June 2008: Blog #3: Reaction to Book "Reluctant Disciplinarian"

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Reading about Gary Rubinstein’s struggles in his first year of teaching – and his unabashed honesty about how awful it was – reminded me about my experiences teaching a small class of second graders through the after-school program America Reads in college. That was an enormously frustrating experience. The class, although only comprised of 8 students, was unfathomably unruly. Like Rubinstein’s first-year classes, this one involved students who wandered around the room and whose refusal to follow rules reduced actual teaching time to about half. It is important for me to recall this time of teaching for America Reads, because I feel that my HSHS summer school experiences so far are too good to be true. The discipline problems in my classroom now are so minimal. Reading RD helped me to put a check on my expectations of what teaching in the fall will be like.  The book made me cognizant of some common “oversimplified beliefs” about teaching that would cause me to develop an over-confidence in my abilities.

One of my favorite insights of Rubenstein’s was his tip: “students don’t necessarily hate the same old routine and may not even, in fact, find it boring” (62).  Doing things the traditional way – working out of textbooks, giving quizzes and dry worksheets – actually will make them feel like they learned something and can do something because of going to school that day. As the author puts it, “Keep it simple at first. Do something safe. When students are allowed to experience success, they feel confidence in themselves and in their teacher.” [in other words, complexity makes students uneasy about the subject, themselves, and me.] Thus, RD has made me conclude that simple, old modes of teaching  are golden and are the gateway to becoming (paradoxically enough!) a not-boring teacher. It’s true: when I think about what I enjoyed in school as a student, it was those teachers that filled the class period up and made me feel like I did something valuable with the day. I hated those classes where we didn’t do anything, the teacher never prepared, and I felt like I had not done anything or learned anything during it. A classroom full of misbehavior is really a classroom full of reluctant monsters, who would actually be having more fun if the class were under control and the teacher were putting them to work.

Above all, I found the Rubenstein reading to be quite reassuring. I like his view that a teacher evolves into the kind of teacher he envisions himself to be, but only with time. You can’t be cool and win over your students with your coolness immediately. Rather, it is through the gradual transmission of your personality and tempered signs that you care about your students. One piece of advice of his that alarmed me was “for new teachers, too much optimism can be dangerous.” I will DEFINITELY begin applying his ‘what is potentially bad about this lesson that I am so excited about?’ technique. After having taught a lesson that bombed this past week, I agree with Rubenstein that the effective lesson is often the one that has the least about it that could go wrong.

One thing I am really excited about with the inception of this blog is that I can use it to track the evolution of my teacher persona. I wonder if I will be able to manage a neutral personality in the classroom come August, as Rubenstein did? My hope is that regular reflection on my teaching through writing this blog will help me to not try to force any kind of teacher persona too soon, but will allow me the feeling of time to fill in to the teacher I want to become, to let my own style and personality emerge gradually through this vocation. I am going to trust in his advice, “I saw that I wouldn’t have to struggle to pretend to be someone else after all.” If that’s not encouraging advice, I don’t know what is! This battle of trying to be “cool” in my students’ eyes is nothing to worry about. I just need to be myself and give it time. To repeat: I don’t need to rush anything or to impress anyone right away. Note to self: Just let who you are emerge naturally! (I guess this means I shouldn’t be afraid of being optimistic and smiley, since that’s who/how I am.) Once my teacher persona emerges, it will be good to keep my ideals stable and unwavering; that way, students won’t ever have to guess who I am. They know.

Here are a few other tidbits of advise I can take away and apply immediately in July summer school:

1. I need to keep learning and being a curious person myself and NOT become stagnant. Thus, I need to make reading and reflecting on my own a priority.
2. Seek to know as much as possible about each individual student. Tend to them as individuals.

I will follow-up and write about these two things in a blog update in one week. So much happens in one week as a teacher that even the thought about writing about it all is daunting! But I will. I take it as a good sign that RD got me thinking and writing so much.  I hope I can keep reading books like this, to promote my reflections about teaching!