Questions I Carry

These trenches.

The trenches is a familiar term in education mostly used among educators. It reflects the battle teachers face each day in the classroom — a battle to win at breaking down the barriers that disrupt paths to educating students. Barriers include figuring out how to get students’ to engage in new concepts, to see learning as a creative endeavor, rather than a path to exposing their failures. Other times it is the war against a system too big, too political to remember that student learning is what the whole school proposition is all about.

The trenches alludes to the classroom as a war zone. This is not to say students are the teacher’s enemy. Far from it. It is the teacher’s continuous task to educate through trauma, through absenteeism, through overcrowded classrooms, through the diverse needs of students, that is the antagonist. And if teaching is a battle for the educator, learning is for the student its own battle that students are forced to walk into without prior knowledge of why they’ve been put in a battle in the first place. For example, English teachers want students to think critically beyond the surface of a thing, to challenge their beliefs, and then offer textual support from sources they’ve never seen before, and then while we are at it, we ask them to write about the belief in perfectly organized, grammatically correct phrasing. No wonder, often it is the teacher who is the only one interested in positive outcomes.

It is not surprising that the challenge of teaching has not taken on other metaphors like, “I’m headed to the beautiful, winding creek,” or “I’m taking a walk in the meadow of daffodils.” The truth is, teaching is a battle with many conflicts, and if you are going to be a part of this battle, you have to be equipped with the right gear.

Since I’ve been working in the alternative high school setting, one of the newest battles and most frustrating is, students' unwillingness to talk. Yes, they talk when I’m not asking them to, they may make unsolicited guttural noises, they may even grant me a giggle at my funny in my own mind jokes. They will talk to me individually, but to get them to talk to one another in group collaboration, for instance, or when I ask a question whole class — they are more reticent than any time since 2004 when I started teaching. Of course, as a soldier trekking across the terrain of education, I am tempted to blame myself for not knowing the terrain well enough, for not having my gear in tow, for missing the obvious signs for this lack of participation, and maybe it is my fault. But, taking the blame for everything that doesn’t work in a classroom seems to be an unhealthy endeavor. I mean, we’ve got parents, administration, politicians and public opinion to do that for us. So, instead, I’d like to think of the following lists I’ve named after Tim O’Brien’s famous book, as the “Questions I’ll Carry” into this battle to get students to talk in group collaboration and during whole-class discussions:

1. Are the assignment expectations clear before students get into groups?
2. Is there enough trust built between me and my students for them to feel comfortable in a discussion where they become vulnerable?
3. Do they have enough background knowledge on a given topic?
4. Have they been given instruction on how to appropriately ask questions and had opportunities to practice in low-risk situations?
5. Do they understand the value of both close-ended and open-ended questioning?
6. Have I given them other tools for questioning, such as modeling what a discussion looks like, and/or sentence starters that help create civil discourse?
7. Do they hate each other, like, are they part of rival gangs?
8. Is the classroom seating arrangement conducive for discussion?
9. Have I made it okay to ask “why?”
10. Am I aware of the community climate after a weekend, after or during the holidays, or on a particular school day?
11. “When I was in school,” “when I taught 10 years ago,” “when I grew up,” are not phrases that necessarily help in translating what is happening to students in today’s world and the trauma they face.
12. Have I remembered their age and also considered their reliance on their social media as metrics for their self-worth and how both may influence their desire to not stand-out?
13. Am I still learning about the students I teach? Am I reading about what they face, their fears, their trauma?
14. Have I considered group collaboration may not be for every class, on one particular day, one particular quarter, or four quarters? If this is the case, am I okay with considering other ways to create dialog?
15. Am I beating myself up over a failed attempt at group collaboration, or am I okay with small successes? Am I feeling okay with “failures” that have at least planted the seeds to questioning, collaboration and effective ways to communicate?