Letter From A Friend

I thought this email from a friend in the middle of a qualification for secondary school teaching was just so insightful that I'd post it.

Dear Literata,
I checked out the blog. A 'reflective journal' is an educational tool (me too with the jargon!) Actually I liked being a student until it came to voicing criticism. My faculty pays lips service to being student-centred, Vygotsky-influenced and so on, but plays hardball with things. My disappointment has been that however nice and encouraging individuals are, the system itself is still punitive, competitive and based on fear: do it this way or you fail. If your citations aren't in order, you fail. Talk back, question authority, dare to be different etc. Truly!
Despite education being an extremely creative field and really being stretched by new technologies and new research into the psychology of motivation and engagament, universities are too often rushed, rigid and unimaginative. I am fascinated by education but sometimes struggle with my own learning: it is so personal and so mixed up with fragile self-regard! It is impossible to be all the things they want you to be: a researcher, a facilitator, a sociologist, a one-man band, a 'good' teacher, a disciplinarian, a leader amongst men etc.
Been teaching at high school and I don't think you would have any trouble with classroom management. The kids are fine (and what parent really minds a bit of chaos?) I try to be relentlessly positive (my core belief is that people can't learn when they are unhappy), so I praise them for every baby step and tell them 'yes you can' like Mr President. Bit by bit I feel they will take another step and another, if you believe in them they will try to become the person you see in them. Sometimes I feel like I am feeding ducks in a pond, casting tasty morsels before them, getting their trust, trying to get the ones hanging at the back to take a scrap. Or like painting a wall, adding a touch here and there, then coming back fro a second coat, then a third. So much of what they are 'supposed to know' is crap — really tedious. As if art or life follows a template: sometimes it feels like teachers take the amazing world and reduce it to a flow-chart or a set of boxes to be ticked.
I think what I like about teaching is what appeals to my heart, not my head. I like the social and emotional challenges, and getting to know these little (and not so little) people. We were discussing heroes in Year 8 and a girl from Nicaragua gave a totally unexpected speech about her hero: "My hero has known me before I was born, will always love me, is the person I want to be." Quite amazing (God, of course). Then a boy at the front asked me "Who was she talking about?". Who do you think, I asked back. "Tony Blair?" he said innocently, so perfectly uncomprehending.
My Year 9, fourteen-years old and on the verge of adolescent disaffection, were sleepy on Monday morning. So I searched in my pockets for some Magic Fairy Dust to help them — 'Found it, Year Nine!' — and proceeded to sprinkle it over them, much to their surprise. The look on their faces still makes me laugh.
My Year 10 class are a defeated bunch, they are not the brightest, but I taught them Animal Farm and kept at it, trying to relate it to their lives. But the task they had to do at the end was so abstract: a formal 'English' essay. Why can't they talk about it, draw it, why do these kids have to conquer an academic essay? Sometimes the education system really does seem stupid. We just want them to think and feel and appreciate and grow, don't we? And archaic forms of assessment just convince them that they are failures, which is exctly the opposite of what we are there for, or at least I think we are there for.
So anyway I am excited but wary, and I hope that with your high expectations of yourself and the course, and your conscientious approach, you don't get overwhelmed. You could do the job now, without all the claptrap, so don't let the need to put in a perfect essay distract you from being confident that you are you, and you are already a great person with or without a distinction stamped on your forehead.
Love S. And I hope to keep this conversation going.