Why I Should Be Ahnald (and other advice)

In my mind, I'm the female, Indiana Jones of English teachers.  We have pretty much everything in common.  I hate snakes; he hates snakes.  I've been in planes, and he's been in planes.  I love teaching and seem really boring most of the time, and he loves teaching and is Harrison Ford in real life.  We both fight Nazis, whatever, my point is that we are two peas in a pod.

But the truth is, I am not this:

How dare you not meet a deadline!



Because that guy is awesome.  He does what needs to be done, and I'm pretty sure he's killed someone.  I don't remember.  At the very least, he let that one guy drink out of the wrong cup, knowing full well that he was choosing... poorly.

Incidentally, that's how I teach the term "understatement."

I'm not that guy, though.  I feel like that guy.  I feel like I crack the whip on my kids all the time.  They seem to have realized in the last two weeks that they are, in fact, fourteen year olds.  They have also discovered that ninth graders LOOOOOVE to talk.  Especially when I'm talking.  That's their favorite.  And that makes me feel like they're ripping out my heart.

That's okay.  I didn't have anything important to say. This is just my career or whatever. 

It's not personal.  And it's very typical.  But here's where the NTO students vary from the average fourteen year olds: They're helping me learn how to teach.

Classroom management for college students, who I learned to teach on, is very VERY different than classroom management for ninth graders.  Sometimes you have to crack the whip, and most of the time they need you to.  In fact, my most disruptive kids will tell me willingly that they need someone to help them focus.  But I'm not capable of really cracking the whip.  That's not who I am as a teacher.  I can't be mean.  I can be disappointed and disapproving, and that works for a while, but it's a reactionary type of classroom management, not a proactive classroom management.

And I really wasn't sure what to do until yesterday, when I had this conversation with a group of students in my first class:

ME: (almost yelling) I need your attention up here, please!

BRITNEY: Miss, why are you always so nice?

ME: I don't understand.  You think this is nice?

BRITNEY: You're too nice. 

ME: I feel like I yell at this class all the time.  That's all I've done today.  When do you guys want to start learning things, by the way?

BRITNEY: You need to be mean sometimes.  You need to be so mean that they never want to do it again.



Britney wasn't saying that she wanted me to change.  Obviously, there are direct benefits to her if I continue to be nice.  She just wants me to find a balance, because my current inability to do so disrupts her learning experience.  She acknowledges that I have covered my bases with reinforcing classroom expectations.  She understands that I'm doing everything that I can do to prevent classroom madness.  She's saying that it's time to be this guy:

She wants me to be Kindergarten Cop.  Because he was terrifying, because: Predator.  But he was also this guy:

Incidentally, this is how I teach Shakespeare.

Now, here's the NTO connection. 

When I became a teacher, I assumed that my students don't really care about me.  Their feelings about me would be limited to how they felt about the class.  When I became a teacher, I told myself not to ever take anything personally.  But that's not what I learned here.  What I learned is that my students do care about their facilitators. 

This environment grows such empathy that it's almost unreal.  Every the learners who talk in class aren't doing so maliciously; it's not because they hate the class or that they're bored or that they're trying to be disrespectful.  Last night, at Open House, I got the chance to talk to a few of my more disruptive students alone.  One, Justin, is in a group that is always, always talking.  He confided in me that "We just get so excited when you're talking about the project.  We can't help ourselves.  We want to talk about our ideas." 



So, you're saying that even my most disruptive students are excited about the course, excited about the content, that they are capable of admitting when they do something wrong and apologizing for any distress it causes the facilitator?  So you mean that they have true empathy not just for themselves or their peers (which is something some adults never really grasp) but even for their facilitators?

That's the New Tech difference.  It's hard to be upset with a student who likes your course, who is so excited that they have to discuss it, and who doesn't have a problem learning how their impulses as fourteen year olds affect their environment.  That's something that can only happen at a school where trust, respect, and responsibility become a true way of life. 

And it's also probably why I have a really hard time doing very much of this:

Also because I'm not crazy and my students aren't thirty year old bald guys.

Tales of a New Teacher

All student and teacher identities have been disguised to protect anonymity.  

If you haven't seen the viral video "Gangnam Style," then you are missing out.  Not only will you feel awkward at parties when all of your friends know how to ride an invisible horse to a techno beat, but you are also clearly never on the internet and, as such, either have lots of real-time friends or no friends at all.  In the latter case, don't worry about it.

The great thing about "Gangnam Style," if you can quantify such a delicious atrocity as anything like Great, is that it has all of the essential elements of a viral video.  It is the meta-viral video.  It a) takes itself just seriously enough, b) involves something that everyone can agree is pretty much wonderful (invisible horse dancing), and c) every single, last person in the video is absolutely committed to what is going on.  You know music video love is real when you can mime lassoing a calf in synchronicity.

My first few weeks of teaching have also been a lot like "Gangnam Style," in that they, like a viral video, seem to have happened overnight.  When I started work at New Tech Odessa, my principal warned me that every day I would "wake up running," meaning that every day is a very productive race.  At the Olympics.  But, as a first year teacher, I'm not so much concerned anymore about the level of work that NTO demands as I am of the fact that, for the first time in six years, I am working somewhere from 7:00 in the morning to 6:00 at night; that's if you don't count the hours of prep work I do at home.  It's not unusual for a teacher, but it's unusual for a former career student.  In fact, everything about teaching in a public high school is unusual.

At the end of last week, I started getting a little down.  There's no downtime on this job; there's not even time to sit back at your desk and grade (it feels like there's barely enough time to take attendance). I felt like I was panicking-- like I had become so overwhelmed by my day-to-day routine that I just didn't know what to do at any given moment.

But then I had a talk with one of my co-workers, one of the most compassionate people I've ever worked with.  She told me that I was stronger than I knew and that I would be stronger on the other side of this year.  She also said, "If you need anything from me, anything at all... let me know.  I'm here for you."

And everything changed.

The next day, my students were really working.... REALLY WORKING.  They were being responsible, they were being ultra-respectful, my rowdiest students were working furiously in the common area, they were asking for more learning, they were learning what I hoped they would, and it all came together.  These last two days, I got a glimpse of what my time at NTO is going to be like.  I got a glimpse of what NTO IS.  And it's good.

The New Tech way of teaching and learning needs to go viral.  New Tech Odessa needs to go viral.  Because we are allowed to have fun; because the students are allowed to take themselves just seriously enough to do great things.  Because we are doing something that actively and interactively creates real learning in both the students and facilitators; this kind of education should be happening in every school, everywhere.  Because we, every last one of us, is absolutely devoted and committed to creating a New Tech family for our learners and facilitators.

When that co-worker passed on that kindness to me, it was like she was pressing the "Share" button on her favorite video.  It was as if she was giving me insight into what she wants education to look like-- that compassion should be shared by every New Tech Network facilitator and learner until the rest of the world has no choice but to stand up and take notice.  If we can create kindness and empathy in every level of education, the global community in which we live and interact will be that much better by extension.  I've already witnessed that first-hand.

Although if we really want to go viral, I think we'll need Rebecca Black in on this.