In what ways do the people you work with or work for act to embrace these stories, either publicly or privately?
I consider myself to be in a rather interesting position as an occasional teacher at the secondary school I frequent the most. For context, I did a placement there in my undergrad and once I graduated, accepted a long-term music teaching position. This school year, I have gone back to occasional teaching (by choice), to give myself more flexibility in hours. I often run into my old students in the classes I am covering for and get an “insider's perspective” on all of the teachings and learnings that my colleagues prepare. I know which classes the students enjoy the most, and which ones are their least favourites. If a teacher has excellent classroom management skills, this is usually reflected in the students. However, if the teacher has a history of being away, the students require more reminders to stay on task, and sometimes never get to the learning at all.
One thing that I am noticing across all classes, is how tired the students are. The teachers at my school struggle to find ways to encourage and engage them. There are students that have not handed in their assignments all semester, with the intention of doing them at the end during the credit recovery period. I attended a school board that never had a board-wide credit recovery period, so this was a very big adjustment when I became employed with my current board.
The section on “These kids don’t want to learn” truly resonated with me. (Radd et al., 2021), describe how educators become frustrated with a lack of academic progress, and how this is usually used to describe “groups of students who are Black, Latino/a/x, or Indigenous, students coming from low-income families, students with disabilities, some groups of immigrant students, and students who are learning English. Seldom (if ever) do we hear this story targeted at middle or upper middle-class White students, even when these students struggle.”
It’s not like there were no students from my school growing up that were unmotivated. I just failed to notice it as much because I grew up in a middle and upper-middle class community. It was not the norm, so to speak, for students across the board to be feeling a collective sense of discouragement and facing slower academic progress due to situations out of their control.
A goal that I am working towards as I float around these classrooms, is to consider the ways in which I can create equitable, safe spaces for my students when I eventually go back to long-term teaching. I take note of the strategies that seem to be working for the permanent teacher. I try to consider the less effective strategies, and what I can do to fix them.
Another one of my goals has been learning to speak less, and listen more. Murphy (2020), describes how often we may unintentionally shift responses in conversations by trying to personally relate to somebody else's situation. We think we are helping the other person by relating, but Murphy (2020) suggests this is a form of passive listening, since we are making the situation about ourselves.
When students share their stories with me, I am learning to be more of an active listener without centering the conversation around myself. Not every student will want to share things about themselves. This is why it is important to look out for the non-verbal cues as well, which we cannot do if we are not listening.
References
Murphy, K. (2020). You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters. Celadon Books.
Radd, S., Generett, G. G., Gooden, M. A., & Theoharis, G. (2021). Five practices for equity-focused school leadership. ASCD.
Kingston, November 2020
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