Some Thoughts on Kozol

On my very first day of field placement, I noticed that student kept pausing by the board on their way into or out of the classroom to fiddle with something. At first I thought that they were just adding notes to the teacher, since my coop keeps a lot of random things posted on her smart board, but after seeing students pause their between every class, sometimes in pairs or groups, I decided it was time for a closer look. What I found in that spot was little magnetic clothing. Baseball jerseys, a chicken suit, floral skirts, and a men’s suit all surrounded a little magnetic Einstein. As I stared, Mrs. H. glanced over. “Oh, that’s our class Einstein. He gets dressed and undressed about fifty times a day,” she said in an off-hand tone.

When I read chapter nine of “Letters to a Young Teacher”, I kept thinking of the little magnetic Einstein.  The high school students in my class may be a little old for fuzzy caterpillars, imaginary instruments and wiggly, wobbly teeth but that doesn’t mean that they are too old to have fun during class time. Bringing things like magnetic Einstein, a floating shark, and a monkey slingshot (yes, these are all present in Mrs. H’s room) doesn’t distract students from their lessons—it lightens the classroom atmosphere and puts students at ease. For instance, whenever the class has to read a text allowed, they use the “slingshot monkey” instead of just going in a circle. The student in possession of the monkey has to speak and when they are done speaking, they slingshot the monkey to whoever they want, and that person has to read next. This keeps the students moving and on their toes even during the rather mundane task of a class read-aloud. No matter how much I wish otherwise, I know that I’m going to have many students who find English or certain aspects of English boring. The trick will be for me to find ways to make it interesting, and bringing fun things into the classroom is one way to do that. It shows students that we, their teachers, recognize them not as robots but as real people with real needs.

Changing the topic (and jumping forward a bit), something that really jumped out at me was in chapter 12, when Kozol says that teachers should be “transparent” in identifying their beliefs as their beliefs (pages 158-159). Teachers need to own their beliefs so that students have the opportunity to (as Kozol puts it) “judge or challenge what they say accordingly”. This make sense to me, but I get the feeling that if I did this too much as a teacher I might just get fired. I believe that it’s important to bring up “hot issues” in class, but in today’s uptight society it may be better to keep our personal opinions about these issues to ourselves. I keep wondering whether it would be better to present both sides of an issue as best as I can without telling students on which side I stand. It seems to me that as long as a teacher doesn’t allow his bias to get in the way of presenting an opposing view, he will be able to represent the view well and his own opinion may not be necessary. On the other hand, I worry that if I don’t express an opinion enough in class my class I will miss opportunities to model supporting opinions during class discussions. After all, the ability to argue and support their beliefs is a skill that I want my students to have for life. Perhaps it’s best to try to find some kind of balance; I’m not sure. So far, I haven't seen any teachers really take a stand or express an opinion on a controversial issue. What do you think? Does a teacher’s opinion belong in the classroom?