It may come as a shock to some of you that I don’t just follow technology and education blogs, but I manage to follow some blogs I classify as “Important Voices.” Ronni Bennett’s Time Goes By is one of them. She’s a fascinating writer who recently moved from New York City to my old home town of Portland, Maine, and I think I follow her for the homesick glimpses she gives me of life in the Auld Sod, as much as the insights into Ageism. Today’s post has an item that echoes directly into this class:
Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older
I thought I’d like to be a writer, to tell stories. Then, in high school, when I’d written a fantasy for class about my home having a funny personality, the teacher gave me the only D I ever received. “Houses don’t have personalities,” she wrote on my paper and I, interpreting it as a negative judgment on my writing rather than the cramped thinking of an unimaginative teacher, gave up the idea of being a writer. It was a rough time in my life, I was only 15 and I didn’t yet have the self-confidence to dismiss a grownup’s spiritless assessment.
Here’s an intersection of Culture and Education. Yes, this happened in the past. I’m pretty sure Ms Bennett graduated high school before me which means this is more than 35 years ago. That’s about a generation and a half in human terms. Does it happen today? Could it happen today? What effect has technology had on Education or Culture that would have any bearing on a teacher’s ability to gut punch a kid like this?
January 16th, 2008 at 10:23 am
[...] talks about how this is a prime example of how culture and education meets at an intersection. (phaedrus » Blog Archive » Time Goes By: Here’s an intersection of Culture and [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I think this happens everyday in our classrooms. I think teachers underestimate what our students are capable of, I think we overlook many students who need that little bit of encouragement. I would hate to think that I am one of these teachers, that at one point has cut down or diminished one of my students thoughts or plans. I think our voice has more power than we realize.
January 16th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Good guess. I graduated from high school in 1958. This incident probably happened in 1956, mayb 1957.
I’m blushing at your lovely compliment about my blog. Stay tuned for another glimpse of Portland snow on Friday…
January 16th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
[...] Someone’s Dreams With A Single Letter Reading Phaedrus blog about Ms. Bennett’s unfortunate experience does unfortunately happen today. Whatever [...]
January 16th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
What came to my mind as I read Ms. Bennett’s story is that most of the writing assignments that I or my children received were supposed to be creative and involve some kind of personification. But my wife said that the senior writing portfolio at her school looks for realism and practicality rather than creativity. So who knows? I guess this could happen today. I’m not sure what effect technology would have on this except for the outcry of bloggers if they were made aware of the teacher’s actions.
January 18th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Being a Language Arts teacher, Ms. Bennett’s story hit a nerve for two reasons. First, I used to be a teacher who valued creativity over all else. I always told my students to “Wow” me. When I was moved into a new school and position, I was urged to make sure students’ writings were down to earth and made logical sense to scorers of a portfolio. After awhile, each paper I read started being more cookie cutter than ever. It was killing me, but I had to do what I was told. Finally, being censored hit close to home. I have twin nephews who are daylight and dark. At school one day, they were asked to color a duck for Easter. One of my nephews colored his duck blue and was told he would have to redo it because ducks weren’t blue. He was in first grade and already his creativity had been stifled. That incident made me realize what I had been doing to my students by telling them to make their writings more realistic. Needless to say, I stopped that very quickly. Now, they are back to “WOWing” me.
January 19th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
I think that one of the most valuable tools that a teacher has is the ability to praise. We can all find the good in something if we are willing to look. We have to remember how impressionable young minds are. Yet, there has to be a balance so that false hope is not given. I knew a teacher who gushed about her student’s poetry and convinced him he could make a living as a poet. He was devastated when he found out that others did not find his poetry as wonderful as this teacher did.
I could not think of a way technology would affect this kind of behavior from a teacher to a kid, but I think of the Kentucky portfolio requirements where student writing has to be more real world and less creative (like the new pieces called transactive and transactive analytical). Students who are not technically minded struggle to write good pieces to meet these standards. I wish that students could choose either a creative path or a technical path, depending on their stronger skill.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
I think as teachers we all have the power to make or break students’ dreams. As an elementary teacher I see that more so than middle and high school teachers do. I think that the use of different kinds of technology should be used in the classroom. Why should students who don’t like writing reports have to write one? Why can’t they get on something like garageband and give a podcast? Why not let them make a video of whatever it was? How about using powerpoint presentation instead! As teachers we think that there is only one way to do it. WE NEED TO BECOME FLEXIBLE.
January 20th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
I see this so often in special education. I have even had people criticize me for wanting to work with children who “can’t learn”. One of the reasons I went into special education was to prove to the world that students with disabilities can succeed. They need to be provided with opportunities, supports and more importantly, high expectations.