Why Are We Teaching, Anyway?

I was in "bobo" (formally recognized as "Standard") math and science classes for the bulk of my secondary experience.  And, I hated it.  I recall a literal haze when I entered those classes; they were dim and loud.  They were shrines of busy work in which the teacher spent 41 minutes yelling at "unruly" students (and ignoring me) or joking with "unruly" students (and ignoring me).

 "Tracking helps create and legitimate a social hierarchy within a school based on perceived differences in student ability" (170).  The racial demographics of any classroom in my high school are usually all that you need to know to determine whether it is a remedial or Standard class or an Honors or AP class.  Majority black and Hispanic?  Remedial or Standard.  Majority white with Indian and Asian?  Honors or AP.  Majority Indian and Asian?  Chances are that it is a high level math or science.  As a high school student, I (as well as my peers) understood the hierarchy that feeds assumptions that some students are intellectually superior.  While no one would ever explicitly say that Asian students are smarter than black students, an Asian student in a Standard class stuck out as an unexpected minority and would often be a cause for jocular discussion.  ("I thought Asians were supposed to be good at math!")

A brief history on tracking:

My least favorite secondary class ever was 11th grade Standard Chemistry.  The majority of the class was black, and the class average was either a C or a D.  I carried an A throughout the year (which, despite the fact I could not tell you a single thing that I had learned from that class at the end of it, got me into Honors Physics the next year).  However, I remember coming to an unsettling realization that year.  One day, while my teacher was trying to teach us something about the Energy Mountain and the girl next to me was steadily texting and the guy in front of me was fast asleep using his backpack as a pillow, I realized that most of the students in that class were smarter than me.  They understood the material better than me.  They knew chemistry!  Yet, I was the one getting A's.  I was the one that they chose when they wanted to use a lab period to get a good grade instead of as a social period.  In retrospect, I realize that it was so unsettling because I had bought into the hierarchy of intelligence that tracking had established in my mind.  ("They can't be smarter than me!")  I knew how to get the grades, but they knew how to understand and apply the concepts that we were taught.  Christensen noticed that "low-track students, in general, have less patience for busy work and value grades less than honors students [and] are more likely to complain loudly, criticize their demeaning work and their teachers" (173).  Keeping all of this in mind, I would say that tracking only teaches children to be students as opposed to scholars and thinkers.

Until reading Christensen's articles, I supported tracking.  While I believed that every student had both the potential and the right to be in upper level classes, I could not get past my own experiences.  I had horrible experiences in Standard classes because of a general lack of motivation from both the students and teachers.  On the other hand, my Honors and AP classes (usually based in analysis and discussion) were wonderful.  Christensen's article showed me that the unintentional untracking that I experienced in high school was unsuccessful because teachers did not "unmask the myths about student ability, redesign the curriculum, [or] change teaching strategies" (171).  They actually did not seem to put much effort into the classes at all; it was often a toss-up whether the teacher or the students gave up on the class first.  I had experienced a failed system of untracking, but I believe that Christensen's plan for untracking is infinitely more valuable than segregating (oops... I meant "tracking") students into courses due to demonstrated or expected ability.

Another thought that Christensen's articles developed (which was also spurred by Ms. Bennington's classroom, described in "Constructing a Teaching Life") is a restructuring of the focus in English classrooms.  Christensen's "explicit focus on the politics of language in [her] senior class, and on the study of education in [her] junior class, play[ed] an additional role in untracking [her] classes" (177).  What if instead of teaching Modern Literature to freshmen, American Literature to sophomores, World Literature to juniors, and British Literature to seniors, we taught themes that incorporated texts from all writers, all time periods, and all geographic regions (including the writings of the students)?  Christensen admits that they read fewer texts in their classroom, but this only reflects the idea that a "less is more."  Not only do her students "learn to think more deeply . . . discover how to dig beneath the surface, how to make connections between texts, their own lives and society," but they responded to the class by saying that "they enjoyed and learned the most from the units [they] spent the most time on" (181).

I am a huge supporter of openness in the classroom.  I have always viewed the means to reach this end to be opening up the classroom for honest questioning.  Christensen has pulled me further to believe that freeing students from sanitized self-expression and interpretation is not enough; it is important to also free them from the restrictions of the English language.  "When more attention is paid to the way something is written or said than to what is said, students' words and thoughts become devalued" (101).  Christensen discusses a question that I struggle with: How can an English teacher balance conventions of the English language with student freedom of expression?  She describes classrooms where students are taught writing with a "right" and "wrong" ideology, where students are taught to discard risks for the security of correct grammar and good grades, and instead advocates a classroom where student voices are "sacred" (103).  I absolutely love the way Christensen twists the restriction of the rules of the English language into a sociopolitical analysis of a "gate-keeping system in our country" (103).  Instead of just forcing the rules of the English language onto her students, she helps them to understand why a mastery of these rules are necessary in American society.

Christensen referenced the "collective text" that her class created, through which her students' "lives become a window to examine society" (103).  I have always viewed literature as that window through which to examine society, and student writing as a response.  However, it is an awesome idea to give my students' writings and discussions the power and validation that I have previously reserved for published literary works.  It will be fun to collaborate texts with student writing to foster discussion and thought!

DON'T try this at school...

I absolutely LOVE Christensen's teaching philosophy; it mirrors mine so much.  "Any text is an investigation into both literature and society, chosen not because it's on some university's reading-for-college-preparation list, but rather because it allows us to examine our society and ourselves more fully" (177).  That is how I want to teach literature, and Christensen is a strong model of the teacher that I pray that I will be!

Again, I am reminded: I will not be teaching books or writing, but thinking individuals.