I knew from the beginning that I was born to teach. My parents were teachers at Wilberforce University. I was one of five children: four sisters and a brother. One by one, each of us girls obtained teaching positions. As the third one, I seemingly waited forever for my turn and was a little “heady” when I obtained my teaching position. My father adjusted my attitude when he looked me in the eyes and said, “Remember, young lady, if the students haven’t learned, teacher hasn’t taught.”
My contract was with a large urban school system that only then becoming integrated. In response to a federal mandate to integrate “with all due haste”, the system had rearranged my school’s borders to include a low-income minority housing project. The school had created a school within a school by forming “ability” groups: A, B, C, then Z for the project children. I was given fourth grade Z’s, considered the least able ability group. To make matters worse, fourth graders had to study geography. I was trained as a secondary teacher. Geography was the most dreaded class requirement in the elementary program. I was crestfallen. I felt cheated and defeated. I was not cheered when my father said, “You just have to do your best, but remember that if the students haven’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.”
During the second week of school, the Central Office “social studies lady” observed my class. I was doing my best, but she saw a “need a to improve.” She gave me a highlighted copy of the geography course of study and an appointment for the following week. During our meeting, she helped me to better understand the course of study and suggested some of the best methods for me to use for implementing each element of the program. I spent the weekend studying the materials and my notes from our meeting. As based on her instructions, I developed lesson plans for the year and as I was told. In May, the principal expressed wonder that my “low” group had not only achieved the best score in our school but was among the top ten geography classes in the school system.
This experience helped me appreciate the value of competent, courageous, concerned school district leadership.
Actually, my college education training was for secondary English and biology teaching. After five years of teaching at the elementary school level, I was happy to have an assignment of junior high English teacher. There was still ability grouping, but this time I was given four average sections and the honors English class. I studied the course outline and planned the years’ work. My plans included each element of the course content.
The school district had a policy of sending progress reports at the end of the fourth marking period, so as to avoid surprising parents with end of the year failures. Shortly after the reports went to parents, the principal called me to a meeting with him and an unhappy parent of an honors student. The complaint concerned a C average I had reported for “her Jennifer” an eighth-grade honors student. She complained again and again that her Jennifer was the kind of student with attribute after attribute and that my assessment of Jennifer was “colored” by my failing as a teacher. The nearly hysterical parent turned to me “what kind of teacher are you…?” When she paused, I opened my brown leather notebook section after section as I replied, “I am the kind of teacher who has planned …” as I named each of the required elements. The principal closed the meeting by saying, “So now you have your answers.”
This experience helped me appreciate the value of careful planning for pacing each element of course content before beginning of the school year.
Teaching advanced composition at a university was another significant learning experience for me. In their junior year, all students took advanced composition as preparation for the writing proficiency examination, a graduation requirement. Students who failed the examination had to continue to take a version of advanced composition until they passed or never graduate.
All writing teachers helped to proctor the exam. During my first experience of proctoring, I could actually see the panic in the students’ hearts and the scrambling in their brains. I watched them repeatedly write half a page, ball the paper up, discard it and start all over again. When two of the three hours of allotted time had passed, they wrote again and continued to write “no matter what.” The result was a less than thirty per cent pass rate. My students represented their share of the failures. I was ashamed to be “a teacher who hadn’t taught” advanced composition.
Panic filled my heart, my brain scrambled, I had one week before the start of the next semester. I had to be prepared to teach no matter what. I could not remember being taught college composition, but I did remember typing papers for my mother one summer when she took a post graduate course called “The Rhetoric of Aristotle.” Mother’s paper included a diagram of a building with a firm foundation, three pillars and a well-supported roof. The diagram illustrated an idea developed by invention, arrangement, and style ready to be presented to an audience. This reflection brought insight. I planned my course of study: From Topic to Composition. One day as I walked across the campus, I heard a student through her window as she called her roommate, “Come, see, there goes that little lady who teaches writing so well.”
This experience taught me to appreciate the value of watching students in order to learn to teach them.
My first experience as a school administrator was as one of three language arts district chairpersons of a large urban school system. Each district was composed of the students of a neighborhood middle school and high school. Each neighborhood represented the socio-economic status of its residents. Predictably, my district was the least financially able and the student academic standing was the lowest. During my first half-day staff development meeting I asked the teachers to help prove that meager income and racial minority need not control academic achievement because through the magic of systematic, cumulative, district-wide methodology coming in last can become coming in first.
Further, I provided the teachers templates of units containing all the elements of the content and skills of their courses at each grade level. Methodology was included. Because our school year was divided into four marking periods of forty-five days, I provided seven six-day units for each marking period. After I explained the templates, we discussed the processes, material and goals for the units. The teachers’ initial response was silence. When the silence became unbearable, one teacher opened respectful questioning others joined in. The issues were student ability differences and reluctance to giving up things they had always enjoyed doing with their classes. As compromise, we agreed to use the first three units as provided and revisit student ability concerns and substitute a teacher’s choice unit for the unit given. During that time the teachers would collaborate and keep “thumbs up, thumbs down” to prepare for our future meetings.
Throughout the school year, the teachers followed what they called the “Robinson Recipe” of the six given units and one either as given or of their choice. After our third year of the use of the template, our district academic performance was as good and in area of composition better than that of the “rich kids.”
This experience taught me to appreciate the value of teacher leadership that offers constructive guidance and respectful compromise.
