Mr. McCourt, you never went to high school and you’re teaching at
Stuyvesant? Cool, man.
And
into the trash basket I drop my teaching guides, my quizzes, tests,
examinations, my teacher-knows-all mask.
I’m naked and starting
over and I hardly know where to begin.
There is so much I love about this passage. First, I love how McCourt finally listens to
his students. Better than that, he
learns from them and adjust his methods.
Talk about getting buy in from the students!
Second, he begins to let his freak flag fly (see teaching tip #7)
about teaching high school though he never went to one! Notice how the students relate to him when he
lowers his guard and is honest with them.
Third, he realizes something very important: we teach students
first THEN the curriculum.
Finally, he begins to confront the all important question - why
do we have to learn this? Once a teacher
can begin to honestly answer that (and McCourt doesn’t here, but this
sets him on the course to answer it), the closer they are to winning over their
students.
Tomorrow, I’ll begin a long installment of the
moment I became a teacher.
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