This is a longer piece, but great fun to read, by special education teacher Ilyse Brainin. It shows how much a new teacher -- even a really outstanding one -- needs to learn, and can only learn by doing it. Those who can, teach . . . as we say.
________________________________
Just like the Velveteen Rabbit who became a "real" rabbit through the life lessons and love of a small boy, the story of how I became a "real teacher" begins with one small boy, many life lessons and my first "gang" of students.
I was hired to teach in the Chicago Public Schools in February, 1991. If you are reading this and are not a teacher, you are not hearing alarms in your head brought on by the notion of being hired six months into the school year. As it happened, I was only one year out of college, so I too did not hear the alarm.
Most teachers might ask at the interview where a classroom of students comes from six months into the school year. I didn't. I had just spent 15 months after graduation as a substitute teacher, and I was ready to ignore the hour(s) commute from Schaumburg to the West Side of Chicago. I was elated by the prospect of my new job, salary and benefits. So I neglected to ask, and the obvious truth was, I didn't care. Later I discovered that it was due to new Federal funding. My principal simply asked the other three first grade teachers to give up five children from each of their classrooms. For those of you who are "real teachers," you understand which students I was given. But again, I was not yet a real teacher, so none of this was obvious to me. Then I met Terrance and "the gang."
I arrived at school on my first day, signed in, signed my contract, dragged my nominal things to the second floor and walked into room 207. To this day I run across classroom essentials proudly marked in permanent ink with my name and Rm. 207. The room was voluminous compared to the suburban schools I was used to, which were built 90 years later. Hardwood floors gleamed up at me with the harkening of the past permanently stamped into the wood. The one-piece black iron desk and chair I had seen at antique shops were obvious once nailed to the floor of this room. Desks? Where were the desks? I wondered. I looked around this beautiful room with built-in (empty) book shelves, closets and wooden drawers encased in dark brown molding. The brass knob to the coat closet was embossed with a seal and the words, Chicago Public Schools. Alas, my desk and those for the children would not arrive for several weeks.
I was told to pick up the students from each classroom after they had lunch. I walked down the stairs and past the office where the first-grade rooms were located. Each room was set up the same, teacher desk in front, opposite the door and student desks in rows all facing the chalk board in the front. This was not the model suggested in college, nor the model used in most classrooms I subbed in, especially in first grade. Isn't that why the desks were no longer nailed in place? As I appeared at the door of the first classroom, a small boy sitting right by the door shot up and with wide eyes and a huge toothy grin called out, "She's here! By y'all!" As he stood next to me he took my hand, looked up at me and then stared back at the class and waited. In that moment, the sun streaming through the windows, the smell of chalk dust and lunch in the air, a small boy with cold dry hands took my hand and changed me forever. " Come on! It's time!" he called out to the class as he stood firmly planted next to me. The others waited for their teacher to come over and call them one by one. Terrance, still holding my hand, introduced himself. The others waited and were introduced by their teacher. I left the room with my first five students following behind me. We appeared two more times, collecting five students from each room. Each teacher had a roster for me, but Terrance knew each child in our newly formed class. He was a mocking bird right from the start. If I said "shhh," Terrance said, "She said shhh, y'all!" And he did this with each directive I gave.
In hindsight, to the real teachers I must have looked like a new mother duck leading her ducklings to water for the first time, a new swimmer herself! Completely oblivious to the thoughts of others beyond my students, I walked them up the stairs and into our new room. It was barren in comparison to the rooms we just came from, but no one seemed to notice.
Until the desks arrived I taped cut out shapes of small feet to the floor that led to a masking taped circle. I learned their names, their faces and about their lives. I took many pictures of them and used the pictures to motivate them to write. We sat on the tape circle each day until our desks arrived, but even then we continued circle time each day. Books were not ordered, curriculum was not in place, but our chalk boards were floor to ceiling and my local Schaumburg librarian allowed me to take out 30 books at a time. I learned quickly that Terrance, Donte' and Nichole were important to the group, and if they were successful and excited, so was everyone else.
What did my students know? I immediately realized they did not know how to read connected text, they knew less than five sight words and writing was challenging, yet more digestible. What was worse, I often did not understand what they were saying. Terrance was a huge help in translation. I never did figure out why his diction involved less slang, but he knew when I was confused, and he always tried to help. I learned a whole new language that year.
Everything I learned at National Louis University, just a few miles away in Evanston, was coming into play. Reading groups were the way to go. I needed to meet with each student and figure out what he or she knew. Unlike most classrooms, I didn't seem to have three distinct levels -- they were all in the same boat. I had the students use the chalk boards that began just below their waist and stretched will above everyone's head, including mine. One thing CPS had was chalk. It cam in an interesting cigar-like cardboard box nestled in little brown bits that kept the chalk dry. It was wonderful, like sidewalk chalk with a mothball-like smell that I will never forget. I gave each student one piece and a sock. The sock served as a home for the chalk and an eraser. The board was wide enough to accommodate all fifteen students at one time.
We began with the alphabet, and with only fifteen students I could easily note what each one could and could not do. I quickly learned that routine and game-like words to direct their hands, arms and chalk made daily lessons easier. I wondered how the one-room schoolhouse teachers did it with only a slate. After learning the alphabet I began teaching rhymes. I began with "at," and then the students went through the alphabet to see which letters made a word. Bat, cat, dat? No, but that's a lesson for another story. I read Dr. Seuss to them, and they began to understand how wordplay worked. April came and still no curriculum. I began dictating sentences from the Dr. Seuss books, and that's when Terrance discovered that no only could he read and write, but he enjoyed it too.
My class was becoming a team. The truth is, they all knew they were the "low" students, the troubled souls, the kids who kept the others from learning. They knew they were taken from their classrooms and handed over to this newbie for a reason. But what I think they didn't know was: I thought they could learn. And learn they did. Donte', Nichole, Terrance and the rest. They learned to read in the spring of their first grade year. They read, were read to and wrote more in four months than they had ever in their lives. They were literate and they enjoyed it. They read and reread and requested books in writing. By the time the reading program arrived, we were ready. My principal and the other teachers were amazed and skeptical at first about my class of readers. It wasn't until Terrance showed another student how to "chunk" a word, during a walking reading group in another room, that he finally received the recognition he deserved. He returned wearing a sticker that proclaimed he was a good helper. He was so proud of himself that he ran back to class to show me the sticker and explained ho he had helped another child in his group learn to read!
I went on to keep my "gang" of students for two more years, until they finished third grade. They scored alongside their peers on their first standardized test. The same year as my principal's retirement. He put in a transfer for me without asking. He told me I would be leaving at the end of the year, saying my safety would be an issue once he was gone.
I didn't think I would ever see my group again.
Then one day eight years later I was at the Maxwell Street Flea Market in Chicago, and a deep baritone voice called out my name. I was alone and couldn't imagine who would have recognized me. I turned and a teenage boy, much taller than me, siad my name again and stepped toward me. I looked up and there, looming over me with a big smile and a well-trimmed haircut was Terrance. He had grown into a tall, handsome manly teen with the beginnings of some facial hair. But I saw his first-grade smile immediately. His bright, hopeful eyes peered back at me in disbelief as I asked, "Terrance?"
We talked for a long time. He wanted me to know what the "gang" was up to. A few didn't make it into their teenage years, but Nichole, who witnessed her father being shot in her living room when she was in second grade, was planning to attend the new UIC campus. Donte' was attending high school too, but things were not as good for him. As for Terrance, he was hoping to leave for college after high school. No one in his family had done that. Little smiley Terrance, the chalk in his hand and smeared across one cheek, eager to learn, write and read. The "spinner" on one heel, was so proud to tell me he would be the first to go to college, hoping to attend Southern Illinois University.
Then he thanked me.
He told me a bit about their struggles with the new principal after I left and their junior high years. I listened in awe, distracted by the memories of my first few years as a teacher, our time together and the impact we had on each other. It was 1998 and we didn't exchange email. it would have been inappropriate for me to give him my phone number, and I did not yet own a cell phone. After a brief hug and some tears (mine) he just turned and walked away.
At my interview, my principal told me Gladstone School was named for a railroad tycoon who funded the building of the school. Gladstone was also among the schools closed this year in CPS. Terrance, I hope you finished college (in my mind you are a teacher now too). I want to thank you and tell you and the "gang" how our chance encounter at the Maxwell Street Flea Market led to the realization that because of you I became a "real" teacher.
