A MEASURE OF THIS TEACHER
This is how it had to be.
90° weather permeated a musty classroom, untouched since mid-summer when custodians and school aides moved furniture away then into the center to wax the floors. My old room’s furniture found its way into this room as well. The first two days of setting up my classroom involved lifting bookshelves, setting up student desks, the teacher area, and textbook collections (because calling them “libraries” would be an insult to libraries). I wore a dark polo, jeans, and Jordans while dumping curricula older than my teaching career. Shakira and the Carters pushed me through the eight-foot wooden apparatuses in need of tender loving construction and screws. I repaired shelves and mirrors, cleaned out lockers, fixed a quick bulletin board, put up a few posters, and took inventory of the supplies I needed. I folded boxes with the contents of my old desks, dusted every piece of lumber in the place, Lysol’ed the desks, and shook the chairs to see which ones would wobble if and when my students got anxious in class.
This is my fifth classroom in five years. Each time, I’m asked to process, sort, and discard of what was left behind. Each time, I oblige because the kids need an environment where the person in charge of it looks like they care. This time was different. Last year, I walked into work with business attire. This year, I wore sunglasses and a t-shirt. Last year, I was given a room with a broken air conditioner. This year, I had an air conditioner. Last year, I had a teacher improvement plan. This year, I didn’t.
No sweat.
I have every intention of shedding the gripes, too. Teacher improvement plans are as anonymous as they sound, and usually just as capricious. I won’t bother you with the minutiae of every sharp Do Now / warm-up, every activity I presented, every student response, every missed opportunity for deeper questioning, every minutes of lost time due to having a broken clock in my classroom, and every moment of wit and anxiety while children and adults take furious notes with different implications. Each time, I never felt I had to prove my pedagogy, but I had to convince others that the dubious measures of evaluation from the year before weren’t a reflection of my classroom. We use an evaluative rubric that provided plenty of appropriate examples in its dimensions, and plenty of wiggle room for folks to mis- and re-interpret.
But it never tells me why students got love for me. Danielson got nothin’ on that. Or me.
Doubt stung my skin and made welts all over it, and, rather than seeking the appropriate ointment, I let it sting so I could empathize with the hundreds of others I’d watch in the news, the Internet, and the grievance offices down at my union. I had a hard time blaming the people in my building because I knew the numbers were out of their control, but Continue reading: A Measure of This Teacher | The Jose Vilson
