*******************************************************************************
Meredith Loveland Brown
Philosophy of Teaching
I have been teaching for over fifteen years. I have taught
at the middle school, high school, and collegiate level; I have tutored for a
corporation, for the school that employs me, and privately; I have taught
English, history, speech, study skills, creative writing, and Algebra II; I
have taught the strongest students in a given setting and the weakest. Throughout
these experiences and settings, I have tried to follow a single guiding mantra:
Teach every student.
On the surface, this principle is
self-evident, true by definition as soon as class members walk into a classroom
and occupy the “student” space while I’m standing up front in the “teacher”
space. My voice reaches each student, my handwriting is scrawled on the board
in front of each student, my assignments are directed toward each student, my
grading and written feedback apply reasonably equitably to each student’s work.
But since
early in my career, virtually its outset, I have believed that these facts
alone do not mean that I am teaching every student. I have The Princeton Review
to thank for this perspective. Of all the institutions I have worked for, it
was this for-profit test-preparation company that articulated this fundamental
principle to me. The paradigm is pretty simple: see the classroom like a photo
negative, so that the shapes thrown into relief are not the students who are
engaged and participating, but rather the students who are not. The motivation
driving this emphasis was simple: business. At that time and probably still
now, TPR offered a score improvement guarantee to every student who attended
and completed the course work. Because of that guarantee and because of the
fierce competition in the test prep industry, a teacher who did not successfully teach each student cost the
organization money (free classes, “refresher” tutoring) and positive “word of
mouth” – both bad for business.
Like many teachers, probably most,
I do not particularly relish the idea of modeling education on a business
model. Teaching, for me, is a passion and calling, not an occupation or the aggregate
of numbers in the plus and minus columns. Some of best ingredients of true
learning are equally ineffable.
That said, the goal of happy
learning customers translates into a classroom approach that is, in my opinion,
not merely sound but ideal. Please note that I mean customers figuratively. Teachers are not waitresses, vending
machines, babysitters, tailors, or valets. In any work I do with students, I
expect a level of professionalism and ownership from all my students, and I
expect every student to engage, to invest effort and heart – non-contingent
helping does not fuel learning, not of classroom content and not of the
life-shaping lessons we gain from the experiences we face as students.
But I also find that too often,
even at a school like the excellent one in which I teach, one that prides
itself on an environment of caring and personal relationships, teachers are
happy to teach each student…to teach each student who is happy to learn in ways
prescribed by the teacher, according to the teacher’s individual, specific, firmly
delineated rules and style: Leave your
issues at the door, learn in my classroom, my subject, my way. I had many
teachers of a similar ilk myself, and, if they were dynamic and funny and
smart, I loved them. But as a student, I was capable of learning in almost any
manner or environment – I could absorb the teacher’s subject, the teacher’s
way. What about the students who cannot? They sit in our classrooms as well.
So what does it mean, in practice, to ‘teach every student’? First and
foremost, at least in my opinion, a teacher must know every student. Observe,
notice, question, inquire: How does he
learn best in class? Does she participate or wait to be called up? Why does he
thrive on homework assignments but fail tests and quizzes? Has his demeanor
changed in recent weeks? Does she seem frustrated or defensive? I make a point to try to hear each student’s
voice at least once a day, even if just by exchanging salutations. I try to
grade attentively rather than robotically. I read each student’s educational
testing. I hunt endlessly for good learning support strategies to enrich my
day-to-day classroom practices. And I ask. I ask students how the day or week
is going, I ask advisors and colleagues when I’m worried about a student, I ask
parents when I have the chance. I ask because students do not exist in the
vacuum that is our individual classrooms: other coursework, social factors,
home and work lives, and physical wellbeing all affect what takes place in my
class. I also ask because I have found that through such conversations,
especially with students themselves, I am mostly likely to find the gaps,
whether in the what (the content) of
the course or in the how (how to
study, organize notes, etc.) The latter is just as much my responsibility, in
my opinion, as the former. Helping students learn how better to learn another fundamental
priority of mine as a teacher.
Furthermore, at least in my
classroom, student learning is necessarily a social endeavor taking place in a
social arena: my courses (in every subject I have ever taught) are
discussion-based and semi-Socratic, feature considerable group work, and are
girded with student-generated questions and answers and student-led paths of
discourse. Moreover, my classroom style is more casual than structured – we can
venture off into an unexpected topic of conversation and still find our way
back to the general territory of the day’s planned class. A relaxed structure
bears obvious dangers. It would be easy to devolve into mere play.
In order for it to foster learning
as opposed to recreation, such an atmosphere must feature mutual trust. It must
also rest upon clear, authentic source of authority: me. What does this mean in
my classroom? It does not mean that we have a predetermined set of behaviors or
a long list of punishments. It does mean that I must know not only the plan
but the score. The day’s agenda, the activities and assessments on the
horizon, the essential questions or long term goals – these are my
responsibility at various times to determine and at all times to know and steer
in light of. But some of the most important teaching that can happen in any
school happens around the margins, as students come into class, walk down the
hall, exchange casual comments en route to the pencil sharpener, and the like. Even
among basically kind students, grade comparisons, “my-[whatever]-is-better-than-your-[whatever]”
implications, petty barbs, “just joking” remarks, and miscellaneous moments of schadenfreude are ordinary fodder. Early
in my career, I remember myself hesitating to step into the fray, afraid that
missteps might damage my credibility with students. Now, perhaps by virtue both
of more years of experience and of parenthood, I do step in, almost daily,
“calling out” students for comments, hints, even facial expressions that seem
to undermine the level of civility, trust, and emotional safety our classroom
and school community afford. As I said to one colleague a year or so ago,
“Someone has to be the grown-up in the room, and we’re the only ones eligible.”
The moral tenor of the classroom and the academic aren’t just equally important;
to my mind, they are different colors interwoven in the same cloth. Defending these
two priorities, especially the notion of ethics, seems to me both idealistic and
essential: whether at my current school or a spectrally opposite setting, these
principles seem vital even when they are almost impossibly far from reach.
A last word about students with
special needs: As a teacher who has worked in academic support services, as a
teacher who is pursuing a graduate degree in special education, it seems remiss
not to mention students with disabilities and with unique conditions and
circumstances that differentiate them from their classmates. The teaching I
strive to do, the teaching I discussed above, does serve such students, or at least it begins to do so. It allows
for students of every level, need, and experience. The whats and wherefores of
this approach depend on the level of student and the subject matter – I could
go on and on about practice, but the philosophy remains the same. Understanding
both key facts about how an individual student learns and what that student
knows about his or her experience in the classroom make it easier to scaffold
learning or, if appropriate or fair, tailor expectations to that student’s
needs or level of current success. Knowing each student’s strengths, needs,
struggles, and aspirations and establishing an environment of caring, kindness,
and respect both facilitate that core goal: Teach every student.
