Surely this isn’t the way all teaching jobs are—the unrelenting, unforgiving manic pace of it, the number of students I’m leaving to fail when I have a moment to look over my shoulder and check, the well-intentioned but practicably ridiculous broad and deep lists of ways we should be interacting, challenging, intervening, assessing, diversifying, universalizing, coaching, re-directing and reaching every child, most of which I wholeheartedly agree with and am reminded thereby of the failures and sacrifices of my own instructional practice; surely some schools have similar hopes and expectations for the classroom but throw fewer competing demands at their teachers, fewer students, more resources; or there must, alternatively, be effective schools out there that focus on fewer deep-bore goals at once.
When I went to Hungary, my interest was not in a comparison of educational policy or pedagogy, but I couldn’t help but be affected by the different orientation teachers and students had with the material and scheduling of their days. It’s how I know that not all teaching jobs are like mine. But I wouldn’t trade on our American push for creativity, collaboration, critical-thinking and choice, nor on the core American belief, backed up by tremendous national investment however flawed, that every child should have resources and opportunities to succeed.
Still, even here, even locally, surely this isn’t the way all teaching jobs are. This morning I began to fantasize about more local exchange possibilities. What if I could trade into other teaching experiences without jeapordizing programs and relationships—and, to be absolutely aboveboard, financial standing—and could learn and weigh approaches to teaching and lifestyle within the same systems (and commuting locale)?
What if I could, for example, spend one week at The Nova Project, learning about an alternative high school in Seattle that vastly rejects the many premises that undergird a day in which intellectual behaviors (and, for thirty minutes, socializing behaviors) are fragmented by bells?
What if I could spend a week living on Vashon Island, home to people who’ve chosen isolation and community over the overwhelming cultural and social bustle of city life? What’s it like to teach at the Vashon High School, or to bike home through the trees?
Surely there’s some job out there that makes sense.
And I have so much to offer an exchange partner who will share the possibilities with me. For one week, I could provide targetted lessons in someone else’s classroom, and someone could play to her own expertise in my classroom. I could jump over and, for a week, provide an intensive week on Shakespeare, for example, or close analytical reading of a poem, or sentence diagramming, or rhetorical analysis of text, or the transferable skills of creative writing, or critical thinking and socratic seminars, or a flashbang introduction to popular French and German philosophy, or sophisticated framing of narrative or argumentative essays, or anything I’m asked. And, alternatively, I could provide someone an opportunity to fill my room and not substitute teach but guest teach one week units to my 9th, 11th and 12th grade groups towards instructor passions and student needs.
An exchange—with all the adventure and fresh relationships and reflection that such an exchange implies!
That was the fantasy this morning, anyway. If I could slip into someone else’s classroom and he into mine without any to-do from headquarters, and if we could serve each other’s looming deadlines and needs, maybe I’d pursue it.
Push me, someone!
